By Camille Cannon

(This article originally appeared in Vegas Seven magazine on November 9, 2016.)

Hang with DJ Steve Aokiat a nightclub and you can expect an earful of his electronic bangers and confetti in your hair. Cozy up to Steve Aoki at Brooklyn Bowl on November 15 and you’ll get to hit pins alongside neuroscientists, bid on one-of-a-kind experiences in live and silent auctions (think jumping into the foam pit at Aoki’s Las Vegas “playhouse”) and catch him outside the booth as he hosts the Aoki Foundation’s Bowling for Brains fundraiser. The inaugural event supports the Buck Institute on Aging, SENS Research Foundation and Las Vegas’ own Lou Ruvo Center for Brain Health, continuing the foundation’s ongoing support of regenerative science.

Why was it important for you to hold this event in Las Vegas?

I’ve lived here for a few years now. I [want to] reach out to the community. Anyone who’s willing to help out toward brain research and organizations that are focused on cutting-edge research on degenerative brain diseases … I want to meet these people. I want to be in the same room with them and create more collaborations. That’s really cool to me. I don’t get the opportunity to do that very often because usually when I do events, I’m just DJing. At this one, I get to hang out. It’s more of an intimate thing. Anyone who enters can have conversations about brain health and what we can do to raise more money and awareness of these organizations that are doing incredible work.

What sparked your interest in degenerative diseases?

After my father passed away in 2008, I started doing a lot of research on cancer and understanding what killed him. That led to researching general health and nutrition and understanding the body, the brain, then science and technology, seeing how far we’ve advanced and what kind of trajectories we’re heading toward. A lot of it has to do with understanding our brain. It’s the single most important phenomenon in civilization—the human brain. Yet we really don’t know much about it. At the end of the day, if we don’t die from something like cancer, we will have some kind of degenerative issues that will affect us and the people that we love.

What have you learned since getting involved with the research?

We’re going down a path that, at one point, was considered science fiction. There are a lot of things happening in science that you wouldn’t even believe. The idea of telekinesis, being able to move things with your brain … that’s happening now. People who have issues with paralysis and can’t move their arms or legs, they’re able to use technology to move machines and be mobile. These radical technological advances are something I’m excited about. You talk about it with people and they’re like, “Holy shit, it’s really happening.” You don’t really hear about it because the science community is so small. In a way, I use this platform to say, “Hey, the science community is pretty small, but the music community is pretty large.” I would love to use this platform to bounce all of these amazing advances off to a community that would never hear about it and let them know, “Hey, you can help out.” We can get there faster, and we can get there more efficiently if more people [get involved].

What is your long-term goal for the Aoki Foundation?

We’re working toward a world where degenerative brain diseases do not exist. … Imagine if we could eradicate that like we eradicated tuberculosis or polio, then we wouldn’t ever have to worry about it again. If we don’t have a brain that’s working, we’re not ourselves.

Aoki Foundation Bowling for Brains

7 p.m., Nov. 15, Brooklyn Bowl, $100–$12,500, steveaokifund.com. Vegas Seven is giving away tickets to this event to four lucky readers, visit vegasseven.com/AokiContest for more details.