Scientists have discovered a new phenomenon in the brain that could explain the development of early stages of neurodegeneration that is seen in diseases such as ALS, which affects voluntary muscle movement such as walking and talking. The discovery was so novel, the scientists needed to coin a new term to describe it: mitoautophagy, a collection of self-destructive mitochondria in diseased upper motor neurons of the brain that begin to disintegrate from within at a very early age.