We may never be capable tofreeze you at the here and now of death and then reanimate you . But the good news is , there may be another way to keep your learning ability viable . A group of scientist have come up with a procedure called “ chemical fixation and plastic embedding ” — which essentially turns your brain into a hunk of delicately preserve plastic .
https://gizmodo.com/10-futuristic-technologies-that-will-never-exist-5931073
Here ’s how you’re able to become immortal , by sealing your brain in amber .
To help us well translate the chemopreservation process , we spoke to futurist John Smart , the Vice President of theBrain Preservation Foundation(BPF ) , a nonprofit science research group mold to value the process , along with other potential preservation strategy .
link and patterns
There are two fundamental assumptions that underlie any scientific discipline of brain preservation after end , whether it be cryonics or chemopreservation : connectomics and patternism .
Connectomics is about the full capturing , mapping , and understanding of how the brain works , begin with a map of which neurons connect to each other ( what ’s call the “ connectome ” ) , plus some critical molecular features of the 1,000 or so synapsis ( bridges ) each neuron makes to others ( the “ synaptome ” ) and perhaps , a few erudition - ground variety in cistron - protein networks in the nucleus of each nerve cell ( the “ epigenome ” ) , which is believed to interact with our synapses in a way that ’s still a bit beyond our understanding .
TheHuman Connectome Projectis largely afoot thanks to theNational Institutes of Health . Their goal is to ultimately build up a connexion map of a fully functional and healthy human Einstein . Connectomics holds relevance to chemopreservation in that it will inform us to the degree , weighing machine , and spirit level of truth required to properly preserve a brain . Moreover , as Sebastian Seung has enjoin , “ The connectome is us . ”
Assuming that you are your connectome , patternism is the leaping of organized religion that comes next . If these molecular features of your brain determine memory and identity , and can be pristinely preserved through plastination , the information that is you will also be preserve . afterwards , devote sufficiently advanced technologies , the information that is you ( i.e. your pattern ) could be reconstituted into an analogous , living brain — whether it be biologically or digitally based .
“ We come out to be our extra , complex radiation diagram , ” Smart told io9 , “ not our matter , or even our type of matter . ” He notes that each of the 250,000 or so people who have had cochlear implant has had one small neural system pattern replaced , or “ uploaded ” , into technology . Retinal implants are amount next . It ’s the pattern reproduction that we wish about , not the matter , or “ substrate . ”
Patternism , in conjunction with connectomics , may finally reveal our neural correlates of identity — and reserve us to preserve capacity like memories , thoughts , emotions , even consciousness . “ knowingness is transitory , it ’s like a pattern in a stream , ” said Smart , “ and it ’s also overrated . You do n’t have it when you kip , and it ’s bring up , at a ulterior time , from much more durable cellular and molecular rule when you are rap unconscious , given anesthesia , drowned for an time of day in cold water system with no EEG , and so on . ”
Identity , argue Smart , is what really count — those pattern that are put in in our neural architectures . They may also be the form that can be keep up in credit card . That ’s what neuroscience is on the edge of answering . Perhaps .
How it work
arrogate that brain plastination finally come into practice , the first step , unluckily , is that you have to die .
This could be in or near a hospital , hospice , or your home . Moments after your death , a response team will set out the process of exigency glutaraldehyde perfusion ( EGP ) for protein fixation ( a sort of advanced embalming process ) . This has to happen within 15 minutes of your death , otherwise the first phase angle of neural degradation will start to sic in ; wit cells start to die on report of oxygen privation .
The extract of this molecule by the response team essentially immobilize your wit into plaza , creating a shot of your identity and your long term memories — though you might lose some myopic - terminal figure memory when you re-start life after reanimation , just as sometimes hap after head trauma today . “ Glutaraldehyde is a very small chemical that gets into all your cell , and locks down your proteins and cytoskeleton , creating a kind of molecular John Cage , ” said Smart , “ all protein - associate interactions grind to a arrest because of this crosslinking . ”
After this , your body will be moved to a centralized facility where , over the course of several months , your head will be carefully bump off and place into a bathtub . Unlike cryonics , this stage is not metre sore ( whereas the standard saying at cryonics facilities is “ time is trauma ” ) . It ’s at this point that a chemical called osmium tetroxide fixes all the fatness and fluent membranes in the brain cells . Then , a series of acetone - similar solvent are used to convert the psyche into plastic where it can be stack away at room temperature . “ All the piss gets strip , out , but all the protein ( and presumably , the other critical features ) is still there , ” says Smart , “ and so are all the nervous connections , as are all the neural weighting — including the three dimensional structure . ”
Slicing it up
Indeed , because the exact 3D complex body part of the brain is keep up , it can be restore .
And this is where Kenneth Hayworth comes in , the President of the BPF and Senior Scientist at the Howard Hughes Medical Institute ’s Janelia Farm Research Campus . Hayworth is the co - inventor of a highly advanced brainpower slicing machine that can image neural circuits at the micromillimeter plate . He ’s designed and built several automated machines to apply this outgrowth .
What does this have to do with chemopreservation ? By carving your charge plate brain into millimicron thin slices , next scientist may be able to reconstruct its three dimensional structure using modern microscopy — negatron microscope that can see down to the degree of speck if necessary . Then , using an automated re - compiling proficiency , along with the requisite computer program , your decisive pattern will be reconstructed , fade by piece , in a computer . And if these traffic pattern interact the same way that vital blueprint interact in a last learning ability , any memories or experiences you want to donate , and perhaps your full identity , will return to the world .
We ca n’t do this yet — and not by a long shot , but the theory is on the table , being advanced by encephalon emulation communities like Sebastian Seung’s , WiredDifferently , and Randal Koene’sCarbonCopies . finally , once we have the requisite processing index , reanimation may become a reality . Smart suspects that affordable reanimation of brains ( even a human being ’s ) could happen as too soon as a few 10 from now , particularly if computer , robotics , scanning , and nanotechnology do n’t level off in their improvement but continue to encourage in exponential mode , as they have so far .
Will it work ?
Of course , we do n’t really be intimate if this will work . The results of the connectome project will inform much of this . It ’s quite possible that chemical fixation will be inadequate in terms of both the amount of information salt away , and its foresighted term storage potential . Moreover , reanimation may not go as elegantly as be after . But as Smart notes , our brains our extremely distributed , fungible and associative , making them resistant to day-after-day damage . Neuroscientists intend that memories are stored in a highly distributed , redundant way . You only may need to retrieve the absolute majority of connective to infer , or recreate , the full storage .
A great proof of conception for both connectomics and patternism , Smart fence , would be the clay sculpture and retrieval of part of a simple occasional memory , such as the way an organism was associatively trained during its lifespan , in a very dewy-eyed exemplar organism , like a insect , a fly , or a sea slug . For model , the first team to crack the long term memory code of the C. elegans nematode louse , an animal with just 302 neurons and rough 6,000 synapses , now being preserved , scanned , and assume byOpenWormand other collaboration groups , would convert many of us that this technology might work .
Today , the Brain Preservation Foundation is running a prize competition to manifest that the connectome is dead keep using both chemo and cryopreservation techniques , in mouse , hare , and squealer brains . But in a few more geezerhood , if neuroscientist bear on to unravel the molecular patterns of memory and thought , we may look to connectomics not just as a way to elevate skill , improve medical specialty , and work up smarter computers , but as a way for us to get to the future , too — if we require .
Top image : musicman / shutterstock.com . Inset images via Human Connectome Project , SciDirect , OpenWorm .
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