Humanity might soon hold the key to Immortality. (Warning 18+ these images may offend you.)

Brain Preservation

You all clicked on the link to know what this great key to immortality is. But before we get to this matter, there is an important notion that we need to understand.

This notion is called plastination.

Here is a definition of plastination : water and fat are replaced by certain plastics, yielding specimens that can be touched, do not smell or decay, and even retain most properties of the original sample. [1]


Here are some exemple of plastination:
[atsimg]http://files.abovetopsecret.com/files/img/bn501600c8.jpg[/atsimg]
[atsimg]http://files.abovetopsecret.com/files/img/sy501600d2.jpg[/atsimg]
[atsimg]http://files.abovetopsecret.com/files/img/fp501600df.jpg[/atsimg]
[2]

Now let's get to the Brain preservation subject. A man by the name of Kenneth Hayworth is pushing this plastination technique to the next level, on a microscopic level. By preserving microscopic slices of every protein, neuron and sysnapse in your brain, Kenneth Hayworth hopes to store these slices to reconstruct them later and bring back your consciousness at the same time.

This is how small they are going to make this plastination :
[atsimg]http://files.abovetopsecret.com/files/img/zu50160f4e.jpg[/atsimg]

Here is how it is done (note that i do not possess the vocabulary to vulgarize this so i pasted it. All references will be at the end of the post ) :

" It involves preserving brain tissue with chemicals that prevent ice formation, followed by low-temperature storage in a "glass-like" state (vitrification). Recent cryonics advances have allowed organ cryopreservation, thawing, and successful re-transplantation in small animals, bringing this technology closer to its goal of reversible solid-state suspended animation. Each of these technologies, and other less sophisticated ones, such as chemical fixation without plastic embedding, deserves to be carefully evaluated for its ability to preserve the critical structures of our brains, an evaluation that has never before occurred for an entire human brain.

Fortunately, neuroscience is now identifying the synaptic structures that contain our unique memories and identity, and new electron microscopy (EM) imaging techniques are allowing us to verify when these structures have been successfully preserved, from general synaptic connectivity all the way to particular synaptic features, receptor distributions, and even the signal states (phosphorylation, methylation, etc.) of individual brain proteins." [3]


Does this man have a solid background or is he making fantastical claims out of nowhere?

"he started his career by racking up a dozen or so patents at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory. From there he headed for the University of Southern California, where, as a grad student, he invented and patented a new kind of brain scanner. I could also mention that he's been working at Harvard lately, researching the human brain's visual system." [4]

And here are the people working with him on this project at the brain preservation foundation:
(About 25 Authors,lecturers in that field of research all with Ph.D)
www.brainpreservation.org...

Here is what brain preservation could bring to humanity :

1. For Science. High-fidelity brain preservation is a necessary step to an eventual Human Connectome Project, understanding the circuit-level organization of human and other animal brains. Progress in connectomics, or plastinating and scanning human and other animal brains, will allow us a much deeper understanding of healthy and disordered mental behavior, and may also help create significantly more intelligent and useful computers.

2. For Memory Donation. Brain preservation would appear to provide interested persons worldwide a means of preserving their memories and experiences. Those who wish to leave behind such memories, for loved ones, descendants, or as a donation to culture would be able to do so, potentially very inexpensively, and potentially to the great benefit of society. Neuroscience strongly suggests brain memories could be read by future technology without revival of the individual, if revival were not desired, much as we read computer hard drives or archeological digs today.

3. For Continued Life. Brain preservation might provide a reliable means of avoiding death entirely and reaching the distant future. For those who accept the hypothesis that they are encoded in their brain's unique physical structure and process, all evidence to date suggests this would work. Furthermore, if general artificial intelligence emerges in this century, as many scholars expect, reanimation might occur not centuries, but mere decades from now, while your friends and loved ones are still alive, and could personally benefit from your revival.

4. For the Future. Even for those unsure of the value of preservation, such a procedure could be desirable if it were inexpensive and reliable. Such individuals might "leave it to the future" (future family, institutions, or society) to decide if memory or identity revival was desired, in their individual case. With certain knowledge that one's life experiences and insights will otherwise disappear from the world, and comparatively few resources necessary for plastination or cryonics, preservation for the possibility of future service to loved ones or society might be seen as a particularly responsible and humble end-of-life decision.

this information can all be found here : www.brainpreservation.org...


For my part, i think that this discovery as the potential to completely change how we humans perceive and deal with death. Now is this technology only going to be available to the elites of this world? probably. Can you Imagine a world where the 99% is being controlled by not only filthy rich but immortal elites. Scary...

But it is always good to dream of the immortality of the mind!




Note that i fully understand that this science is in progress and has not yet achieved the recreation of the mind or brain by plastination.



[1]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plastination
[2]http://shopoddities.tumblr.com/post/26954658591/ooooo-plastination-i-love-saying-that
[3]http://www.brainpreservation.org/content/overview
[4]http://www.huffingtonpost.com/ben-thomas/your-brain-on-immortality_b_1700226.html?utm_hp_ref=weird-news&ir=Weird%20News

reply to post by CompisMentis


This technique is amazing...my father took my girls to see this a few years ago, they were amazed by it. Never thought of it in the sense of immortality. Seems like cryogenics may not be the end all, nasty freezer burn, it will be interesting to see it this technique will work and can be reversed. S&F!!

Wow, that is pretty gruesome, yet still a better love story than Twilight.

My mum actually has volunteered to become one of these 'experiments', giving her body to young med students to do with what they please. Not sure I'd be game to visit my mum if she was in this state though, although the nagging would be reduced!

(also, don't forget to use the ex-text tags when using other work from other sites)

Originally posted by timetothink
reply to post by CompisMentis

 

This technique is amazing...my father took my girls to see this a few years ago, they were amazed by it. Never thought of it in the sense of immortality. Seems like cryogenics may not be the end all, nasty freezer burn, it will be interesting to see it this technique will work and can be reversed. S&F!!

Great! how old were your daughters when they saw the exhibition? I personally have nothing against it, the conservatives in my country diabolized it but i think it is a great way to learn more about death. What did they have to say about it?

Something similar in this thread......

What would you do different.....

Fascinating topic!



Not even a star or a flag on my contribution?
Wow thanks I'll keep ya in mind.....
Good thing I don't hold grudges.....

Now let's get to the Brain preservation subject. A man by the name of Kenneth Hayworth is pushing this plastination technique to the next level, on a microscopic level. By preserving microscopic slices of every protein, neuron and sysnapse in your brain, Kenneth Hayworth hopes to store these slices to reconstruct them later and bring back your consciousness at the same time.

Great, so his whole plan is predicated on the assumption that consciousness is "informatic". There are structual and philosophical problems with that. First, if consciousness is informatic, then the information patterns that define consciousness would have to be recognizable in order for it to be identified. But how would that be done? You have a situation of self-referential impredicativity. Such situations also give rise to irresolvable paradoxes in the foundations of mathematics and logic.

reply to post by CompisMentis


I think they were about 14, they were always interested in science..my daughter is in her 3rd year in biology in college right now. I always encouraged them to explore.

Originally posted by graybox

Now let's get to the Brain preservation subject. A man by the name of Kenneth Hayworth is pushing this plastination technique to the next level, on a microscopic level. By preserving microscopic slices of every protein, neuron and sysnapse in your brain, Kenneth Hayworth hopes to store these slices to reconstruct them later and bring back your consciousness at the same time.

Great, so his whole plan is predicated on the assumption that consciousness is "informatic". There are structual and philosophical problems with that. First, if consciousness is informatic, then the information patterns that define consciousness would have to be recognizable in order for it to be identified. But how would that be done? You have a situation of self-referential impredicativity. Such situations also give rise to irresolvable paradoxes in the foundations of mathematics and logic.

If consciousness is indeed information stored in the brain i do not see how patterns of consciousness have to be identified or recognized for it to work. They are simply pressing pause on the whole system. The only way i can see this not working is If consciousness is not part of the system (does not originate from the brain) or found in units smaller than neurons or synapses (therefore lost in the process). Hope this answer makes sense.

Thank you for posting, great reply.

This makes me think of a science-fiction book I read some years ago, Permutation City, by Greg Egan. It's a story about the possibility to recreate and simulate the brain in a virtual reality..

I dont think brain can survive this procedure. The only way to revive a frozen person would be to scan their brain on a microscopic level and then reconstruct and simulate it in a computer. Essentialy, we need mature mind uploading for revival.

Ok, I've seen this "Plastinate your brain for immortality!" meme shooting around alot lately and it's just an awful idea all around. The idea of memory preservation is laughable at best for two very important reasons 1) the mind and memory seem to rely on MUCH more than the patterns of neural branching and synaptic potentiation. In fact, most of the evidence now points to the mind's physical substrate being a combination of electrochemical and quantum mechanical. (In fact some recent work on memory shows the specific mechanism through which the two systems transduce information between each other for transmission at the synapse). The kind of resolution this sort of procedure needs, at MINIMUM, is at the molecular scale, and perhaps MUCH smaller than that, not to mention the time dependent aspects of the maintainence of Mind as an operative mode.

What these guys are talking about is taking a JPEG of a page of War and Peace, dropping the resolution to 8 pixels square and calling the result "Russian literature". Maybe -- MAYBE -- they could pull some traces of memories. But, do you really want to leave a jaggy, cragged version of bits of your mind to science?

And the second reason this is a laughable idea is that the scientists who've been pushing this idea have GOT to know all this stuff. I'm just a well-read layman. Which basically means it's all a great big PR scam to get brains for science. And that's HILARIOUS!