GoKawiilA pig's brain has been frozen with its cellular activity locked in place and minimal damage. Some believe the same could be done with the brains of people with a terminal illness, so their mind can be reconstructed and they can "continue with their life"
Could our brains one day be preserved in a way that locks in our thoughts, feelings and perceptions? SAMUNELLA/SCIENCE PHOTO LIBRARY
An entire mammalian brain has been successfully preserved using a technique that will now be offered to people who are terminally ill. The intention is to preserve all the neural information thought necessary to one day reconstruct the mind of the person it once belonged to.
“They would need to donate their brain and body for scientific research,” says Borys Wróbel at Nectome in San Francisco, California, a research company focused on memory preservation. “But what we are offering, as a company, is for their body and brain to be kept, essentially indefinitely, in the hope that sometime, in the future, it would be possible to read out the information from the brain and reconstruct the person… to allow them to continue, in effect, with their life.”
When it comes to preserving the minute architecture of the brain, timing is critical. Within minutes of blood no longer circulating, enzymes break down neurons and cells start digesting themselves.
Cryonics usually involves preserving people’s bodies at sub-zero temperatures in the hope that they could one day be revived if a treatment or cure for their medical condition becomes available. Traditionally, this aims to preserve the brain quickly after natural death by cooling it and adding fixatives, but unless the cryonics team is at a person’s bedside, deterioration will have already begun before this occurs.
To circumvent this problem, Wróbel and his team have developed a protocol that is compatible with physician-assisted death, in which a person who is terminally ill chooses the time of their passing. The idea is that by intervening immediately, scientists may have the best chance of preserving the brain in a state that closely reflects a living condition.
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Wróbel’s team tested the protocol on pigs, which have brain and cardiovascular anatomy that is comparable to people. First, they inserted a cannula into the heart roughly 1 minute after cardiac arrest, before flushing out the blood and introducing preservation solutions into the brain. These fluids contain aldehyde chemicals, which create molecular bridges between cells, essentially locking cellular activity in place.
They then introduce cryoprotectants, which replace water within tissue, preventing the formation of ice crystals during cooling, which would otherwise damage cells. Next, the brain was cooled to around -32° C, at which temperature cryoprotectants form a glass-like state. The structure of the brain can then be preserved indefinitely.
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