Tutorial 2: Afterlife for athetist Summary

Original Text:

Afterlife for Atheists

Can  brains  be  so  preserved  forever?  Fahy  and  his  colleague  Robert  L. McIntyre are now developing techniques that they hope will win the Brain Preservation  Technology  Prize,  the  brainchild  of  neuroscientist  Kenneth Hayworth (I'm on their advisory board as the advocatus diaboli ). As I write this, the prize is currently valued at more than $106,000; the first 25 percent of the award will be for the complete preservation of the synaptic structure of a whole mouse brain, and the other 75 percent will go to the first team "to successfully preserve a whole large animal brain in a manner that could also be adopted for humans in a hospital or hospice setting immediately upon clinical death."

I witnessed the infusion of a rabbit brain through its carotid arteries with a fixative agent called glutaraldehyde, which binds proteins together into a solid gel. The brain was then removed and saturated in ethylene glycol, a cryoprotective agent eliminating ice formation and allowing safe storage at

–130 degrees C as a glasslike, inert solid. At that temperature, chemical reactions are so attenuated that it could be stored for millennia. If successful, would it be proof of concept?

Think of a book in epoxy resin hardened into a solid block of plastic, McIntyre told me. "You're never going to open the book again, but if you can prove that the epoxy doesn't dissolve the ink the book is written with, you can demonstrate that all the words in the book must still be there … and you might be able to carefully slice it apart, scan in all the pages, and print/bind a new book with the same words." Hayworth tells me that the rabbit brain circuitry he examined through a 3-D scanning electron microscope "looks well preserved, undamaged, and it is easy to trace the synaptic connections between the neurons."

This sounds promising, but I have my doubts. Is a connectome precisely analogous to a program that can be uploaded in machine-readable format into a computer? Would a connectome so preserved and uploaded into a computer be the same as awakening after sleep or unconsciousness? Plus, there are around 86 billion neurons in a human brain with often 1,000 or more synaptic connections for each one, for a total of 100 trillion connections to be accurately preserved and replicated. Staggering complexity. And this doesn't include the rest of the nervous system outside the brain, which is also part of yourself that you might want resurrecting.

Shermer, M. (2016). Afterlife for Atheists. Scientific American. 314 (2), 73.

doi:10.1038/scientificamerican0216-

Summary:

Shermer (2016) questioned the techniques and science of preservation of the human brain after death whereby the brain could be protected without damaging the synaptic connections in the neurons in a way that it could be used for a hospital or hospice setting shortly after clinical death. The author participated and observed the development of the technique but doubts its progress due to the complication of the brain's nervous system.

Teachers Summary:

- Talk about the difference between human and rabbit brain
- Due to the complexity

Notes:
Figure out the relationship of ideas.