{"id":25286,"date":"2018-03-15T03:49:18","date_gmt":"2018-03-15T03:49:18","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.kurzweilai.net\/?p=310048"},"modified":"2018-04-21T18:09:14","modified_gmt":"2018-04-21T18:09:14","slug":"neuroscientists-devise-scheme-for-mind-uploading-centuries-in-the-future","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/hoo.central12.com\/fugic\/2018\/03\/15\/neuroscientists-devise-scheme-for-mind-uploading-centuries-in-the-future\/","title":{"rendered":"Neuroscientists devise scheme for mind-uploading centuries in the future"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Representative electron micrograph of white matter region in cryopreserved pig brain (credit: Brain Preservation Foundation)<\/p><\/div>\n

Two researchers —\u00a0Robert McIntyre, an MIT graduate, and Gregory M. Fahy, PhD., 21st Century Medicine<\/a> (21CM) Chief Scientific Officer, have developed a method for scanning a preserved brain\u2019s connectome<\/a> (the 150 trillion microscopic synaptic connections presumed to encode all of a person\u2019s knowledge).<\/p>\n

That data could possibly be used, centuries later, to reconstruct a whole-brain emulation — uploading<\/a> your mind into a computer or Avatar<\/em>-style robotic, virtual, or synthetic body, McIntyre and others suggest.<\/p>\n

According to MIT Technology Review<\/em><\/a>,\u00a0McIntyre has formed a startup company called\u00a0Nectome<\/a> that has won a large NIH grant<\/a> for creating \u201ctechnologies to enable whole-brain nanoscale preservation and imaging.\u201d<\/p>\n

McIntyre is also collaborating with Edward Boyden, PhD., a top neuroscientist at MIT and inventor of a new \u201cexpansion microscopy\u201d technique (to achieve super-resolution with ordinary confocal microscopes), as KurzweilAI<\/em> recently reported<\/a>. The technique also causes brain tissue to swell, making it more accessible.<\/p>\n

Preserving brain information patterns, not biological function<\/strong><\/p>\n

Unlike cryonics (freezing people or heads for future revival), the researchers did not intend to revive<\/em> a pig or pig brain (or human, in the future). Instead, the idea is to develop a bridge to future mind-uploading technology by preserving the information content<\/em> of the brain, as encoded within the frozen connectome.<\/p>\n

The first step in the ASC procedure is to perfuse the brain\u2019s vascular system with the toxic fixative glutaraldehyde (typically used as an embalming fluid but also used by neuroscientists to prepare brain tissue for the highest resolution electron microscopic and immunofluorescent examination). That instantly halts metabolic processes by covalently crosslinking the brain\u2019s proteins in place, leading to death (by contemporary standards). The brain is then quickly stored at -130 degrees C, stopping all further decay.<\/p>\n

The method, tested on a pig’s brain, led to 21st Century Medicine<\/a> (21CM), lead researcher McIntyre, and senior author Fahy winning the $80,000 Large Mammal Brain Preservation Prize<\/a> offered by the Brain Preservation Foundation (BPF), announced<\/a> March 13.<\/p>\n

To accomplish this, McIntyre\u2019s team scaled up the same procedure they used to previously preserve a rabbit brain, for which they\u00a0won the BPF\u2019s Small Mammal Prize in February 2016, as KurzweilAI<\/em> has reported<\/a>. That research was judged by neuroscientist Ken Hayworth, PhD., President of the Brain Preservation Foundation,\u00a0<\/em>and noted connectome researcher Prof.\u00a0<\/strong>Sebastian Seung, PhD.<\/a>, Princeton Neuroscience Institute.<\/p>\n

Caveats<\/strong><\/p>\n

However, BRF warns that this single prize-winning laboratory demonstration is \u201cinsufficient to address the types of quality control measures that should be expected of any procedure that would be applied to humans.\u201d Hayworth outlines here<\/a> his position on a required medical procedure and associated quality control protocol, prior to any such offering.<\/p>\n

The ASC method, if verified by science, raises serious ethical, legal, and medical questions. For example:<\/p>\n