Cryonics  

The Freeze Phil Campaign has been incubating for some time but was formally started, finally, in October 2012. The goal of this project is a legal, "Pre-Mortem Cryonic Suspension" for Philip Rhoades at an appropriate time and place for him and of his own choosing. The plan is to build a substantial campaign to force legislative change that will allow people more flexibility about their end of (current) life decisions ie in short, to allow people a legal "Pre-Mortem Cryonic Suspension."

My father died last year at age 89.  The last couple of decades of his life were worse than they should have been because of Alzheimer's Disease (AD).  Now, Dad's younger brother (my uncle) is in a similar state to Dad when he was the same age.  Clearly, most of the problem with AD is (epi)genetically-based.  I am fairly confident that if Homo sapiens can deal with our self-destructive tendencies and survive the Sixth Mass Extinction AND maintain current scientific and technological progress for another few decades - then there will almost certainly be early treatments to prevent the onset of AD - as well as treatments to reverse the symptoms of people already affected by AD. However, it will most likely be too late for me.

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There is not much doubt I am going down the same path as my father, uncle and other ancestors.  For two decades I have been active in Life Extension efforts including Cryonics and Neural Archives - but those last options for extending life (albeit involving a technological "resurrection" in the future) depends on the information in the brain being well enough preserved that there remains a "person" in the liquid nitrogen to reanimate.  In Australia, it is not a crime to kill yourself.

"I am looking for people who are interested in the project as I have outlined to help me develop some sort of Open Source project that will allow me to evolve Phi Rho from a simple (though amusing) chatbot to an entity that can increasingly act on my behalf."

 If, pre-mortem, you can be be cooled to -196C you are then legally "dead" (in Cryonics terms you are a "patient"). However there is great risk for anyone who helps you to get to that state.  I have been exploring options around that particular hurdle but the problem of continuing cognitive decline remains.  I do what I can to slow down the process.

There is, however, something else that I have been working on which I think will help me deal with my predicament.  A few years ago I bought a licence for the chatbot that won the 2012 Loebner Prize. Because of various health crises within the family I wasn't able to finish setting up a modified version of this chatbot for what I had intended at the time.  Now, I think I have a better use for it.  The homonid brain evolved, like other anatomical features, by duplication and divergent specialisation of various parts.  In a similar way, I think I can evolve my chatbot Avatar, Phi Rho, into something more.  I need to replace his current crude, quick-and-dirty memory of previous conversations with something more robust and scaleable and then I need to start adding AI and other modules as well as data dumps from the current wetware so Phi Rho becomes more and more like me.  If I can evolve Phi Rho into being what will eventually become a Distributed Autonomous Entity (DAE) with the evolutionary imperative of eventually scanning and decoding the information in the frozen brain of the original biological person (me) - then, over the next few years, there should be some protection from loss of information from dementia and freezing damage etc of the original biological brain.

Image Source - Jim Trifyllis/News Corp Australia

Since I retired last year, I don't have the resources that I used to have to pay developers etc to do the work that is too difficult or too slow for me do - so now I am looking for people who are interested in the project as I have outlined to help me develop some sort of Open Source project that will allow me to evolve Phi Rho from a simple (though amusing) chatbot to an entity that can increasingly act on my behalf - so that by the time my "Freeze By" date is up (scheduled for 2020 unless there are dramatic developments in the treatment and reversal of AD), there will be something of me that will be able to carry on in the world and which has an interest in the development of scanning technology that will, fundamentally, eventually, allow brain uploading and virtual people.

Links for further information:

http://freezephil.org
https://www.facebook.com/PhiRhoChat
http://philiprhoades.org

So if you are interested in this project and have some IT, AI etc ideas regarding a three-year development strategy for enhancing Phi Rho and are prepared to be involved (even if it is only to contribute constructive suggestions) then please feel free to contact me.  I can't promise any payment at the moment but the situation may change somewhat in the near future.  In the first place I am looking for Java people to upgrade Phi Rho's memory.

See you in the future.

By  Philip Rhoades	Embed
Philip Rhoades is an Executive Officer at the Cryonics Association of Australasia (http://cryonics.org.au), Executive Director, Neural Archives Foundation (http://neuralarchivesfoundation.org) as well as a member of the LifeBoat Foundation (http://lifeboat.com).

Elon Musk  

re Mind Uploading and Colonizing Mars

Dear Elon,


All my life (I am 65 now) I have wanted to explore the rest of the known Universe - to do this I knew I would need a greatly extended life span. I worked in BioMedical Research and then in IT and might still complete a PhD in computer simulations of Population Genetics of Threatened Species.

When I could no longer ignore increasing physical decrepitude, I investigated and became actively involved in Cryonics. Later, with signs of cognitive decline (my father died last year from Alzheimer's at age 89), I decided that information preservation was more important than cell viability, so I set up the Neural Archives Foundation. NAF has been in existence for nearly nine years and has frozen more than one brain per year - including those of both my parents last year.

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Now, in addition to my own health issues, the planet also has rapidly increasing environmental health problems - with the potential for Abrupt Climate Change and concomitant, large-scale ecological collapses. For these reasons I am convinced that I need to become a virtual person (via mind uploading) sooner rather than later - and lots of other people should too - "Rage, rage against the dying of the light."!

Since your PayPal days I have been following your ventures with great interest (I have even paid the deposit on the purchase of the Model 3 Tesla) and I also think that the world would not be in the parlous state that it is now if we had had more corporate leaders like you.

I have a proposition for you, and, with a lot of luck and a very large amount of commitment and investment of resources, we might be able to help each other. A successful result would be that I would get to explore the Universe for as long as I found life interesting and exciting and, with the help of my virtual self, you would have a much better chance of successfully colonizing Mars. Your current SpaceX and Tesla projects are part of the bigger picture and your new 'Neural Lace' development is a very big part of it.

Sending virtual people to Mars solves lots of your "hairless apes in tin cans with air, food and water" problems - the more virtual people with synthetic bodies you have on the trips, the more successful colonisation is likely to be - particularly in the initial stages.

Let me know if you want to chat.

Sincerely,

Philip Rhoades

By  Philip Rhoades	Embed
Philip Rhoades is an Executive Officer at the  Cryonics Association of Australasia (http://cryonics.org.au), Executive Director, Neural Archives Foundation (http://neuralarchivesfoundation.org) as well as a member of the LifeBoat Foundation (http://lifeboat.com)

Cryonics  

The Brain Preservation Foundation’s (BPF) Small Mammal Prize has officially been won. A team has discovered a way to preserve the delicate neural circuits of an intact rabbit brain for extremely long-­term storage using a combination of chemical fixation and cryogenic cooling. The prize represents an important prerequisite milestone towards the development of a robust memory preservation protocol for humans.

Over the last two decades cryonics researchers have made progress eliminating problems like ice formation in frozen tisssue using a technology from mainstream cryobiology called vitrification.

Vitrification uses high concentrations of cryoprotectants that allow tissue to solidify during cooling without the formation of ice crystals. When optimally applied, vitrification eliminates damage to cell structures caused by ice formation and has been shown compatible with recovery of biological functioning in small slices of isolated brain tissue.

However, when applied to whole brains, limitations in diffusibility lead to dramatic shrinkage of the brain’s tissue. Electron microscope images of such brains show dramatic distortions to the delicate neural circuits, and recovery of biological function in whole brains or animals remains far out of reach.

Such difficulties have led a new generation of researchers to focus on a more achievable and demonstrable goal –preservation of brain structure only, without concern for later biological viability. They focus on demonstrating preservation of the delicate pattern of synaptic connections, or the connectome, which neuroscience contends encodes a person’s memory and identity. Instead of biological revival, these new researchers often envision a future “synthetic revival” comprising nanometer-scale scanning of the preserved brain to serve as the basis for mind uploading.

Now a team from 21st Century Medicine, spearheaded by recent MIT graduate Robert McIntyre, has discovered a way to preserve the delicate neural circuits of an intact rabbit brain for extremely long­term storage using a combination of chemical fixation and cryogenic cooling.

Proof of this accomplishment, and the full “Aldehyde ­Stabilized Cryopreservation” protocol, was recently published in the journal Cryobiology and has been independently verified by the Brain Preservation Foundation through extensive electron microscopic examination. This answers a challenge issued to the scientific and cryonics communities five years ago by the BPF, and carries an award of $26,735.

Kenneth Hayworth, President of the Brain Preservation Foundation and Michael Shermer, member of BPF advisory board witnessed the full Aldehyde Stabilized Cryopreservation surgical procedure performed on this rabbit at the laboratories of 21CM under the direction of 21CM lead researcher Robert McIntyre in September last year.

"Every neuron and synapse looks beautifully preserved across the entire brain. Simply amazing given that I held in my hand this very same brain when it was vitrified glassy solid… This is not your father’s cryonics."

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The procedure included the live rabbit’s carotid arteries being perfused with glutaraldehyde and subsequent perfusion with cryoprotectant agent (CPA). Hayworth witnessed this rabbit brain being put in -135oC storage, removal from storage the following day (verifying that it had vitrified solid), and witnessed all subsequent tissue processing steps involved in the evaluation process.

“​Every neuron and synapse looks beautifully preserved across the entire brain. Simply amazing given that I held in my hand this very same brain when it was vitrified glassy solid… This is not your father’s cryonics,” stated Hayworth.

The winning team is focused now on the final Large Mammal phase of the contest which requires an intact pig brain to be preserved with similar fidelity in a manner that could be directly adapted to terminal patients in a hospital setting. The 21st Century Medicine team has recently submitted to the BPF such a preserved pig brain for official evaluation. Lead researcher Robert McIntyre has started a company, Nectome to further develop this method.

This result directly answers a main skeptical and scientific criticism against cryonics –that it does not provably preserve the delicate synaptic circuitry of the brain. As such, this research sets the stage for renewed interest within the scientific community, and offers a potential challenge to medical researchers to develop a human surgical procedure based on these successful animal experiments.

SOURCE  The Brain Preservation Foundation

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 Cryonics  

Researchers have now proven that cryogenically-suspended worms maintain their memories after reanimation.

S ome animals can survive extended periods of actually being frozen.  Understanding and controlling this ability is a key area of researcher for the field of cryonics—in the hope that someday frozen humans who were about to die of disease or accident can be revived and restored.

Animals undergo the process by somehow regulating the way their bodies enter a frozen state, and at the other end of the cycle, controlling the thawing out process.

Until recently it hasn’t been understood whether important higher-level functions, like memory, are preserved in the natural cryonic process. Now, Natasha Vita-More and Daniel Barranco, have proven for the first time that cryogenically-suspended nematode worms keep their memories after reanimation.

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The researchers first trained the C. Ekegans worms to move to specific areas in an area when they smelled benzaldehyde (a component of almond oil). After learingn this task, the worms were bathed in a glycerol-based cryoprotectant solution and put into to a cryogenic state.

"This is the first evidence of preservation of memory after cryopreservation vitrification or slow freezing."

When the worms were reanimated, they were able to remember the lesson and moved to the correct position in their training area when benzaldehyde was provided.

Two different methods of freezing were tested on the worms: the first effort was based on the traditional way to freeze cells or organs in a low concentration of cryoprotectant and then slowly cool and reanimate the creatures. The second method  involved a more aggressive procedure known as vitrification.

Vitrification uses a higher concentration of cryoprotectant, but does the freezing and thawing rapidly so that ice crystals which can damage cell structures, do not form as readily. Only about a third of the worms that were frozen by the slow method actually survived reanimation, while almost all of those vitrified will survive.

Vita-More and Barranco did find though that worms frozen by either method retained the tested memory functions. They concluded:

Our results show that the mechanisms that regulate odorant imprinting (a form of long-term memory) in young C. elegans have not been modified by either the process of vitrification or by slow freezing in the adult stage. This is the first evidence of preservation of memory after cryopreservation vitrification or slow freezing).

The research is an important step for the study of cryonics, and is an indication that the process currently being undertaken at facilities like Alcor's may one day bear fruit for the people frozen within.

Demonstrating that worm brains can handle top-down freezing by artificial means is an important step towards doing the same for larger organisms, like humans. Additional research may make survivable cryonic suspension a real solution for the current problem of aging and disease.


SOURCE  Extreme Tech

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 Brain Preservation  

Dr. Ken Hayworth – a proponent of the idea of brain preservation – wants to move the debate around brain preservation beyond ideology and towards measurable scientific milestones.

Would you have your brain preserved? Do you believe your brain is the essence of you? To Dr. Ken Hayworth, the answer is an emphatic, “Yes.” He is currently developing machines and techniques to map brain tissue at the nanometer scale - the key to encoding our individual identities.

“I wish it were possible, from this instance, to invent a method of embalming drowned persons, in such a manner that they might be recalled to life at any period, however distant; for having a very ardent desire to see and observe the state of America a hundred years hence, I should prefer to an ordinary death, the being immersed in a cask of Madeira wine, with a few friends, until that time, then to be recalled to life by the solar warmth of my dear country. But since, in all probability, we live in an age too early, and too near the infancy of science, to see such an art brought in our time to its perfection, I must, for the present, content myself with the treat…of the resurrection of a fowl or a turkey-cock.”

- Ben Franklin, Observations on the Generally Prevailing Doctrines on Life and Death

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Often individuals’ opinions on the quality of current preservation methods are suspiciously well aligned with whether or not they think the whole ‘life after death’ thing sounds like a good idea. Is the field legitimate science, pseudo-science, or the domain of hucksters? Hayworth – a proponent of the idea of brain preservation – wants to move the debate around brain preservation beyond ideology and towards measurable scientific milestones.

A self-described transhumanist and President of the Brain Preservation Foundation, Hayworth’s goal is to perfect existing preservation techniques, like cryonics, as well as explore and push evolving opportunities to effect a change on the status quo.

"I really expect that brain preservation is a solvable problem, and it will be solved within the next decade," states Hayworth.  Also, he believes that more and more neuroscience evidence will convince skeptics, that the brain, and the billions of neurosynaptic connections—the connectome—is who we really are.

"I really expect that brain preservation is a solvable problem, and it will be solved within the next decade."

Currently there is no brain preservation option that offers systematic, scientific evidence as to how much human brain tissue is actually preserved when undergoing today’s experimental preservation methods.

Hayworth believes we can achieve his vision of preserving an entire human brain at an accepted and proven standard within the next decade. If Hayworth is right, is there a countdown to immortality?

The film above, is the first short film in  Ken Hayworth series on the Galactic Public Archives YouTube channel.

SOURCE  Galactic Public Archives

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 Suspended Animation  

Science fiction has featured placing people in suspended animation for long trips in space for decades.  The Emergency Preservation and Resuscitation For Cardiac Arrest From Trauma (EPR-CAT) study seeks to rescue patients who have suffered cardiac arrest due to massive bleeding by chilling them to nearly 50 degrees below normal body temperature.

Very soon,  the world's first attempts at placing humans in suspended animation using a newly developed technique will take place at the UPMC Presbyterian Hospital in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.  The purpose of this research isn't for long-distance space flight (yet), but for saving lives.

Suspended animation featured prominently in the films 2001: A Space Odyssey,The Alien moves and Avatar.

In the study, ten initial patients will undergo the treatment.  Their wounds will be deemed otherwise be lethal and suspended animation will be a final attempt to buy the doctors time.

"We don't like to call it suspended animation because it sounds like science fiction, so we call it emergency preservation and resuscitation."

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The University of Pittsburgh Medical Center technique works, as suggested by science fiction, by cooling the body -- but not by applying an external temperature change.

A team of surgeons will remove all of the patient's blood, replacing it with a cold saline solution. This will cool the body, slowing its functions to a near standstill and reducing the need for oxygen.

The effect is similar to what has been seen in accidents where people are trapped in freezing conditions.  For instance, Swedish Anna Bågenholm survived trapped under a layer of ice in freezing water for 80 minutes in a skiing accident and Japanese Mitsutaka Uchikoshi survived 24 days without food or water by entering a state of hypothermic hibernation.

The study will also have potential implications for longer term preservation during cryonics.

"We are suspending life, but we don't like to call it suspended animation because it sounds like science fiction," Doctor Samuel Tisherman, the surgeon who will lead the trial, told New Scientist. "So we call it emergency preservation and resuscitation."

The technique was developed by Doctor Peter Rhee, who successfully managed to test it on pigs in the year 2000. In 2006, Dr Rhee and his colleagues published the results of their subsequent research. After inducing fatal wounds in the pigs by cutting their arteries with scalpels, the team replaced the pigs' blood with saline, which lowered their body temperature to 10 degrees Celsius.

All of the control pigs, whose body temperature was left alone, died. The pigs who were resuscitated at a medium speed demonstrated a 90 percent survival rate, although some of their hearts had to be given a jump start. Afterwards, the pigs demonstrated no physical or cognitive impairment.

This study is a feasibility and safety study designed to see if hypothermia is beneficial in this setting. In EPR, body temperature is lowered to about 50ºF (10ºC) by administering a large volume of cold fluid through a large tube, called a cannula, placed into the aorta, which is the largest artery in the body. A heart-lung bypass machine would be used to restore blood circulation and oxygenation as part of the resuscitation process. The study will be conducted at the University of Pittsburgh and the University of Maryland.

It's not science fiction quite yet -- a human body can only be safely placed under these conditions for a maximum of a few hours -- but even if it raises the survival rate just the little, it will be a massive step forward.

In the video below, Tisherman explains a new trial that will soon be underway at the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine and UPMC. Footage in the video was taken during practice runs of the procedure on mannequins at The Peter M. Winter Institute for Simulation Education and Research (WISER).




SOURCE  University of Pittsburgh Medical Center Top Image - 2001: A Space Odyssey

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 Cryonics  

A recent London Futurists Hangout on Air featured a discussion between an international panel of people with practical experience of the world of cryonics: Max More, Anders Sandberg, Natasha Vita-More, and Garret Smyth.

What lies in the future for cryonics - the practice of low-temperature suspended animation of people who have died of an incurable disease, in the hope of a future cure?

This London Futurists Hangout on Air features a discussion between an international panel of people with practical experience of the world of cryonics: Max More, Anders Sandberg, Natasha Vita-More, and Garret Smyth.

The discussion with David Wood covers:

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• Recent developments in the world of cryonics, and anticipated future improvements;
• Why has the take-up of cryonics been comparatively low so far, and what steps might change that state of affairs?
• Objections to cryonics - and responses to the objections;
• Cryonics in context - new attitudes towards death and technology.

The Mores and Sandberg are involved with Alcor, the long-running cryonics foundation in Arizona.  According to Alcor, today brain tissue preserved with a modern vitrification solution shows virtually no freezing damage. Whole neurons are visible with intact membranes and well defined structure. This brain preservation which Alcor claims it can now achieve in human patients. Many who complain about damage caused by cryonics procedures are unaware that such preservation is now possible.


SOURCE  David Wood

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 Ideas  

During a talk a last year's Alcor Conference, Future of Humanity Institute researcher and futurist Anders Sandberg presented a high level talk on the problems of futurist thinking and what some of the implications might be for the pursuit of cryonics.

Researcher, science debater, futurist, transhumanist, and author Anders Sandberg presented and interesting talk on the possibilities of cryonics and other futurist topics at last year's Alcor conference.  He defines his presentation as a 'theoretic and meta talk," on the future.

Uncertainty, for Sandberg, is especially prevalent when we extend outside of our animal needs.  The solutions therefore are to approach such problems with rationality.  However as he points out, decision theory is hard and rationality is hard, so approximation is always necessary.  These problems affect multiple areas including economics and artificial intelligence.

Moreover for humans, our cognitive biases affect our decision-making.  During his talk, Sandberg discusses how these factors affect the pursuit of cryonics.

Sandberg also points out that certain tools of futurism, like trend lines, can affect accuracy.  He warns that technological tracking, like Moore's Law, or the graphs used by Ray Kurzweil to predict the Singularity, do not really take into account uncertainty and, as a consequence, the models may not reflect what is actually going to happen.  For Sandberg, the Singularity also represents a potential area of uncertainty.

Looking at cryonics Sandberg comments, "Cryonics is actually fun, because we have so much uncertainty in it."  There is uncertainty about the future situation(s), uncertainty about storage, uncertainty about the future of medical advances, uncertainty about the reanimation situation and uncertainty about identity recovery (especially considering how little we know about what defines identity now).  Statistically, for Sandberg, "not getting suspended poses the greatest risk of all."

Sandberg model of cryonics - Image Source: Anders Sandberg

Also for Sandberg, "The Singularity is a wildcard you may or may not believe in.  It amounts to a serious chunk of the positive futures, but is likely to also contribute significant existential risk."

Sandberg holds a Ph.D. in computational neuroscience from Stockholm University, and is currently a James Martin Research Fellow at the Future of Humanity Institute at Oxford University.

Sandberg's research centres on societal and ethical issues surrounding human enhancement and new technology, as well as on assessing the capabilities and underlying science of future technologies. His recent contributions include work on cognitive enhancement (methods, impacts, and policy analysis); a technical roadmap on whole brain emulation; on neuroethics; and on global catastrophic risks, particularly on the question of how to take into account the subjective uncertainty in risk estimates of low-likelihood, high-consequence risk.

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He has worked on this within the EU project ENHANCE, where he also was responsible for public outreach and online presence. Besides scientific publications in neuroscience, ethics, and future studies, he has also participated in the public debate about human enhancement internationally. Anders also holds an AXA Research Fellowship.

Sandberg has a background in computer science, neuroscience and medical engineering. He obtained his Ph.D in computational neuroscience from Stockholm University, Sweden, for work on neural network modelling of human memory. He has also been the scientific produce for the major neuroscience exhibition “Se Hjärnan!” (“Behold the Brain!”), organized by Swedish Travelling Exhibitions, the Swedish Research Council and the Knowledge Foundation that toured Sweden 2005–2007. He is co-founder and writer for the think tank Eudoxa.


SOURCE  Alcor

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 Connectomics  

Currently there are two methods on the table for preserving a brain so that it may be reanimated, or uploaded in the future. Alcor has been cryopreserving people for 40 years, while the techniques for bringing back frozen flesh, and more importantly neural pathways, are slowly developed. Now connectomics research has introduced chemical brain preservation as a method, albeit destructive, that may someday allow a brain to be brought back to 'life'.

S ebastian Seung may seem like an unlikely person to visit and talk at the Alcor Conference.  The computational neuroscientist, and author of Connectome: How the Brain's Wiring Makes Us Who We Are, did just that though last year. Specifically, Seung addressed some of the points and criticisms of the last two chapters of the book, which explore more of the transhumanist areas of connectomics research, including how cryonics may not save a person's brain (see video above).

Advances in neuroscience today strongly suggest that appropriately preserved brains will contain our memories, identity, and consciousness, and therefore preservation technology, when it arrives, will make such brains available for future reading of memories, or full revival if desired.

According to Seung, if the connectome is to be preserved, with the gossamer thin strands of neural connnections, that measure end-to-end into the millions of miles, cryopreservation will not work. Seung in his talk does not ever say these words exactly, but does ask the audience to consider what he is saying, by going through the steps that he, and other connectomics researchers like Ken Hayworth use.

Image Source: Brain Preservation Foundation

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Seung and Hayworth use the technology of chemical brain preservation to explore connectomes. Unlike the freezing method of cyronics used at Alcor, chemical brain preservation essentially kills the cells it preserves. Shortly before or moments after death, a scientists will start the process of emergency glutaraldehyde perfusion (EGP) for protein fixation (a kind of advanced embalming process).  

"The human race is on a beeline to mind uploading: We will preserve a brain, slice it up, simulate it on a computer, and hook it up to a robot body," says Hayworth.

At Alcor, many of the members want eventually to return to life in their own bodies, and so the methods of freezing the body (or just the head) at death makes sense.  They do not necessarily want to return as a 'brain in a box' upload, that seems to be the de facto outcome of the chemical brain preservation route.

In another talk at the same conference, Twenty-First Century Medicine cryobiologist Gregory Fahy took aim at the chemical brain preservation researchers (see image below).  Showing his work on advancing cryonics, Fahy says:

All of a sudden something scary happens.  People like Ken Hayworth come along and Sebastian Seung and John Smart wondering if maybe cryopreservation is all wrong - it's not the right way to go at all.  It would be much better too have your brain perfused with gluteraldehyde, then embedded in plastic and then cut into tiny little pieces and bombarded with electron beams.  I don't know but, I have some reservations about my brain being destroyed as a way of preserving it.

Fahy is counting on future nanomedicine to reanimate cryopreserved people.  He prefers what he calls the 'classical' cryopreservation approach.

Image Source: Anders Sandberg

To help decide whether cryonics or chemical brain preservation (or both, or neither) is a feasible method for an eventual uploading/immortality technology, Seung is a judge for the Brain Preservation Foundation's prize.  The Brain Preservation Foundation was started by Hayworth as an organization to advance the use and techniques of chemical brain preservation and long term storage.  The Prize seeks the development of an inexpensive and reliable hospital surgical procedure which verifiably preserves the structural connectivity of 99.9% of the synapses in a human brain if administered rapidly after biological death.

There are currently two competitors for the Brain Preservation Foundation prize.

Seung undoubtedly retains a lingering fascination with the possibility of an intersection between connectomics and transhumanism. At a TED talk he gave, he commented that connectomics might eventually put to the test whether a technology like cryonics will eventually be feasible.  



SOURCE  Alcor Cryonics

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Professor of Computational Neuroscience at MIT Sebastian Seung discusses how the study of "connectomes", a comprehensive map of neural connections in the brain, can help turn science fiction into reality. Seung proposes that through the study of the connectome we can test whether ideas such as freezing ourselves or uploading our brains on to computers are even possible.

Seung has found what he calls the nexus of nature and nurture: the "Connectome", or the network of connections between neurons in the human brain. He will take you inside his ambitious quest to model the Connectome, which, if successful, would uncover the basis of personality, intelligence, memory and disorders such as autism and schizophrenia.

Dr. Seung is Professor of Computational Neuroscience in the Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences and the Department of Physics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and Adjunct Assistant Neurobiologist at Massachusetts General Hospital, Boston. He studied theoretical physics with David Nelson at Harvard University, and completed postdoctoral training with Haim Sompolinsky at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. Before joining the MIT faculty, he was a member of the Theoretical Physics Department at Bell Laboratories. Dr. Seung has been a Sloan Research Fellow, a Packard Fellow, and a McKnight Scholar. 

He is also author of the recent book, Connectome: How the Brain's Wiring Makes Us Who We Are, and creator of the Eyewire project.  McGill University Professor of Psychology and Neurosciences Daniel Levitin wrote in The Wall Street Journal that Connectome is "the best lay book on brain science I've ever read."

View the complete video at: http://fora.tv/2012/02/13/Sebastian_Seung_Connectome 

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