Brain transplants

[His Divine Shadow]

Let say for the sake of this discussion that scientists have been able to clone human bodies and accelerate their growth so a mature clone of say the equivalent of 20 years could be made in relatively short amount of time and that they could transplant the brain from the original to the clone, would this be immortality or not? I mean the brain, wouldn't it still be old, and wouldn't it eventually fail anyway even with a new body to support it? Or would the original brain be sort of rejuvenated from the new younger body somehow?

[Alyeska]

As far as the right to lifers would be considerned, this would be worse then abortion.

For the sake of argument, you ought to say that they somehow manage to create the bodies without brains and a empty skull area ready to take the brain.

As for transplants, it would likely work depending on the situation. If the brain was in good condition and it was taken from a older person who was still fit and mentally compitent, then being ina young body again ought to help it. However the brain will eventually deteriate no mater what, and the "hard drive" space in the brain is limited so at some point you could take no more memories.

[His Divine Shadow]

As far as the right to lifers would be considerned, this would be worse then abortion.

Yes well this is not such a discussion, if it makes them feel better, say they can grow a clone without a brain

[C.S.Strowbridge]

Let say for the sake of this discussion that scientists have been able to clone human bodies and accelerate their growth so a mature clone of say the equivalent of 20 years could be made in relatively short amount of time and that they could transplant the brain from the original to the clone, would this be immortality or not? I mean the brain, wouldn't it still be old, and wouldn't it eventually fail anyway even with a new body to support it? Or would the original brain be sort of rejuvenated from the new younger body somehow?

I'm pretty sure the brain would die. After all, aren't there's diseases which are just the premature aging of the brain.

[Icehawk]

Their is something similar to this with a few of the characters in a PC mech game called Starsiege.

Although instead of simply transplanting the brain, they first transfer your consciousness, memories, etc into an "organimech" replacement brain which can last for an unspecified amount of time (supposedly forever) and over the centuries you continue to transplant the artificial brain into new bodies thus achieving a sort of immortality.

[Crown]

This is something that my sister (Neuropsycholigist) would be better to answer than me, but from what I picked up from helping her study is;

The brain that is being transplanted would be old, and it would be deteriating way before the body ever got old. So no, unless there are major advancements in brain knowledge it's not a good idea. Imagine being a 20 year old body with Alziemers (spell?), Dementia or Parkinsons!

[His Divine Shadow]

Yes well what about somebody who is old but is not yet suffering from any neural diseases, would that work, because isn't most damage like that caused by the body itself failing to maintain the brain as it gets older?

[NecronLord]

It would be hard to tell. I believe they have had limeted sucess with memory transfer in rats. Still that is far far les complex. You'd need a lot of resech, but it could probably be done. You may need to do some tinkering to make the brain work indeinately.

Morally. It would not be that hard to prevent a clone from acheiving sentience. The moral problem is if you use a sentient clone.

A better idea would be to use a few people i could think of as hosts

[Dirty Harry]

Alyeska mentioned the brain having a "hard drive", so to speak.
But that lead me to this question, How much infomation can the brain actually store before it is "full"?

[Guest]

I dunno. I read somewhere that the brain can hold 5000 years of life experience, but I think this includes people forgetting things to make room

[Shaka[Zulu]]

to continue the analogy of brain=computer, with processors, short term memory (RAM), long-term memory (hard drive) and BIOS (ROM), I suggest the following:

1. during waking time ie your time spent awake, your brain devotes most of its' available CPU resources to motor control and the processing of sensory data into short-term memory (RAM).

2. when the available RAM begins to near maximum capacity, you start to get tired and need to sleep. if you fail to sleep when needed, your brain is forced to start using HD space as RAM, and also start devoting time to compressing RAM while you are awake... this can cause major problems if you are driving or using heavy equipment.

3. Once sleep is attained, the brain switches over from sensory processing to archival compression, performing a form of winzip to compress the RAM contents for long term storage in the HD.

4. with that task done, it then proceeds to go back to perform more compression on memories that have been stored longer, beginning with the oldest records on file, and prioritizing said recompression based upon the tagged value of said record(s) -- this goes a long way to explaining why people find it nearly impossible to remember unimportant things quickly, and especially memories that happened before a certain age... the data is there, but it has been compressed so much that to decompress it for conscious recall takes alot of juice. this issue also explains much about dreams, but I will get more to that later.

where does this all lead?

It is my hypothesis that, given the fact that the brain is in effect an organic computer system running in the RF range, that it must have some means of wireless networking in there somewhere. this WiFi hardware is typically disabled, but also can sometimes be found to be active on a limited scope, say within a 'workgroup' of very (nee extremely) close individuals -- identical twins for example... think about it, telepathy can be extremely stressful if there is no built-in security/access control. Remember all that compression the brain does on memories? well, here is the kicker -- all that compressed data is in an ideal form for a burst transmission once the brain determines that death is imminent. once that switch gets flipped your built in WiFi gear goes immediately active, 'pinging' every compatible receiver within range (what that range is, nobody knows, but is effectively limited to the horizon, perhaps beyond if the transceiver can take advantage of ionospheric bouncing). once an IP for the nearest (lowest ping) open port (ie blank HD -- short for embryo developed enough to receive) is acquired, a burst upload to that new HD is initiated (high priority files first) -- the embryo at that point can only receive from that transmitter (only one port remember?). Once the upload is done, the embryo closes that receive port down, locking out any other transmitters.

now, this theory isnt finished -- in fact my thoughts on it are rather crude at this point (I was in the opening throes of stage 2 above as I wrote this) -- but it does go a way to explaining things like reincarnation, past life regression therapy, Deja vu etc... if true, it could easily be considered a form of immortality. it is not guaranteed however, particularly under circumstances where ther brain is destroyed before it can do the ping, or if the transmission is terminated before completion.

I will add/refine it later if asked to... for now I would like to hear your thoughts...

[Singular Quartet]

to continue the analogy of brain=computer, with processors, short term memory (RAM), long-term memory (hard drive) and BIOS (ROM), I suggest the following:

1. during waking time ie your time spent awake, your brain devotes most of its' available CPU resources to motor control and the processing of sensory data into short-term memory (RAM).

2. when the available RAM begins to near maximum capacity, you start to get tired and need to sleep. if you fail to sleep when needed, your brain is forced to start using HD space as RAM, and also start devoting time to compressing RAM while you are awake... this can cause major problems if you are driving or using heavy equipment.

3. Once sleep is attained, the brain switches over from sensory processing to archival compression, performing a form of winzip to compress the RAM contents for long term storage in the HD.

4. with that task done, it then proceeds to go back to perform more compression on memories that have been stored longer, beginning with the oldest records on file, and prioritizing said recompression based upon the tagged value of said record(s) -- this goes a long way to explaining why people find it nearly impossible to remember unimportant things quickly, and especially memories that happened before a certain age... the data is there, but it has been compressed so much that to decompress it for conscious recall takes alot of juice. this issue also explains much about dreams, but I will get more to that later.

where does this all lead?

It is my hypothesis that, given the fact that the brain is in effect an organic computer system running in the RF range, that it must have some means of wireless networking in there somewhere. this WiFi hardware is typically disabled, but also can sometimes be found to be active on a limited scope, say within a 'workgroup' of very (nee extremely) close individuals -- identical twins for example... think about it, telepathy can be extremely stressful if there is no built-in security/access control. Remember all that compression the brain does on memories? well, here is the kicker -- all that compressed data is in an ideal form for a burst transmission once the brain determines that death is imminent. once that switch gets flipped your built in WiFi gear goes immediately active, 'pinging' every compatible receiver within range (what that range is, nobody knows, but is effectively limited to the horizon, perhaps beyond if the transceiver can take advantage of ionospheric bouncing). once an IP for the nearest (lowest ping) open port (ie blank HD -- short for embryo developed enough to receive) is acquired, a burst upload to that new HD is initiated (high priority files first) -- the embryo at that point can only receive from that transmitter (only one port remember?). Once the upload is done, the embryo closes that receive port down, locking out any other transmitters.

now, this theory isnt finished -- in fact my thoughts on it are rather crude at this point (I was in the opening throes of stage 2 above as I wrote this) -- but it does go a way to explaining things like reincarnation, past life regression therapy, Deja vu etc... if true, it could easily be considered a form of immortality. it is not guaranteed however, particularly under circumstances where ther brain is destroyed before it can do the ping, or if the transmission is terminated before completion.

I will add/refine it later if asked to... for now I would like to hear your thoughts...

Intresting Idea, however, as most CS majors will tell you, recompressing compressed data is a bad idea, and generally does the oppisite of what you want to do. Unless the brain uses a nifty compression algorithim, it would be realitivly useless.

[Mr Bean]

Yes I will tell you its a horrible idea
However the THEORY itself is extremtly intresting

Don't you think so?
Nod=Yes

[haas mark]

I think that Brain Transplants would be a very peculiar matter...simply because "clones" won't have the same personality as the original...it may take several clones to have the personality of the original. Plus, what would happen to the memories? The brain stores these memories, and then all of a sudden you have the brain (+ memories) of an entirely different human...imagine...thinking that you knew for sure this other person's family was your own...accidentally going to their house and trying to open their door...and not even knowing who your own family is! Trippy, innit? Would wreak havoc all over the place!

[His Divine Shadow]

I think that Brain Transplants would be a very peculiar matter...simply because "clones" won't have the same personality as the original...it may take several clones to have the personality of the original. Plus, what would happen to the memories? The brain stores these memories, and then all of a sudden you have the brain (+ memories) of an entirely different human...imagine...thinking that you knew for sure this other person's family was your own...accidentally going to their house and trying to open their door...and not even knowing who your own family is! Trippy, innit? Would wreak havoc all over the place!

What are you talking about? The clones have no personality, no nothing, they've never ever even been "awake", the body is just the instrument to keep the brain alive, the brain contains all your personality and memories and putting your brain in a new clone body would be like getting a younger body.

[haas mark]

Okay..my thoughts were going too fast for me to be clear and coherent...the clones will have a diff personality, even if they are not "woken" yet. If the brain were taken from a once-live human, there will certainly be a difference in personality, as well as memory...but you must understand, a non-waken clone will have NO memory, and therefore neither will the transplantee.

[GrandMasterTerwynn]

Let say for the sake of this discussion that scientists have been able to clone human bodies and accelerate their growth so a mature clone of say the equivalent of 20 years could be made in relatively short amount of time and that they could transplant the brain from the original to the clone, would this be immortality or not? I mean the brain, wouldn't it still be old, and wouldn't it eventually fail anyway even with a new body to support it? Or would the original brain be sort of rejuvenated from the new younger body somehow?

The original brain itself has been subjected to anywhere from 50 - 70 years of antioxidant and radiation damage. It has suffered cell death from all those accumulated poisons. Unless you have some method of repairing all that damage to the brain cells, you will have a person who may have a young body, but end up being completely useless by the time their body hits 40.

Computer technologies will eventually get to the point where we can reliably simulate a neural network with 10E+9 discreet switches, each having about 20,000 different connections. Then . . . you could just copy the brain, connection-for-connection, to the new android brain. Though you'd better hope that the error rate is really, really really low. I don't think there'd be a way to do that copying without destroying the original medium, so if the copying process gets interrupted . . . well, it's off to the Big Sleep for you.

[GrandMasterTerwynn]

Let say for the sake of this discussion that scientists have been able to clone human bodies and accelerate their growth so a mature clone of say the equivalent of 20 years could be made in relatively short amount of time and that they could transplant the brain from the original to the clone, would this be immortality or not? I mean the brain, wouldn't it still be old, and wouldn't it eventually fail anyway even with a new body to support it? Or would the original brain be sort of rejuvenated from the new younger body somehow?

The original brain itself has been subjected to anywhere from 50 - 70 years of antioxidant and radiation damage. It has suffered cell death from all those accumulated poisons. Unless you have some method of repairing all that damage to the brain cells, you will have a person who may have a young body, but end up being completely useless by the time their body hits 40.

Computer technologies will eventually get to the point where we can reliably simulate a neural network with 10E+9 discreet switches, each having about 20,000 different connections. Then . . . you could just copy the brain, connection-for-connection, to the new android brain. Though you'd better hope that the error rate is really, really really low. I don't think there'd be a way to do that copying without destroying the original medium, so if the copying process gets interrupted . . . well, it's off to the Big Sleep for you.

Oh yeah. If we could build android bodies to house these android brains . . . well, that would do away with the whole cloning issue. But, if that wasn't possible, then you'd still have to interface the 'brain' with the rest of the body. And that would still be a serious problem for the "transplant the whole damned thing" idea . . . connecting the brainstem of the original to the spinal cord of the 'donor'.

[His Divine Shadow]

Okay..my thoughts were going too fast for me to be clear and coherent...the clones will have a diff personality, even if they are not "woken" yet. If the brain were taken from a once-live human, there will certainly be a difference in personality, as well as memory...but you must understand, a non-waken clone will have NO memory, and therefore neither will the transplantee.

Uhm, the clone-body has no effect whatsoever on the personality of the brain, if the brain is transplanted from the old body to the new body what we will have is an old brain in a young body and this will have the personality of the brain thats been transplanted.

The personality is solely in the brain and if the cloned body has a brain it'll be chopped away and sold as dog food or something and will as such have no effect on anything.

[Guest]

to continue the analogy of brain=computer, with processors, short term memory (RAM), long-term memory (hard drive) and BIOS (ROM), I suggest the following:

1. during waking time ie your time spent awake, your brain devotes most of its' available CPU resources to motor control and the processing of sensory data into short-term memory (RAM).

2. when the available RAM begins to near maximum capacity, you start to get tired and need to sleep. if you fail to sleep when needed, your brain is forced to start using HD space as RAM, and also start devoting time to compressing RAM while you are awake... this can cause major problems if you are driving or using heavy equipment.

3. Once sleep is attained, the brain switches over from sensory processing to archival compression, performing a form of winzip to compress the RAM contents for long term storage in the HD.

4. with that task done, it then proceeds to go back to perform more compression on memories that have been stored longer, beginning with the oldest records on file, and prioritizing said recompression based upon the tagged value of said record(s) -- this goes a long way to explaining why people find it nearly impossible to remember unimportant things quickly, and especially memories that happened before a certain age... the data is there, but it has been compressed so much that to decompress it for conscious recall takes alot of juice. this issue also explains much about dreams, but I will get more to that later.

where does this all lead?

It is my hypothesis that, given the fact that the brain is in effect an organic computer system running in the RF range, that it must have some means of wireless networking in there somewhere. this WiFi hardware is typically disabled, but also can sometimes be found to be active on a limited scope, say within a 'workgroup' of very (nee extremely) close individuals -- identical twins for example... think about it, telepathy can be extremely stressful if there is no built-in security/access control. Remember all that compression the brain does on memories? well, here is the kicker -- all that compressed data is in an ideal form for a burst transmission once the brain determines that death is imminent. once that switch gets flipped your built in WiFi gear goes immediately active, 'pinging' every compatible receiver within range (what that range is, nobody knows, but is effectively limited to the horizon, perhaps beyond if the transceiver can take advantage of ionospheric bouncing). once an IP for the nearest (lowest ping) open port (ie blank HD -- short for embryo developed enough to receive) is acquired, a burst upload to that new HD is initiated (high priority files first) -- the embryo at that point can only receive from that transmitter (only one port remember?). Once the upload is done, the embryo closes that receive port down, locking out any other transmitters.

now, this theory isnt finished -- in fact my thoughts on it are rather crude at this point (I was in the opening throes of stage 2 above as I wrote this) -- but it does go a way to explaining things like reincarnation, past life regression therapy, Deja vu etc... if true, it could easily be considered a form of immortality. it is not guaranteed however, particularly under circumstances where ther brain is destroyed before it can do the ping, or if the transmission is terminated before completion.

I will add/refine it later if asked to... for now I would like to hear your thoughts...

Intresting Idea, however, as most CS majors will tell you, recompressing compressed data is a bad idea, and generally does the oppisite of what you want to do. Unless the brain uses a nifty compression algorithim, it would be realitivly useless.

lossy compression might explain the forgetting

[haas mark]

Okay..my thoughts were going too fast for me to be clear and coherent...the clones will have a diff personality, even if they are not "woken" yet. If the brain were taken from a once-live human, there will certainly be a difference in personality, as well as memory...but you must understand, a non-waken clone will have NO memory, and therefore neither will the transplantee.

Uhm, the clone-body has no effect whatsoever on the personality of the brain, if the brain is transplanted from the old body to the new body what we will have is an old brain in a young body and this will have the personality of the brain thats been transplanted.

The personality is solely in the brain and if the cloned body has a brain it'll be chopped away and sold as dog food or something and will as such have no effect on anything.

I meant if one were to put a brain from a clone into a living being. Simple enough for ya?

[Mr Bean]

I meant if one were to put a brain from a clone into a living being. Simple enough for ya?

*Shurg, unless you transfer the memories you'd have a body with no motter or speaking skills basicly a Day old infant in a much older body

Or
The same as if you put a rock in the clone's head

[Shaka[Zulu]]

well, regardless of just how nifty the brains compression algorithms may be, I still like my idea of the burst download into the nearest available embryo... surgical procedures of such a nature make me extremely nervous...

[His Divine Shadow]

I meant if one were to put a brain from a clone into a living being. Simple enough for ya?

But thats not what we are discussing, so I never even pondered on that.

[Crown]

Yes well what about somebody who is old but is not yet suffering from any neural diseases, would that work, because isn't most damage like that caused by the body itself failing to maintain the brain as it gets older?

Again I am far from an expert on this, but it wouldn't matter since the brain (like all other cells in our bodies) deteriate as we get older. So whether on not the body is healthy if the brain is old than you still suffer the same problems. Most of the 'brain' deseases are an older generation phenomenon, however they are not limited to just old people alone. That's one of the difficulties with brain functions.