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Reviving / Reanimating Brains & Nervous Tissues

Ermintruder

The greatest risk is to risk nothing at all...
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This news item was being extensively-covered by BBC radio news this evening. Interesting, and is either very disturbing, or it's not. I puzzle over why the neurologists being interviewed (in other reports, not the one below) are raising even the slight possibility that these reoxygenated/recirculated brains might possess some form of consciousness.

Surely all conventional neuroscience would say such a phenomenon was impossible? And (relatively-easily) measurable, using sensitive EEG and other brain-scan technologies? Is this a straw-man self shootdown?

This faux moral quandry, then, when they're talking about the need for a 'public conversation' (to use the contemporary BS verbiage) regarding the acceptability or otherwise of doing this- surely the strong implication is that there IS the possibility of detecting consciousness as a result of their efforts?

Implying then, that the elusive-but-engaging 'ghost within the machine', the soul of existential substance is (partly, wholely, somehow) like a electromagnetic field generated by a biomechanical container?

https://www.mirror.co.uk/science/scientists-keeping-pig-brains-alive-12436934

Scientists keeping pig brains 'alive' inside their SEVERED heads in Frankenstein-style research
They've kept the reanimated brains "alive" for up to 36 hours
Scientists have been able to bring the brains of dead pigs back to life placing the severed heads of the animals inside an abattoir.

While there has been no evidence that the brains regained consciousness, the researchers were able to restore circulation with a system of pumps, heaters and artificial body-temperature blood.
 
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the scene from Robcop 2 springs to mind.

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Better that they have the ethical conversation before than after reanimating them, even if it's considered unlikely. What if they animated the brains and they detected eeg?

After all, what happens when future us thaw out some of those cryo suspended brains sitting in liquid nitrogen waiting to be brought back to life. Those folks are dead.
 
Well, the headline says it all!
"‘Partly Alive’: Scientists Revive Cells in Brains From Dead Pigs
In research that upends assumptions about brain death, researchers brought some cells back to life — or something like it."

Via the New York Times

I always thought Herbert West would make a come back :)
 
That reminds me of an alleged Soviet era experiment to resuscitate a man who had been dead for over a day, with disturbing results.
Can't find a link. It may have been in an early FT that I read it.

This stuff is about a dog (possibly a schweinhund).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Experiments_in_the_Revival_of_Organisms


The only case I can find regarding to a man is an SF story which may have been conflated with the dog experiments.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2743238/
 
So did any of the revived pigs tell of a trip through the pearly gates to a heaven where nobody is eating bacon sandwiches???
 
I've heard of hog heaven, but this is ridiculous.
 
So, the next time someone looks at undercooked bacon and says "A good vet would have that back on it's feet..."
 
That reminds me of an alleged Soviet era experiment to resuscitate a man who had been dead for over a day, with disturbing results.
Can't find a link. It may have been in an early FT that I read it.

Sergei Bryukhonenko (the central figure in Experiments in the Revival of Organisms) did conduct a revival experiment with a human who'd committed suicide in 1934.

This was apparently inspired by an earlier human revival experiment conducted by Aleksei Kuliabko. Kuliabko had restarted a dead infant's heart (in isolation) in 1903. In 1929 he and Fyodor Andreyev attempted the resuscitation of a man who'd died in surgery the previous day.

In both cases, the corpses responded with movements and a gurgling semi-vocalization that shocked the experimenters.

https://www.salon.com/2013/06/14/russians_who_raised_the_dead/
 
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