How'd you like to live forever? The question is sparking more serious scientific debate than ever before. But this time, it's not mind uploading or anti-aging that's spurring argument. It's a new kind of approach.
The plan is to chemically hit the "pause" button on a living human brain, then preserve microscopic slices capturing every detail: every protein, every synapse, every neuron. These perfectly preserved slices will then await future technologies that can reconstruct a functioning brain -- and your consciousness -- from the data these slices contain.
Or at least, so says Kenneth Hayworth.
Who is Ken Hayworth? Good question. I can tell you he started his career by racking up a dozen or so patents at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory. From there he headed for the University of Southern California, where, as a grad student, he invented and patented a new kind of brain scanner. I could also mention that he's been working at Harvard lately, researching the human brain's visual system. But none of that would explain what Ken Hayworth is all about.
Because the main thing you need to know about Ken Hayworth is this: He thinks neuroscience will make us immortal. Farfetched? He's not denying it. But impossible? That, he says, is a much tougher question to answer.
Take connectomics, for example. Over the past decade or so, data on the brain's microscopic wiring has been flooding into labs faster than anyone can catalogue or study it; so connectomics, a new branch of neuroscience, has sprung up around this data. Backed by multimillion-dollar grants, connectomics researchers design new software just to crunch this wealth of numbers -- and to develop neuron-by-neuron simulations of our brain's most elaborate behavior. And it's connectomic technology, Hayworth says, that makes his plan for immortality feasible.
"[Connectomics] will open up possibilities we've never dreamed of," Hayworth says. "Other neuroscientists will come around when they see the massive amounts of connectome data that we're generating, and they'll say, 'Wow, the future has arrived.'"
In that future, as Hayworth explains it, we'll take a much less permanent view of death. Anyone who's ready to leave his or her aging body will, after a cheerful "going-away" party, relax under anesthesia, then be filled with a chemical that fixes every molecule in the brain in place. A staining solution will be injected to make cell membranes more visible under a microscope. Finally, all the water will be drained from the brain and spinal cord, to be replaced with plastic resin."The most perfectly preserved fossil imaginable," Hayworth says -- and one that, in the still more distant future, he hopes will enable you to be revived.
It's not a view that's won Hayworth many converts, even in the connectomics community. For instance, MIT's Sebastian Seung counters that while a connectome is a scientific concept, selfhood remains a philosophical one; in other words, the former is a data set that can be examined in a lab, while the latter is a purely subjective experience. Until we develop scientific techniques for examining subjective consciousness (or life after death) in a lab, Seung says, "it's just your word against mine" as to who -- or what -- would wake up in that resurrected brain. Olaf Sporns, the neuroscientist who coined the term "connectomics," is even more blunt: "I am not my connectome," he says.
Despite their skepticism, Seung, Sporns, and other prominent neuroscientists continue to sit on the foundation's advisory board. After all, they say, Hayworth's obsession has already inspired its share of brain imaging breakthroughs, and it's likely to lead to more. It's tempting to cite the old saying about babies and bathwater -- and to point out that in this particular case, the baby is widely considered a genius.
Then, of course, there's that other old saying, the one about genius and insanity. But "science has tremendous self-correcting mechanisms," as Sporns says. "Truly crazy ideas never go far, but unconventional ideas do sometimes push forward the boundaries of knowledge. So I salute Ken's courage and hope he continues to push the envelope."
The whiff of curiosity, subtle though it may be, is hard to deny.
Follow Ben Thomas on Twitter: www.twitter.com/theconnectome
Without consciousness our bodies are nothing more than inanimate matter. Rather than preserving our bodies for some future miracle cure or reversed aging process it's more legitimate to transfer our consciousness to another healthy body (from some foolish person willing to give up their body)...but of course that isn't possible because we're clueless how consciousness is connected to our bodies in the first place...see the problem?
If we have no possibility of transferring consciousness from one body to another, there's no possibility to revive our body from stasis at some future time drawing consciousness back into the body (from where -- exactly...what's it's origin and where does it go?...emergent property explains nothing). Once a person is dead, whether by stasis or natural causes, no one knows how to retrieve consciousness...it's a bridge too far.
Some may take the journey in the future... maybe even many. But they will do so knowing that it is a much greater change than what their naive ancestors hoped it would be.
http://www.skeptiko.com/154-neurosurgeon-dr-eben-alexander-near-death-experience/
http://www.biography.com/tv/i-survived-beyond-and-back
Agreed and well said…It’s not possible to pick up consciousness from one point and place it somewhere else as it is not a physical entity. Consciousness arrives on its own - from where we do not know - whenever there is an appropriate biochemistry that invites it.
I'll have to read through your profile to see what you've been writing about lately. I'm sure I'll see more of you as Curiosity details unfold in coming weeks and months. Like you, I'm looking forward to learning about new details.
"...whenever there is an appropriate biochemistry that invites it." -- well stated.
Besides …What I was trying to say was ….That if this thing does really work …. Then in principle, one should go for the change when one`s mental and physical capacities are near their peak values, rather than wait till one is old and sick.
Yeah, I thought about that too: it would probably mean immortality for a copy of you, not for yourself. Immortality would still be achieved but no one living today would ever be immortal.
A robot is anyday better.
But continue the research on that and the visual systems, both are worth it for a myriad of reasons.
As it is, we are on the road towards self destruction due to overpopulation and depletion of resources.
If we succeed in these ventures...it will only increase our speed on that road...
So I am not wishing `Good luck` to those working on it.
``The personal self = the omnipresent all comprehending eternal self```.....
And confirming Schrodinger`s views on the `Oneness of mind`…
That should be enough to ensure `Immortality` for all of us.
I think the non-invasive techniques of regrowing organs using some form of intracellular matrix regeneration are more promising. As it is now you are literally not the same person you were a decade ago, but even though no new brain cell is an exact duplicate we have the illusion of continuity because the process is gradual. We would have to find a way, perhaps with connectomics, of retaining the existing pattern to allow regeneration without psychosis, and also a way of reprogramming the brain to accept regenerated organs that it's expecting to be aging.
Of course, being able to make people immortal AND make them sterile at the same time would be critical for obvious reasons.
One thing's for certain - if it can be done, somebody will do it, and once somebody has done it....
Continuity is also a critical question - the only sure way to know it's "really you" in that new brain is to preserve some kind of unbroken conscious link between the two. If that proves to be as major a concern in the future as it is today, regeneration might be a more viable option than data preservation.
I don't know if the connectome is far down enough in resolution to capture that organization that makes me who I am. But if I were on my deathbed and had no other options, I'd be willing to volunteer and find out.
I agree with SwiftJonathan's comment below that it probably won't require as much storage as the naysayers claim. I suspect, when we finally understand how information is processed in the brain, we'll be surprised by how inefficient it is and how small the real information footprint actually is. (Of course, some may never accept it or any copies as being the same person.)
At any rate, I'm with you: if I'm on my deathbed and have nothing to lose, why not give it a shot?
Give what a shot? There is nothing there to try.
1. say you scan my brain, and get every detail, then build a brain (and body to house it) just like it.
2. The new brain would have all my memories and experiences and would identify itself as me....but call itself "I".
3. My original brain (and body) still survives the experience of scanning and it still identifies itself as me...calling itself "I".
The new brain is NOT me, it is a new individual.
The only logical conclusion is that there is no such thing as "consciousness" or there is no such thing as "MY consciousness".
So you have two brains walking around, each identifying as "me", each with the same memories as "me", but now each will build new memories independent of each other, and after many years they will be two different people with different memories and experiences from the point of splitting.
To me the only possible logical conclusion is consciousness is an illusion given by the isolated function of brain chemistry, and there is no "transfer" possible as there is nothing to "transfer"!
I agree with your comment about consciousness although I think I'd use "emergent" instead of "an illusion".
What I read before about Hayworth's idea of copying and reanimating the mind/brain of a deceased person is the the mind's life would be extended by installing it in a robot ( http://chronicle.com/article/The-Strange-Neuroscience-of/132819/ ), but in my opinion that would not really constitute the person still being alive. I think such a robot will "know" that it is a robot, and therefore the robot will know for sure that it is not the same identical being.
What if some form of old age memory loss, dementia, or just age related mental and physical decline has occurred in the brain of the person being replicated. Will the dementia or loss of ability be replicated forever in order to duplicate the person's mind/brain? A repaired brain/mind is not a true copy, and the replacement will again know that it is not that same old-time, tired "person" living on.
Does a long dead person really benefit from being replaced by a computer... I mean by a robot? If robots really can replace a human predecessor won't it eventually become obvious that the human should be replaced while the human is still young...perhaps in infancy?
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However, in all likelihood the human brain does not actually need most of this information. Much of it is probably redundant, so that it may be possible to encode most of what a person is into a much smaller data set.
The problem with all of this is that the encoded person is NOT the real person, though. So you can probably make "a copy" that looks very similar to you, but it won't be you. Moreover, the readout process will, in all likelihood, have to be destructive... which means that you will have to kill yourself to create something that is similar to you, without being you.
And that's just not much of a plan...