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We agree there is more to the mind than the synaptic connections between neurons. The exact molecular and electrochemical features of the brain that underlie the conscious mind remain far from completely explored. However, available evidence lends support to the possibility that brain features that encode memories and determine behavior can be preserved during and after cryopreservation.
Cryopreservation is already used in laboratories all over the world to maintain animal cells, human embryos, and some organized tissues for periods as long as three decades. When a biological sample is cryopreserved, cryoprotective chemicals such as DMSO or propylene glycol are added and the temperature of the tissue is lowered to below the glass transition temperature (typically about -120 oC). At these temperatures, molecular activities are slowed by more than 13 orders of magnitude, effectively stopping biological time.
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Direct evidence that memories can survive cryopreservation comes from the roundworm Caenorhabditis elegans, the very animal model discussed in Hendricks's response. For decades C. elegans have commonly been cryopreserved at liquid nitrogen temperatures and later revived. This year, using an assay for memories of long-term odorant imprinting associations, one of us published findings that C. elegans retain learned behaviors acquired before cryopreservation. Similarly, it has been shown that long-term potentiation of neurons, a mechanism of memory, remains intact in rabbit brain tissue following cryopreservation.
Going to sleep and waking up in a time when the world will finally have flying cars is appealing, but would you really enjoy life as a walking anachronism?
(Score: 4, Insightful) by tftp on Tuesday October 20 2015, @03:11AM
My enjoyment would be directly proportional to the success of my pre-preservation investments.
If you are awakened, it means that the technology has progressed so far ahead that your "investments" are worthless. You'd be like a pacific islander holding a handful of shark's teeth in a modern store. Perhaps Latinum would be useful then, or a digital currency, but not shares of companies that crumbled to dust centuries ago. How could you invest into Microsoft in 1960, or into Google in 1980?
Of course, you can entrust your savings to a trust fund. But I'd think that these monies will be artfully stolen during the centuries that you weren't around to intervene. Corpsicles do not file lawsuits, and do not read quarterly reports.
I would presume that if you are thawed and revived, it means that the society is not worried anymore about the money that you need to live. If they are worried, why would they wake you up? Most likely your basic needs will be satisfied. It is also possible that they have a job ready for you, and that job may be on another planet (it is much easier to transport dewars than live people.) You may not have a choice in this matter. As the population continues to grow, it is very likely that Earth will become overpopulated within a century, and then thawing the frozen clients on this planet would be simply impossible.
You won't need your money in any of these cases. There is no door into summer.
(Score: 2) by jdavidb on Tuesday October 20 2015, @12:24PM
ⓋⒶ☮✝🕊 Secession is the right of all sentient beings
(Score: 2) by darnkitten on Tuesday October 20 2015, @03:51PM
Tell that to the cat.
(Score: 2) by darnkitten on Tuesday October 20 2015, @04:56PM
The Door into Summer...
I read that for the first time in high school while I was taking a drafting class. I really wanted a Drafting Dan. I read it again around the time I first learned AutoCAD, and was struck by its similarities to and differences from Drafting Dan. I returned to the novel around 2000, and became fascinated by both the successes and the failures of futurist prediction.
I must admit, I still have visions of flying cars and cloud cities, but now, the vision is tempered with the knowledge that not only does my (rural) town not have cell service, it is currently planning to un-pave some of the streets, because it can't afford to maintain them.
I suspect that, were we to find the cryonic "door into summer," those using it, much as D.B. Davis in the novel, would find a superficially-different-but-culturally-all-too-similar world that would react against them in the same way that Europe is currently reacting against immigrants and refugees.
(Score: 2) by jdavidb on Tuesday October 20 2015, @05:59PM
They'd probably find this [xkcd.com].
ⓋⒶ☮✝🕊 Secession is the right of all sentient beings