Stories
Slash Boxes
Comments

SoylentNews is people

posted by martyb on Friday April 27 2018, @05:13PM   Printer-friendly
from the "some-pig" dept.

A breakthrough in restoring micro-circulation has allowed scientists to keep pig brains alive outside of a body:

In a step that could change the definition of death, researchers have restored circulation to the brains of decapitated pigs and kept the reanimated organs alive for as long as 36 hours.

The feat offers scientists a new way to study intact brains in the lab in stunning detail. But it also inaugurates a bizarre new possibility in life extension, should human brains ever be kept on life support outside the body.

The work was described on March 28 at a meeting held at the National Institutes of Health to investigate ethical issues arising as US neuroscience centers explore the limits of brain science.

During the event, Yale University neuroscientist Nenad Sestan disclosed that a team he leads had experimented on between 100 and 200 pig brains obtained from a slaughterhouse, restoring their circulation using a system of pumps, heaters, and bags of artificial blood warmed to body temperature. There was no evidence that the disembodied pig brains regained consciousness. However, in what Sestan termed a "mind-boggling" and "unexpected" result, billions of individual cells in the brains were found to be healthy and capable of normal activity.

It's possible that the level of function could be increased, and the brains could be kept alive indefinitely:

Sestan now says the organs produce a flat brain wave equivalent to a comatose state, although the tissue itself "looks surprisingly great" and, once it's dissected, the cells produce normal-seeming patterns.

The lack of wider electrical activity could be irreversible if it is due to damage and cell death. The pigs' brains were attached to the BrainEx device roughly four hours after the animals were decapitated.

However, it could also be due to chemicals the Yale team added to the blood replacement to prevent swelling, which also severely dampen the activity of neurons. "You have to understand that we have so many channel blockers in our solution," Sestan told the NIH. "This is probably the explanation why we don't get [any] signal."

Sestan told the NIH it is conceivable that the brains could be kept alive indefinitely and that steps could be attempted to restore awareness. He said his team had elected not to attempt either because "this is uncharted territory."

Next step: hooking it up to a computer?

Related: First Human Head Transplant Could Happen in Two Years
Complete Head Transplant or Complete Publicity Stunt
Claims That Head Transplant Has Been Successfully Done on a Monkey
How Would You Define "A Successful Human Head Transplant"?


Original Submission

 
This discussion has been archived. No new comments can be posted.
Display Options Threshold/Breakthrough Mark All as Read Mark All as Unread
The Fine Print: The following comments are owned by whoever posted them. We are not responsible for them in any way.
  • (Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Friday April 27 2018, @06:42PM (1 child)

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday April 27 2018, @06:42PM (#672720)

    kept the reanimated organs alive for as long as 36 hours.

    Heck, we've had khallow posting here for years! And they are proud of keeping a pig-headed head alive for 36 hours?

    Starting Score:    0  points
    Moderation   +1  
       Funny=1, Total=1
    Extra 'Funny' Modifier   0  

    Total Score:   1  
  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday April 28 2018, @04:21PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Saturday April 28 2018, @04:21PM (#673050)

    Personally I thought a comatose pig brain sounded more like EF, my bet is some mad Frankenstein already perfected this and added a neural keyboard interface.