SoylentNews is people
SoylentNews
Arthur T Knackerbracket has found the following story:
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.
[...] Today in the journal Nature, 17 neuroscientists and bioethicists, including Sestan, published an editorial arguing that experiments on human brain tissue may require special protections and rules.
They identified three categories of "brain surrogates" that provoke new concerns. These include brain organoids (blobs of nerve tissue the size of a rice grain), human-animal chimeras (mice with human brain tissue added), and ex vivo human brain tissue (such as chunks of brain removed during surgery).
They went on to suggest a variety of ethical safety measures, such as drugging animals that possess human brain cells so they stay in a "comatose-like brain state."
(Score: 1) by anubi on Thursday December 27 2018, @11:23PM (5 children)
If there is no body, can the brain be in agony?
"Prove all things; hold fast that which is good." [KJV: I Thessalonians 5:21]
(Score: 5, Insightful) by fustakrakich on Thursday December 27 2018, @11:36PM
"I Have No Mouth, and I Must Scream"
La politica e i criminali sono la stessa cosa..
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday December 27 2018, @11:41PM
Just imagine a quadriplegic Helen Keller. No pain. The brain might be in a comatose state too.
(Score: 4, Informative) by Runaway1956 on Thursday December 27 2018, @11:42PM (2 children)
Ghost pains. You lose a foot, or a leg, an arm, it might "hurt" forever. No reason the brain wouldn't "feel" pain in the whole body.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by looorg on Friday December 28 2018, @02:11AM (1 child)
But where would it get sensory input from? It's not connected to anything. No nerves, no spine, no skin. If it has ghost pains can't they just be numbed with drugs. After all it's a brain in a jar with warm liquids being pumped around it.
(Score: 5, Informative) by Immerman on Friday December 28 2018, @03:30AM
Some painkillers *may* relieve ghost pain - but there are no guarantees. After all, you're talking about the brain imagining an expected pain signal into existence when it's not actually getting any input. As such, I expect that even though most painkillers work directly on the brain, the brain is perfectly capable of imagining sufficient pain to overwhelm the numbing effect of the drugs to experience the expected amount of pain.