Scientists have preserved and recovered cryogenically-frozen brains in near-perfect condition.
Robert McIntyre and Gregory Fahy from 21st Century medicine were able to prevent neuron shrinkage that follows dehydration.
The pair used ultrafast chemical fixation and a new cryogenic storage technique called aldehyde-stabilised cryopreservation (ASC) to preserve and thaw rabbit and pig brains.
The Brain Preservation Foundation announced the team had won the Small Mammal Brain Preservation Prize for the work first published last August in the paper Aldehyde-stabilized cryopreservation (pdf) [open, DOI: 10.1016/j.cryobiol.2015.09.003].
"To demonstrate the feasibility of ASC, we perfuse-fixed rabbit and pig brains with a glutaraldehyde-based fixative, then slowly perfused increasing concentrations of ethylene glycol over several hours in a manner similar to techniques used for whole organ cryopreservation," the pair say in the paper.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by ikanreed on Saturday February 13 2016, @02:25AM
Not because I explicitly think cryogenics or cryonics or whatever they call it is truly scientifically impossible, but because any sort of scientific-advance-by-press-release news item should be treated with suspicion, especially when the announcer stands to gain financially from publicity.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday February 13 2016, @03:16AM
While I know nothing about this field, the choice of ethylene glycol was surprising. I thought that propylene glycol was the non-toxic anti-freeze and ethylene glycol was the one that was toxic for mammals.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by JoeMerchant on Saturday February 13 2016, @03:25AM
When ingested, it's terrible for your liver, when perfused it's beneficial if you intend to go for a solid brain freeze.
Next trick, doing anything at all useful with a discorporated brain.
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(Score: 3, Funny) by ikanreed on Saturday February 13 2016, @04:06AM
It's great for cryonics places, idiots pay them a fortune to keep the brains, then every Halloween they can rent them out as decorations.
(Score: 2, Informative) by Francis on Saturday February 13 2016, @04:27AM
If this is ever going to happen the key is going to be the speed at which the freeze and thaw processes occur. The faster the freeze the smaller the ice crystals and the less likelihood of tissue damage. There's also the issue of how the biological processes function when you get hypothermia.
Warming something the size of the body up quickly enough is going to be extremely tricky. You can't just raise the temperature as that would result in the outside being thawed with the brain and organs being frozen. Which would be fatal. But, if you want the heating gradient to be more shallow, that requires a lower temperature over a longer period of time typically. Which would likely be fatal as the biological processes don't function properly at low temperatures.
So, this is likely only going to be helpful if we're talking about preserving brains in jars, assuming it even works as advertised on a human brain. An organ that's much larger than the ones they're working at and much more likely to have issues with the heat gradient leading to partial defrosting.
(Score: 2) by driverless on Saturday February 13 2016, @09:33AM
In any case it's not news, Nazi scientists did this decades ago [wikipedia.org].
(Score: 4, Funny) by goody on Saturday February 13 2016, @03:08AM
This is great. Now we can make TV dinners for zombies.
(Score: 2) by Bot on Sunday February 14 2016, @08:24PM
The first zombie who orders well done, I'll unleash a vampire over him.
Account abandoned.
(Score: 1) by zugedneb on Saturday February 13 2016, @03:26AM
Say, you roam around in the galaxy with the job to find planets, give all immortality and stop evolution.
Obviously, you give the immortal life by copying the brain into some computer.
Would you take these frozen people who have paid to be defrosted when medicine is good enough, or not?
I would only take those who are alive at that particular time...
The dead + the rest are, well, dead...
old saying: "a troll is a window into the soul of humanity" + also: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Ajax
(Score: 3, Insightful) by JoeMerchant on Saturday February 13 2016, @03:39AM
There's not a lot of logic at work for most people considering cryogenic suspension. For someone like Walt Disney, his ego is probably correct that someone would care enough to bring him back for a chat in the future. For most other people, their wallet is writing checks that their legacy can't cash.
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(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday February 13 2016, @03:58AM
Walt Disney being cryopreservd is a extremely old myth that is a complete falsehood. Although the idea is correct, in that someone would rather thaw a frozen Walt Disney than Joe Nobody for a multitude of reasons. But business is business and if someone paid to be thawed when possible I don't see any reason they shouldn't be, regardless of their past social status.
(Score: 2, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday February 13 2016, @05:32AM
Eventual thawing is the only real guarantee.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Saturday February 13 2016, @01:35PM
The early "restorations" will likely be fabulously expensive, and risky, requiring far more investment than most corpsicles have set aside.
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(Score: 3, Funny) by takyon on Saturday February 13 2016, @08:30AM
If people can be revived by thawing and uploading their brains or getting a new body built, will negligence (or taking the brain out of the freeze tank and chucking it in the woods) be considered manslaughter/murder?
Just imagine it, you're disembodied, not thinking or functioning, and your hard, slick brain is gently lifted out of storage by a man in a cryosuit. Does this man then attempt to bring you back from the cold? NO! He smashes your meat prison with A FUCKING HAMMER. Shards of brain chips start flying everywhere as your existence loses its last chance to cling to this godless life. SMASH SMASH SMASH. After a generous hammering, the shards are collected and thrown into an 18-inch wok. A few spices here, a little beef filler there, and you're feeding the ideological cannibals!
So yeah, making your body semi-immortal or brain uploading could be a much more desirable outcome than brain freezing.
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(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Saturday February 13 2016, @01:39PM
I think the whole industry is an offshoot of the obscenely wealthy - they've got more than they or their children will ever need, so why not splash out (I have no idea of the actual cost, do understand that there are two competing providers in the US), say $10M for perpetual freezing plus eventual revival costs - it's not likely to work, but then neither was that wonky business gamble they took that got them their $300M in the first place...
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(Score: 2) by takyon on Saturday February 13 2016, @01:52PM
Costs don't seem likely to reach $10 million:
http://www.alcor.org/Library/html/CostOfCryonics.html [alcor.org]
http://io9.gizmodo.com/5889638/the-economic-problems-with-cryogenically-freezing-your-body [gizmodo.com]
http://www.benbest.com/cryonics/cryiss.html#financial [benbest.com]
Maybe $100,000 to get the procedure done, FAST, after your death, and $1,000 a year recurring costs. $10 million would get you 9,900 years. If you haven't been revived by the 2200s, it's safe to assume that you were cheated, or that the immortality concept is tougher than expected, or that civilization ended.
You don't have to be a billionaire to lay down less than $1 million for a long shot at immortality. If you get buried or cremated, you're just gone. With cryonics, you at least have a chance.
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(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Saturday February 13 2016, @08:01PM
So that's $100K up-front, plus $20,000 to net $1000 annual storage costs from investment (assuming 5% ROI), plus whatever you can spare ($1M?) to smooth over financial bumps and give a decent incentive to try a revival.
Then we get into the whole question of "what is immortality?" and, would you really want to preserve all your memories from thousands of years of life? If not, what's the point in preserving yourself?
Regardless of cost, it's sort of the ultimate vanity expenditure. Also, what I know of the businesses that provide the service - they're run on shoestrings and not exactly likely to succeed on a long time horizon, but it's still a better chance at immortality than cremation.
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(Score: 1) by tftp on Saturday February 13 2016, @06:45AM
Would you take these frozen people who have paid to be defrosted when medicine is good enough, or not?
We cannot be sure. However if the technological progress continues, those people might come very handy. For example, as colonists on faraway planets. They are already frozen! Just ship them on a sublight pony express, and when they arrive they will be thawed and introduced to their new world - that none of the currently living would want to touch with a 1 ly pole.
(Score: 2) by choose another one on Saturday February 13 2016, @08:06AM
So, basically, they died and went to hell...
(Score: 2, Insightful) by tftp on Saturday February 13 2016, @08:29AM
Still beats rotting alive and eventually dying on Earth. In the future bodies will be also easier to repair and maintain. You may get to live on a planet like Pluto; on one hand it's pretty cold and dark there, but on the other hand why would you care if you wear a body that is designed and augmented to thrive in exactly those conditions? We are wearing such bodies here, on Earth - they don't work well anywhere else. I, personally, wouldn't care, as long as the body is functional enough. Plenty of patients on Earth (blind, deaf, paralyzed, etc.) cannot get even that.
(Score: 2) by Gravis on Saturday February 13 2016, @08:22PM
Still beats rotting alive and eventually dying on Earth. In the future bodies will be also easier to repair and maintain. You may get to live on a planet like Pluto;
that's preposterous! there is no way Pluto is going to be redesignated as a planet! ;)
(Score: 2) by inertnet on Saturday February 13 2016, @02:15PM
If I'd consider cryogenics, I would hide valuables that could only be retrieved with my own brain intact and fully functioning. The problem is that it's hard to guess what will be valuable in the future, for instance diamonds and gold might not be as valuable as they are now. Maybe in combination with art, a mix of things would be a good idea.
(Score: 2) by choose another one on Saturday February 13 2016, @08:17AM
Did the rabbits and pigs work afterwards? Did they just need a jolt of the old electrickery to wake them up?
Or did they just look more or less the same down a microscope so they called that a success ?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday February 13 2016, @09:58AM
"Perfect dead order." As in not functioning. Abby Normal normal brains, you might say. But who knows what they may have been able to achieve if they started with live, functioning brains?
(Score: 2) by rleigh on Saturday February 13 2016, @04:51PM
Fixation with glutaraldehyde guarantees that it's dead and unrecoverable--it cross-links all the proteins inside and outside every cell. This is used to preserve fine structures for e.g. cryosectioning or wax or resin embedding and thin sectioning, for use in light or electron microscopy. Even if the cross-linking were fully reversible, I strongly suspect the cells' functioning is badly compromised. Unless you can reverse the process, this is utterly pointless. If we can scan brains at high enough detail in the future and then reconstruct a digital replica, then this might allow recovery of memory, real simulation etc. But as a method for freezing and thawing a *working* brain, this is clearly a non-starter.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday February 13 2016, @10:45AM
Does this mean that brains preserved in formalin can be brought back to life?
(Score: 2) by opinionated_science on Saturday February 13 2016, @08:39PM
the only way this is *ever* going to work properly, is to emulate what evolution has already discovered.
If you want a freezer frog (yes they exist) the transition has to be at the molecular level.
Before CRISPR this was not possible. Now, it might be possible to engineer a "metabolic program" and transition in concert with temperate etc...
Just my $0.02.
(Score: 1) by gOnZo on Sunday February 14 2016, @02:57PM
Hmmmmmmm,
Is it a prerequisite that the brain be in 'perfect working order' before beginning the process???
Or would something from say 'Abbey Normal' do?
(Young Frankenstein).