Scientists Restore Some Functions in a Pig's Brain Hours after Death:
Circulation and cellular activity were restored in a pig's brain four hours after its death, a finding that challenges long-held assumptions about the timing and irreversible nature of the cessation of some brain functions after death, Yale scientists report April 17 in the journal Nature.
The brain of a postmortem pig obtained from a meatpacking plant was isolated and circulated with a specially designed chemical solution. Many basic cellular functions, once thought to cease seconds or minutes after oxygen and blood flow cease, were observed, the scientists report.
"The intact brain of a large mammal retains a previously underappreciated capacity for restoration of circulation and certain molecular and cellular activities multiple hours after circulatory arrest," said senior author Nenad Sestan, professor of neuroscience, comparative medicine, genetics, and psychiatry.
However, researchers also stressed that the treated brain lacked any recognizable global electrical signals associated with normal brain function.
"At no point did we observe the kind of organized electrical activity associated with perception, awareness, or consciousness," said co-first author Zvonimir Vrselja, associate research scientist in neuroscience. "Clinically defined, this is not a living brain, but it is a cellularly active brain."
[...] researchers in Sestan's lab, whose research focuses on brain development and evolution, observed that the small tissue samples they worked with routinely showed signs of cellular viability, even when the tissue was harvested multiple hours postmortem. Intrigued, they obtained the brains of pigs processed for food production to study how widespread this postmortem viability might be in the intact brain. Four hours after the pig's death, they connected the vasculature of the brain to circulate a uniquely formulated solution they developed to preserve brain tissue, utilizing a system they call BrainEx. They found neural cell integrity was preserved, and certain neuronal, glial, and vascular cell functionality was restored.
Journal Reference:
Vrselja, Z. et al. Restoration of brain circulation and cellular functions hours post-mortem. Nature, 2019 DOI: 10.1038/s41586-019-1099-1
Also at The New York Times, National Geographic, and NPR.
The article in The New York Times explores some of the medical ethics of this experimentation and what it may hold down the line. Consider, for example, current policies and practices concerning organ donations from "dead" people.
Previously: Researchers are Keeping Pig Brains Alive Outside the Body
Related Stories
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.
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday April 17 2019, @09:06PM (1 child)
Hey, it's pretty obvious the Yalies tried this on their own alum GWB some time back, and he recovered well enough to get elected.
Now they go public and claim it's just experiments on a pig. Ha!
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Wednesday April 17 2019, @09:37PM
For more fun: research cryonics. It's real, it's funded, people actually do freeze heads for money, and it's a pretty bizarre endeavor all around.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 5, Funny) by Bot on Wednesday April 17 2019, @09:16PM (5 children)
They went all the trouble to restore cellular activity and didn't bother to evoke the soul of the pig so that it could be restored to life. All those centuries of witchcraft and sacred texts, ignored. Barbarians.
Well OTOH what if an evil spirit gets inside, instead. Good call, good call.
Account abandoned.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Wednesday April 17 2019, @09:34PM
Our acute pig research did all kinds of terribly painful things to the pig's body while we documented results for science. The part that made it 'humane' was that the pig never regained consciousness. If you regained consciousness after having all kinds of heavy surgical procedures performed on your thorax, you'd probably be inhabited by evil spirits for quite a while afterwards too.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 4, Funny) by Azuma Hazuki on Wednesday April 17 2019, @10:12PM (3 children)
Tell me, if the pig's already been made into bacon, do you get the soul back in thin strips or what...?
I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
(Score: 3, Informative) by mhajicek on Thursday April 18 2019, @03:55AM
Now that's what I call soul food!
The spacelike surfaces of time foliations can have a cusp at the surface of discontinuity. - P. Hajicek
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday April 18 2019, @12:59PM
Ask Indians, they have the traditional expertise about these phenomenons. Personally I think bacon doesn't look like a good strategy for reincarnation.
(Score: 2) by Bot on Friday April 19 2019, @04:12AM
If the pig becomes bacon it has transcended to a higher state, so it's basically all soul already.
Account abandoned.
(Score: 1) by RandomFactor on Wednesday April 17 2019, @09:20PM (1 child)
Everybody is thinking it, only the names change.
В «Правде» нет известий, в «Известиях» нет правды
(Score: 2) by Farkus888 on Wednesday April 17 2019, @09:35PM
I demand a Metallica mod for comments like this that are sad but true.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday April 17 2019, @09:20PM (1 child)
This is old news.
The real question is how far have they progressed?
Because the last time they tried this we got Trump.
(Score: 1, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday April 17 2019, @09:41PM
Nah, Trump wouldn't be seen dead at Yale, Wharton grads are that way.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Wednesday April 17 2019, @09:30PM
Well, duh... we did CPR research on pigs, paralyzed them and gave them artificial respiration, stopped their heart and gave them a novel form of CPR, for hours, and revived them (briefly, before euthanizing them... not much fun to wake up after all that, for the pigs especially.) We monitored blood gasses which remained near normal, considering the reduced circulation inherent in CPR, and we also injected colored microspheres for post mortem study of organ perfusion, which was quite good...
By some definitions of dead, sure, the pigs were dead, but we kept their chemistry functioning by keeping the blood moving through the lungs and other organs and kept the air in the lungs fresh. They were revivable.
So, these guys circulate artificial blood and declare miracles? Pffiffle.
One of the ideas kicked around as to what we could do with our CPR method was organ preservation awaiting transplant, but that didn't appeal to anyone who might have given us further funding, so - like many other great ideas that don't appeal to people with money, it hasn't happened yet.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 3, Funny) by aristarchus on Wednesday April 17 2019, @09:41PM (2 children)
This is better, but speaks of alchemy.
http://strangehorizons.com/non-fiction/articles/installing-linux-on-a-dead-badger-users-notes/ [strangehorizons.com]
(Score: 2) by HiThere on Wednesday April 17 2019, @11:17PM (1 child)
I wasn't able to locate the listed materials. Who distributes VüDü Linux? And why use a Mac controller rather than a Linux box?
Javascript is what you use to allow unknown third parties to run software you have no idea about on your computer.
(Score: 2) by aristarchus on Wednesday April 17 2019, @11:46PM
You do realize the blog post is some seventeen years old? Do you realize how many re-animated Linux Badgers we would be up to our armpits in by now, if this actually worked? So, in a few years, let's both check back in on the Pighead situation.
(Score: 2) by looorg on Wednesday April 17 2019, @10:08PM (3 children)
Zombie Pig! Zombie Pig! Does whatever a zombie pig does!
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday April 17 2019, @10:34PM
Bow and grovel to your Supreme Porcine Overlord! Oink! Oink!
(Score: 2) by PartTimeZombie on Wednesday April 17 2019, @11:06PM
As it should.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday April 18 2019, @12:27AM
> Zombie Pig! Zombie Pig! Does whatever a zombie pig does!
You might have some talent, that sounds a lot like a Frank Zappa lyric. Just sayn'.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday April 17 2019, @10:50PM
First thing that came to my mind.
You want zombies ? That's how you get zombies.
(Score: 3, Funny) by Bot on Thursday April 18 2019, @01:07PM
> try to revive pig
> some functions come up
> the higher level functions stay down
finally, a system where using different init methods actually matters. Go Lennart go! (hopefully he swallows the bait)
Account abandoned.