9 ms·
Pig brains kept alive outside bodies for first time
- colordrops 9y ago> While the researchers were certain the disembodied brains did not regain consciousness I'm curious how they were able to verify this. I am under the (perhaps incorrect?) impression that consciousness is neither well defined nor a binary function.
- newshorts 9y agoAgreed. It may not be observing itself but there was obviously some brain function. This is fascinating research.
- staticassertion 9y ago"the scientists concluded they were producing a flat brain wave comparable with someone in a comatose state."
- herpderperator 9y agoI was also curious, but as I kept reading it seems they may have answered that. > After initially shocking results indicating the brains were partially conscious – which later turned out to be mistaken – the scientists concluded they were producing a flat brain wave comparable with someone in a comatose state. > “That animal brain is not aware of anything, I am very confident of that,” said Dr Sestan.
- krona 9y agoSimply that certain brain waves correlate with some definition of awareness of your surroundings. I'd imagine its pretty hard to be certain that a brain-dead person can't perceive his or her surroundings, however.
- TomMckenny 9y agoBut someone with far less brain activity than, for example, an unconscious patient on an operating table is not going to be more conscious.
- Waterluvian 9y agoIts a rational, intuitive assumption. But we learn new things all the time.
- zipwitch 9y agoGiven that there are people walking around living perfectly normal lives who have only a small fraction of normal brain mass, I'm always skeptical of definitive pronouncements regarding conciousness.
- logicallee 9y ago>Given that there are people walking around living perfectly normal lives who have only a small fraction of normal brain mass, Could you find a link perhaps? I Googled the end of what I just quoted but didn't find anything...
- monkpit 9y agoHow would a disembodied brain even be capable of being “aware of its surroundings” without any sensory information?
- swebs 9y agoThey measured brain waves via an electroencephalogram. The lack of brain waves reflects a lack of brain activity. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neural_oscillation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neural_oscillation
- Karlozkiller 9y agoIt's not well defined, but we can compare a dead brain to a brain in comatose to a fully awake and perceptive brain. I assume, given what they say in the article, that the pig brain activity in the experiment was somewhere close to the activity of a dead brain or a brain in a coma. They also explained that the blood-replacement they used contain a lot of inhibitive substances probably preventing the brains from being active even if they could.
- blueprint 9y agoHow do you define consciousness such that pigs have actual consciousness on their own (without having spent some significant amount of time with humans)?
- cmrdporcupine 9y agoYou have to wonder if the evidence of lack of consciousness could just as easily be a result of the lack of any sensory input whatsoever. I mean what does a brain do with absolutely no external stimulus at all?
- rocqua 9y agoHow would we stimulate such a brain? Would you put electrodes on nerves going into the brain-stem?
- Baeocystin 9y agoIt hallucinates its own patterns. the tl;dr is that a healthy brain produces a significant amount of activity, even absent of sensory stimulation. https://www.quora.com/What-happens-in-the-brain-during-sensory-deprivation https://www.quora.com/What-happens-in-the-brain-during-senso...
- Razengan 9y ago> what does a brain do with absolutely no external stimulus at all? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dream https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dream
- yeukhon 9y ago“However, Dr Sestan has since said he does not wish to elaborate on the findings of his pig brain experiment, as he is awaiting publication of the results in a scientific journal.” Hmm why? No spoiler? I wouldn’t mind sharing it right away.
- mirimir 9y agoSome journals are very picky about that. As in refusing to publish, if too much gets leaked.
- mirimir 9y agoHere it comes ... pig-brain powered autopilot. OK, maybe not pig brains. Maybe dog brains. Dogs are pack animals, and quite trainable. Remember the watchdogs in Cryptonomicon :) PETA would not be happy, however. Edit: No, that was Snow Crash. How embarrassing :(
- Someone 9y agoYou don’t need that advanced tech for that: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Pigeon https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Pigeon https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-tank_dog https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-tank_dog
- mirimir 9y agoI don't think that you'd actually want a dog driving your car. But yes, the anti-tank dogs didn't work out. So maybe you don't want dog brains.
- noir_lord 9y agoOr Rat Things from Snow Crash.
- mirimir 9y agoYes, that's what I meant. They were dogs.
- gamw_mana_sou 9y agoPETA might be the most known animal welfare-related organization, but they aren't really worthy to be a drop-in replacement for the generic term. Also, allegedly, China experiments on humans. Human rights organizations probably wouldn't be happy to see the resulting scientific papers.
- mirimir 9y agoMaybe human brains would work in China. But that'd be pushing the envelope. In Hannu Rajaniemi's Flower Prince trilogy, he posits that the minds of billions of people will get uploaded, and that all but a few rich ones will end up as slaves. Basically apps.
- georgeecollins 9y agoBrain in a jar!
- cup-of-tea 9y agoThis is truly horrifying. Makes me think of _I Have No Mouth, and I Must Scream_.
- anvandare 9y agoThey haven't figured out how to interact with the nerves to create any kind of sensory input (vision, hearing, taste, smell, touch, balance, ...), so no Altered Carbon-like virtual reality where you can be tortured to death over and over again. Well, not yet, anyway.
- Sharlin 9y agoThe point is we don’t know what sort of horribly torturous experience it might be to be a conscious mind disconnected from all sensory input.
- anvandare 9y agoThat's what sensory deprivation tanks are for. As the brain is a constant pattern-matcher and input-filter, depriving it of fresh inputs seems to turn it a bit hallucinatory, it starts to make up stuff (could be described as boredom, perhaps?). Feynman seemed to enjoy the experience somewhat (described in "Surely you're joking, mr Feynman"). Of course, every person's experience could be unique and different.
- x3haloed 9y agoI have an idea. Try dissociatives.
- x3haloed 9y agoOr if you buy into social drug stigmas, then research dissociatives.
- YaxelPerez 9y agoIs there any research being done into putting living neurons on a chip and having them process information?
- gscott 9y agohttps://singularityhub.com/2010/10/06/videos-of-robot-controlled-by-rat-brain-amazing-technology-still-moving-forward/#sm.0000vtfr8lfb6fiovzv247mxtfe4j https://singularityhub.com/2010/10/06/videos-of-robot-contro...
- ColanR 9y agoI saw some research into that back in ~2004 (?), where researchers put rat neurons in a petri dish that had an electrode array inside. Had great success, the neurons were able to drive a little rc car around and fly a jet simulator. I've seen nothing about it since then. I like to imagine the scientists are working on Terminators for DARPA. Edit: guess I should've read the link in the other reply. :)
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- repsilat 9y agoThe article mentions "ethical implications" a few times, but doesn't really hint at anything potentially negative. Obviously the potential to save or prolong lives is an enormous potential benefit, and any negative consequences would need to be elaborated on to be weighed against it. Is it just that the technology smells like scary sci-fi stuff?
- joe_the_user 9y ago"The ethical implications are left as exercise for the reader". Keeping a brain alive outside the body might be have the problem that it in constant pain and unable to act in the world in any meaningful way. What more terrifying experience could imagine than being aware and utterly "disembodied"? But then again, it might have the implication that the brain might installed in a new body with the slight problem that existing brain is evicted. Sure, some healthy bodies with dysfunctional brains can be found but that's only a short term problem. Nothing that hasn't covered by the scariest horror movies you can think of. The movie "get out" occurs to me - old people parasitizing younger bodies, rich people parasitizing poorer bodies, etc.
- gtirloni 9y ago"Altered Carbon" also poses this problem.
- pmoriarty 9y ago"in constant pain and unable to act in the world in any meaningful way" This is how many factory farmed animals already live. Where is the outrage?
- sizzle 9y agoGreat point, reminded me of the stress hormones that their animal brains release into the meat I mindlessly consume. I think I'm gonna be vegetarian for a while...
- lostlogin 9y agoCPR can be ethically complicated, this is a step more so. How does consent work? Who can give it? What if the revived brain somehow asks to be switched off - is that suicide or assisted suicide or neither? Does it have rights? Property rights? Can it make decisions about the things it owns? How do those decisions get authorised?
- spydum 9y agoSo... Krang? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Krang https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Krang
- fogzen 9y agoIt’s odd people talk about ethics here but have no problem torturing and killing pigs so they can eat them.
- joe_the_user 9y agoMost people would not be concerned if this were somehow just something people did and could only do to pigs. But the thing is that this is clearly showing what might be possible to do with people in a little bit.
- jacquesm 9y agoPigs are not typically tortured before they are killed for consumption.
- horsecaptin 9y agoDo you not think that hitting them, packing them into cramped conditions, transporting them in similar conditions is torturous?
- gtirloni 9y agoPeople eating pork don't think their meat as coming from such conditions and/or want/expect that to happen. So it's not fair to say "people" are okay with that and not the brain experiment. Producers might be okay but that's a different argument to which the one you're replying in this thread.
- Sharlin 9y agoPeople don’t want to know what’s going on on factory farms about it because it makes them uncomfortable. A textbook example of cognitive dissonance. From ethics point of view that’s better than wholeheartedly endorsing it but not by a large margin.
- jacquesm 9y agoThere is plenty wrong with the bio-industry but to compare that and this experiment is not helping the discussion. It's the same as saying that what was happening at Guantanamo bay was no worse than what was happening elsewhere so why all the fuss?
- vpribish 9y agocool. but that's a lousy article just playing up the ick factor for clicks. I'd guess that this makes studying the living brain much easier - but they don't get into any detail.
- no1youknowz 9y agoI'm surprised no one has mentioned Psycho-pass just yet [0]. The Sibyl System is made up of networked human brains giving tremendous computation ability. Would not surprise me that the answer on what's beyond silicon is actual living brain tissue being the CPU. [0]: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt2379308/ https://www.imdb.com/title/tt2379308/
- kpil 9y agoSpintronics. It's possible to build compact neuromorphic devices using spintronics... Denser and more energy efficient.
- digi_owl 9y agoNot quite. The setup is that the brains come from people that "broke" the system, and are wired up to look for others that match their kind. They are effectively there much like Neo and Zion are to the Matrix, a way to rebalance the system over time.
- nukeop 9y agoI don't see this being any more unethical or unnerving than keeping a liver a or a lung or a heart alive outside of a body. A brain is just another organ, it's not a mind. It is a vital organ, to be sure, but the article equates it with the "essence" of a living being. This involves too many assumptions.
- creep 9y agoThis is true. The "mind" could very well exist outside of any organ system.
- kpil 9y agoNo it can't.
- creep 9y agoProve it?
- Tade0 9y agoThe sheer amount of energy used by this organ is a major hint. Also damage to the brain has immediate and profound effects on one's mental capabilities as opposed to damage to any other organ.
- creep 9y agoThere are theories that the brain is just an interface for the mind-- as in, it exists apart from the brain, but the brain facilitates its expression in physicality. If the brain were damaged, the interface would thus be damaged, and you could no longer access the information provided by mind. There are theories that there is no such thing as mind. You didn't prove anything.
- Tade0 9y agoCitation needed. Where is the mind then according to these theories?
- rocqua 9y ago> “To ensure the success and social acceptance of this research long term, an ethical framework must be forged now” It seems to me like the ethical framework surrounding this depends rather a lot on the outcome of these experiments. We have no idea what a disembodied consciousness experiences. Nor do we know what, if anything, they would express. To me, the answers to these questions determine the ethics of this to a very large degree. One might argue that the possibilities are so horrible that we should not proceed. And yet I cannot help but be curious.
- x3haloed 9y agoWe should experiment on ourselves instead of animals if we expect to reap all the benefit. We do have an idea. Try dissociatives. Or at least read about them.
- x3haloed 9y agoHint: it CAN be extremely terrifying.
- ItsMe000001 9y ago> We have no idea what a disembodied consciousness experiences. Try sensory deprivation (or isolation) tanks, or just solitary confinement. Both and especially the latter obviously are just a tiny fraction as bad. You don't spend much time in a tank, and the solitary confinement still leaves you with your senses. But already getting too much of either is pretty bad. As an exercise for yourself: Just sit completely still in a completely quiet and dark room for as long as you can (try the cellar).
- Herodotus38 9y agoWhile I am not sure how long the Soviets were able to keep the dogs alive for (they say "hours"), there is a very interesting film about reanimation of dogs from decades ago. Warning that the film does show a decapitated dog being artificially kept alive through a bypass device. A much different era. https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=KDqh-r8TQgs https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=KDqh-r8TQgs
- theonemind 9y agoI have seen this. I tend to question whether they actually did it, and whether this represents an authentic film. Consider, say, the space race. They have a clear motivation to demonstrate superiority close to this era. I have also gotten the impression that the classic soviet government didn't exactly have a reputation for sterling honesty, and this doesn't seem wildly far afield from something you could achieve with practical effects. I have limited specialist domain knowledge, but the head doesn't really have a power source. Blood can give the brain oxygen, but hours seems a bit far-fetched. They definitely skip a lot of detail here, like where/how they oxygenate the blood without lungs. The head has the brain, which takes a lot of energy to run for its size, and probably doesn't carry out the metabolic processes of energy production, with the blood/brain barrier. So, you have a big power draw, and no engine. Hours of observable or verifiable life seems like a lot for stale blood with no power source and a big power draw. I also don't know the authentic history of the video to verify it didn't come as a complete fabrication of a historical curiosity at a later date. I would like to see credible verification, but it doesn't really add up.
- Herodotus38 9y agoThank you for your response. I do have some domain knowledge as it seemed to be a crude form of ECMO (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extracorporeal_membrane_oxygenation https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extracorporeal_membrane_oxyg...) , but it made me dig deeper into the history of extracorporeal perfusion. I think you will enjoy the link below which has a lot of information about the video. The scientist in the beginning of the film is the famous physiologist Haldane, which is why I originally believed the video. However your response led me to find out he was a Marxist! Now I was torn and had doubts. Turns out that while the film was propaganda aimed toward Western Scientists, it was real and did work. http://perfusiontheory.com/who-really-invented-the-heartlung-pump-and-ecpr/ http://perfusiontheory.com/who-really-invented-the-heartlung...
- liveoneggs 9y agofinally wilbur will be able to survive without charlotte.
- CocoaGeek 9y agoThis is really disturbing :(
- acd 9y agoSomebody will connect a neural interface to the pig brains. Then run neural programs on the brains as that will be power efficient. This seems like a scene from the movie the matrix.