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Frozen human brain tissue was successfully revived for the first time
- idiotsecant 2y agoBecause 'lab grown self-organizing brain samples continue to grow after being frozen' is a little less appealing than the clickbait title
- Retric 2y agoSmall mammals up to the size of hamsters can successfully be cryogenically frozen and revived significantly later. So while the same thing working on small samples of human tissue is completely expected it’s still useful research for organ transplants etc. All that cryogenic preservation that showed in science fiction is somewhat realistic even if we can’t do it yet and it’s probably going to require extensive surgery beforehand to enable rapid cooling.
- lisper 2y ago> Small mammals up to the size of hamsters can successfully be cryogenically frozen and revived significantly later. Reference?
- sanxiyn 2y agohttps://doi.org/10.1098/rspb.1956.0054 https://doi.org/10.1098/rspb.1956.0054 (Yes, it's the same James Lovelock.)
- lisper 2y agoThanks. (Those poor hamsters!)
- blincoln 2y agoThat reads more like surviving extreme hypothermia than being frozen and thawed in the sense of cryogenic preservation. The greater the percentage of water in their body that was frozen, the less likely they were to survive, with some precipitous cliffs around 50% and 75%. Am I misreading it?
- a-r-t 2y agoFrom the article: "The researchers also applied their technique to three-millimeter cubes of brain tissue from a 9-month-old girl with epilepsy. The tissue maintained its pre-freezing structure and remained active in a laboratory culture for at least two weeks after being thawed."
- Waterluvian 2y ago> and remained active in a laboratory culture for at least two weeks after being thawed I’m sure I don’t fully understand the details but this kind of thing both excites and horrifies me when I ponder how much brain might be necessary to sustain the experience of consciousness.
- lallysingh 2y agoMeh. If we want immorality we'll probably end up converting a brain scan to an LLM. Medically this could be great for preventing brain damage.
- Waterluvian 2y agoAt this point it feels like we’d required the resources of an entire planet to run a single full-fidelity virtual brain. Which leads to interesting science fiction premises.
- hateful 2y agoOr one entire actual brain - if it can be done once by natural selection, it can be done more efficiently again by a designer. Time exists because the universe doesn't do calculations - the only way to see the outcome is to do the thing. See: The Three Body Problem
- hateful 2y agoSee: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40508705 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40508705
- dyauspitr 2y agoI thought brain cells didn’t reproduce.
- musicale 2y ago> a little less appealing than the clickbait title I read that as "appalling" and ... it's kind of both.
- FireInsight 2y agoI just imagined dying and then noticing myself thinking again but without any sensory inputs; freaky stuff.
- baxtr 2y agoI recommend you google sleep paralysis. I experienced it a couple of times when I was younger. Really scary.
- Waterluvian 2y agoI had it once and it was the most terrifying experience of my life.
- deadbabe 2y agoCan you guys elaborate? Do you feel like you’re some brain in a vat somewhere when this happens?
- Waterluvian 2y agoI could see but I couldn’t move any muscles. It felt like five minutes but was probably less. It happened in an afternoon nap which is something I never did. I was screaming internally for my girlfriend to notice me. I thought I was suddenly a quadriplegic or something and was panicking. Eventually my girlfriend noticed (she later said she noticed my deep, heavy breathing) and shook me and being shaken pulled me immediately out of it.
- lisper 2y ago> I could see How do you know that you weren't simply dreaming?
- chrisnight 2y agoREM atonia, which is the paralysis that sleep paralysis comes from/uses, paralyzes the majority of your body. However, one organ it doesn’t paralyze is your eyes, hence people experiencing it generally open their eyes as they try to escape it. However, even with your eyes open, you can experience dream-like hallucinations overlayed ontop your view of reality, hence people thinking they see other entities in their bedrooms, etc. It’s possible that it was a dream, but it’s completely possible it wasn’t, so if a person claims they were awake, then in all likelyhood they were.
- Teever 2y agoA few years ago I became interested in the cryonics movement. What I find most interesting about it aren't the kooks and weirdos that are into cryonics, but the visceral reaction that your average Joe has to the idea. The average opinion about cryonics seems to range from 'That is impossible' to 'why would you want that?'. But if you ask that same average Joe about a cure for cancer they're likely to say that it's been done and the rich just horde it for themselves. It's weird that they don't see things like cures for cancer, regrowing organs, age slowing drugs etc... as all part of a pathway to the same thing which is a technological solution to many causes of aging and death. Unlocking the ability to grow and store organs or even just store donated organs cryogenically is highly desirable from an economic standpoint has it frees up so many resources (1pc of US GDP is spent on dialysis alone) so if there's a technological means to do it we're going to find a way sooner or later. And once we've found a way to freeze and revive large parts of the body it's just a gruesome divide and conquer from there...
- spondylosaurus 2y agoI did read an interesting thing recently (can't remember where unfortunately) about ongoing strides in the transport and preservation of donor organs. If we crack the code to putting a kidney in ice, you can get it across the country to its new owner instead of crossing your fingers that someone local needs one and is a recipient match.
- lttlrck 2y agoBy my calculations 0.078% of GDP is spent on dialysis. Still crazy looking at the raw numbers. $20billion/$25.4trillion https://tradingeconomics.com/united-states/gdp https://tradingeconomics.com/united-states/gdp https://www.propublica.org/article/in-dialysis-life-saving-care-at-great-risk-and-cost https://www.propublica.org/article/in-dialysis-life-saving-c...
- exe34 2y agoimagine a life where a contract between you and a soulless corporation or religious order forbids you from dying, and no matter how many times you try to escape, they bring you back for untold miseries.
- stenl 2y agoFreezing and thawing organoids is not new, it’s fairly routine. The frozen piece of brain from an epilepsy patient doesn’t retain ”normal function”. There is no evidence in the paper that it integrates into neuronal circuits (this was not even tested), or supports anything like normal neuronal firing. The cells are alive, yes, and likely highly abnormally perturbed.
- dcist 2y agoBig news for Ted Williams
- platz 2y agoare you sure https://www.espn.com/boston/mlb/news/story?id=4524957 https://www.espn.com/boston/mlb/news/story?id=4524957
- caseyy 2y agoInterfering with the pathway that causes cell death is very interesting. Maybe more than freezing. Related sci-fi: https://galactanet.com/oneoff/antihypoxiant.html https://galactanet.com/oneoff/antihypoxiant.html
- intelVISA 2y agoGives me hope we can reverse the damage wrought by Js and return to Lisp
- andrewstuart 2y agoSo is Walt Disney coming back?
- m3kw9 2y agoNext is to freeze and unfreeze someone for a couple weeks and see if they are still the same person. If this works everyone and their mothers will want to be forwarded a few hundred years
- qingcharles 2y agoIf you're very rich you could probably forward yourself now by building a very fast spaceship and flying out for a while and come back a decade or two into the future.
- stevenalowe 2y agoIt said "Just five more minutes, Mom" and went back to sleep.
- xyproto 2y agoCryo me up, Scotty.