At the beginning of Possible Worlds, George Barber is found dead with his brain removed from his body. It is later discovered that a neuroscientist named Pensfield committed the murder and took George’s brain to further his research. Pensfield puts George’s brain in a jar and hooks up some lights to it, much like he did with rats’ brains. In what looks like flashbacks, we see George have multiple, differing encounters with Joyce, his wife. Each encounter appears to be taking place in a parallel universe where George can somehow partially commune with each of his counterparts in the other universes. The one constant in each universe is Joyce, who he seems to have a soulmate-like connection to. He is most likely unaware that he is dead, his consciousness trapped in a lucid, dream-like state, and the parallel universe narration his brain’s way of making sense of his disembodied reality.
The science behind keeping a human brain alive outside the body is very much in its infancy, but the motivation for some scientists couldn’t be higher. If we could keep our brains alive after our bodys' death, we could extend our lives well beyond the normal human life span.
It was announced earlier this year that scientists were able to keep the brains of slaughtered pigs alive for as long as 36 hours (Regalado, 2018). The pigs’ brains were reanimated, meaning they had been dead for an undisclosed amount of time. Once scientists revived a brain, billions of individual cells in that brain were capable of normal activity and found to be healthy (Regalado, 2018). Despite this, there was no evidence that the pigs’ brains regained consciousness.
Scientists are very keen to point out that keeping a brain animated after death is not the same as keeping other organs alive for transplanting purposes. Steve Hyman, director of psychiatric research at the Broad Institute in Cambridge, Massachusetts said that transplanting a brain into a new body “is not remotely possible” (Regalado, 2018). However, two doctors are teaming up to perform the world’s first head transplant, possibly as early as the summer of 2018.
After successfully transplanting a human head onto a corpse, Sergio Canavero of Italy, and his colleague Xiaoping Ren of China, will perform the surgery in China. The surgery is being performed in China because no North American or European institute would allow such an operation to take place. Many scientists are critical of the notion that the two doctors are being allowed to carry out surgery that has not had enough testing on animals, lacks published literature on their techniques and outcomes, lacks ethics approval, and the general circus-like atmosphere created by Canavero (Wolpe, 2018).
It seems very unlikely the head transplant will succeed, but others are looking into alternative ways to cheat death. What if the brain or body could be frozen and later restored? Researchers at 21st Century Medicine in Fontana, California recently transplanted a rewarmed rabbit kidney successfully after it had been cryoprotected and frozen to −135 degrees Celsius (Shermer, 2016). The company specializes in the cryopreservation of human organs and tissues using cryoprotectants, and are looking into ways of preserving the brain upon death. One method they are looking into involves freezing the brain, and coating it in a resin-like cocoon. The brain cannot be thawed without causing harm to it, but can be stored for a thousand years. The hope is that the technology of the future will be able to unthaw it without harm, or that with a brain so well-preserved, a copy of it can be made by scanning it. The unthawed or copied brain will essentially pick up where it left off right before it was frozen. With 86 billion neurons in a human brain that each have 1,000 or more synaptic connections, totalling 100 trillion connections (Shermer, 2016), the task replicating a brain, or harmlessly unthawing it, seems daunting, if not impossible, but who knows what will be possible in the future.
Takashi Taneichi is researching whether consciousness exists outside the brain. According to Taneichi (2015), “the multidimensional picture of the universe can be important in seeking the origin of the consciousness outside the brain.” Taneichi posits that the existence of a new particle called the parasite fermion exists outside our four-dimensional universe. He does not think the soul exists, but our consciousness, which Taneichi argues is essentially our soul, exists in another dimension, and when we die in our dimension, the soul simply continues to live on in this other dimension (Taneichi, 2015). Taneichi is studying the physics of our universe and beyond to figure out what happens after death to our consciousness or souls.
Taneichi’s research may sound a little out there, but many ideas and concepts came from a place that was once considered out there.
We have a long way to go before we figure out how we can preserve our brains, and thus our consciousness past the expiration of our bodies. Considering how little we know about our universe, science, and ourselves, anything is possible. We just need to apply our brains.
References
Regalado, A. (2018, April 25). Researchers are keeping pig brains alive outside the body. MIT Technology Review. Retrieved from https://www.technologyreview.com/s/611007/researchers-are-keeping-pig-brains-alive-outside-the-body
Shermer, M. (2016, February 1). Can Our Minds Live Forever? Scientific American. Retrieved from https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/can-our-minds-live-forever/
Taneichi, T. (2015). Physical consciousness outside the brain: Parasite fermion model for substance of consciousness. NeuroQuantology, 13(2) doi:http://dx.doi.org.ledproxy2.uwindsor.ca/10.14704/nq.2015.13.2.838
Wolpe, P. R. (2018, April 2). A human head transplant would be reckless and ghastly. It’s time to talk about it. Vox. Retrieved from https://www.vox.com/the-big-idea/2018/4/2/17173470/human-head-transplant-canavero-ethics-bioethics
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2. den-belitsky