John Smart will give a talk, Chemical brain preservation: How to live "forever" at World Future 2012 in Toronto.
Mission
Our Institutional Mission
The central objective of the Brain Preservation Foundation is to promote scientific research and services development in the field of whole brain preservation for long-term static storage. Through outreach to appropriate scientific communities, online activities, presentations and articles, directed research grants, challenge prizes, and other methods, we seek to explore the scientific hypothesis of whether a reliable surgical procedure exists that is capable of preserving the precise neural circuitry of the human brain at nanometer scale.*
Through the Brain Preservation Technology Prize, we aim to spur the scientific evaluation of such technologies as chemopreservation (aldehyde or other chemical fixation, often followed by "plastination") and cryopreservation (a process of chemoprotecting and "vitrifying" tissue for low temperature storage). The Prize seeks the development of an inexpensive and reliable hospital surgical procedure which verifiably preserves the structural connectivity of 99.9% of the synapses in a human brain if administered rapidly after biological death. Extending existing preservation techniques to whole brain volumes is essential to the scientific goal of mapping neuronal connectivity across an entire human brain – a goal that has been identified by the NIH and others as crucial to furthering of our knowledge of brain function (e.g. the NIH’s Human Connectome Project). Furthermore, advances in neuroscience today strongly suggest that appropriately preserved brains will contain our memories, identity, and consciousness, and therefore preservation technology, when it arrives, will make such brains available for future reading of memories, or full revival if desired.
To help people understand the value and implications of such technology, we also seek to advance public understanding of the self, of our brains as physical, chemical, and biological carriers of our "internal self", of our social relationships and environment as aspects of our "external self", and of our technologies as rapidly-improving carriers and extensions of both our internal and external selves.
Should any brain preservation technology be proven to work, we will make every effort to help that technology become as affordable and legally available as possible, for use in hospitals, hospices, and homes around the world.
Our Societal Mission
BPF's societal mission is to help individuals preserve, use, and improve their brains to the greatest degree possible, both now and in the future. At the most basic level, we seek to promote the preservation and improvement of our biological brains, via good diet, exercise, proper education, rich social life, lifelong learning, positive outlook, personal integrity, and other evidence-based behaviors that promote mental and physical health. Social behaviors that improve mental health include the prioritization and maintenance of fulfilling relationships, cherished friendships, and vibrant, equitable communities. At a less obvious level, we want to help people understand the way the use of appropriate digital technologies (photos, recordings, computers, social networks, and soon, personal digital agents/avatars) provides a more stimulating, creative, and resilient environment for their biological and social brains, as well as a wealth of useful resources and "facets of self" to share with their loved ones and communities after their biological death.
For those who have not considered brain preservation before, we want to help people understand why inexpensively preserving their memories and identity upon their biological death, for possible future revival of either, is of great potential value for themselves, their loved ones, and society. For many, this understanding may require a slight reimagining of the nature, value, and future of self in society, a recognition of themselves as not only as relatively static "entities" with well-defined interests and boundaries, but also as continually changing "patterns," or processes that improve as their biology, society and technology improve. By such efforts we hope to do our small part to help each of us better appreciate the gift of life and realize the fullest extent and potential of our humanity.
For those able to help increase either the Technology Prize purse, our Competitor Evaluation Fund, our Operating Budget, or our long-term Endowment, please consider making a small donation today. Every dollar helps. Thank you.
Footnotes
* In electron microscopy we can visualize preserved neural tissue down to about a 6 nanometer resolution. This allows us to directly see each neuron's synapses and dendrites, and all the larger molecular structures, including neurotransmitter vesicles in axon terminals, that form their connections. This level of neural structure is the most common definition of the connectome, how neurons connect to each other in a living brain.
Electron microscopy does not allow us to directly see things like individual membrane receptors and other even smaller molecules in the synapse, or the signal states (phosphorylation, methylation, etc.) of individual brain proteins. That level of structure is sometimes called the synaptome, and it remains an open question in neuroscience what features of the synaptome need to be preserved to preserve memory and identity. What we do know is that chemical fixation and cryonics both preserve the fats, proteins, sugars, and DNA in living neurons, and fix them effectively in place, and membrane receptors stay in their normal distributions as well, as verified by antibody probes. What we don't know yet is which of the very smallest molecules in our neurons and glia are critical to memory and identity, and which signal states at the molecular level are also important.
Our current Brain Preservation Technology Prize is focused on the connectome. As neuroscience advances, we may learn that certain features of the synaptome must also be preserved. In that case, the Brain Preservation Foundation will offer additional synaptome-level Technology prizes. Bottom line: As neuroscience continues to advance, BPF will do our best to help science to determine whether reliable and affordable protocols can be found to preserve those brain structures that give rise to our memories and identities, according to our best evidence to date.