I'm not sure that I have anything productive to add to the conversation here, other than that this makes me viscerally uncomfortable. The idea of being a brain-in-a-jar sounds incredibly terrifying.
I'm not sure that I have anything productive to add to the conversation here, other than that this makes me viscerally uncomfortable. The idea of being a brain-in-a-jar sounds incredibly terrifying.
In a way. I've heard people say that the entire body exists to keep the brain alive. That's one way to look at it. But "you" aren't just a brain. But maybe it's more accurate to say that the brain...
In a way.
I've heard people say that the entire body exists to keep the brain alive.
That's one way to look at it. But "you" aren't just a brain.
But maybe it's more accurate to say that the brain exists to keep the body alive. It's causing the heart to beat and other organs to work and most of the time it keeps you from doing dangerous things like falling off a high spot.
If you look at how life evolved, the brain is a relatively late development. There were lots of bodies without a complicated central brain, and some with multiple simple ones, and so on.
The scary part is that the brain seems to be the only organ that maybe could become aware that it is in a jar.
Please don't tell me, but I just wanted to commiserate on the difficulties of recommending something where the premise itself is a spoiler, especially in discussions about that premise. "Oh, you...
Please don't tell me, but I just wanted to commiserate on the difficulties of recommending something where the premise itself is a spoiler, especially in discussions about that premise.
"Oh, you like this thing? Well there's a book where this is the major concept. No, I can't tell you what it is, that would ruin it!"
Off-topic, but you can use “summary” to hide spoilers: Expandable section explanation link https://docs.tildes.net/instructions/text-formatting#Expandable-sections More than one paragraph, too!
Off-topic, but you can use “summary” to hide spoilers:
This is absolutely insane and could change the entire field of neuroscience, medication, and lead to some massive innovations.
They report—thanks to electrocorticography and brain-depth electrodes evaluating the brain activity—that there were “minimal to no changes” in brain activity over the five-hour procedure.
Once the organ was isolated, the team then researched sugar’s effect on the brain without any concerns about influence from the rest of the body’s organs muddying the findings. This is the first time, according to Pascual, that researchers have ever been able to fully study the brain’s function without worrying about the impact of the rest of the body.
This is absolutely insane and could change the entire field of neuroscience, medication, and lead to some massive innovations.
Okay, that is of value. But I feel like now would be a time to mention one of my reoccurring nightmares. That has been coming to mind for a long time now, ever since I ran through some European...
Okay, that is of value.
But I feel like now would be a time to mention one of my reoccurring nightmares. That has been coming to mind for a long time now, ever since I ran through some European history. Where they used the guillotine sometimes. And other cultures, that will use a sword to do the same thing.
Is there a period of time, for the executed person, after the blade has come down, where they know and feel that they've just been beheaded? Do they have a second where they get to experience having no body. A flash of a moment where they know they're a floating head now?
I mean, sure I get that they die pretty darn fast. There's no fresh blood coming to the brain since no body (and the body has no neurosignals to moderate its functions), so the brain dies. But it's just always bugged me, terrified me, to think there might be a second or so where that hapless fucker is feeling their skull bounce down on the platform knowing "yup, they just cut my head off."
I recall reading of an agreement between some lord and a doomed convict whereby the convict would blink his eyes for as long as he was able after being beheaded. My memory has it that the head was...
I recall reading of an agreement between some lord and a doomed convict whereby the convict would blink his eyes for as long as he was able after being beheaded. My memory has it that the head was able to blink rapidly for about half a minute after being severed.
I remember reading about that one, I think it was a convict and his friend or colleague rather than the lord. There's debate on whether it was conscious blinking, or just muscle spasms or...
I remember reading about that one, I think it was a convict and his friend or colleague rather than the lord. There's debate on whether it was conscious blinking, or just muscle spasms or something like that. Even when we die, bodies can still move for a bit.
The claim that sticks with me is an anecdote from a man who saw his friend get decapitated in a car crash. He claimed his friend's head looked confused before seeing his body and his expression twisted with horror. Obviously this is an anecdote and can't be proven or replicated, but it just makes lucid decapitation feel more plausible and real than the blinking experiment.
I think 30 seconds is very plausible. Just because the blood flow stopped, doesn't mean the brain stops immediately. It'll run out of oxygen quick without blood flow but there would absolutely be...
I think 30 seconds is very plausible. Just because the blood flow stopped, doesn't mean the brain stops immediately. It'll run out of oxygen quick without blood flow but there would absolutely be a window there where you are still conscious after decapitation.
Just like in movies when someone dies immediately after getting shot. Like no, you're still alive for a few minutes unless they hit the heart or brain. You're going to sit and bleed out or whatever organs were hit stop functioning.
I’d say less, just based on my experience with being choked out semi frequently (in a sporting context). Closer to 10 seconds before unconsciousness, and that’s just obstruction of arteries, not...
I’d say less, just based on my experience with being choked out semi frequently (in a sporting context). Closer to 10 seconds before unconsciousness, and that’s just obstruction of arteries, not severing. No way is anyone conscious after 30 seconds of no blood.
One thing that we know is that when blood pressure drops below a certain level we lose consciousness. This is separate from just oxygenation, but it might be a compensatory mechanism in...
One thing that we know is that when blood pressure drops below a certain level we lose consciousness. This is separate from just oxygenation, but it might be a compensatory mechanism in anticipation of low oxygen. So when you sever the arteries you drastically drop blood pressure, and the feedback information about blood pressure is disconnected as well, so I would imagine that loss of consciousness is rather rapid.
Wasn't there a very upsetting experiment done by soviet scientists that disembodied a head from a dog and attempted to feed it oxygenated blood in a rudimentary ECMO method in like the fifties or...
Wasn't there a very upsetting experiment done by soviet scientists that disembodied a head from a dog and attempted to feed it oxygenated blood in a rudimentary ECMO method in like the fifties or something?
Claiming the head was, if not responsive, at least independently motile?
cc: @trim At the top of this page you can click Ignore, or from the main page click Actions then Ignore. After this the topic won’t show up in your feed and you won’t see it again unless you’re...
It worries me that we are even talking about regulating any part of this, this is groundbreaking type of research, the possibilities are absolutely insane. If anything, we need far more of this...
It worries me that we are even talking about regulating any part of this, this is groundbreaking type of research, the possibilities are absolutely insane. If anything, we need far more of this type of research. This is something that could change the entire medical world and general society for the better.
Pigs are extremely intelligent and social. If the pig was able to feel or experience any part of this, that would be torturous. Lots of experiments that would yield important information are...
Pigs are extremely intelligent and social. If the pig was able to feel or experience any part of this, that would be torturous. Lots of experiments that would yield important information are unethical.
Then again, people are okay with much worse happening to pigs so they can eat them. If I could only end that or this, I'd end that.
I'm skeptical that this research is as valuable and necessary as it's being sold. The brain's function cannot be understood without seeing how it works in conjunction with the rest of the body, so...
I'm skeptical that this research is as valuable and necessary as it's being sold. The brain's function cannot be understood without seeing how it works in conjunction with the rest of the body, so how important really is it to know the way it works independently of the body? The groundbreaking (though not necessarily good) part of this research I would say is in the engineering, not the science.
in many regards yes. But I can see some value in being able to isolate a brain and try to see how it responds to stimuli. Or simply to preserve it during some intensive surgery. It also has very...
The brain's function cannot be understood without seeing how it works in conjunction with the rest of the body
in many regards yes. But I can see some value in being able to isolate a brain and try to see how it responds to stimuli. Or simply to preserve it during some intensive surgery.
It also has very obvious (and even more ethically dubious) applications for future medical procedures.
But isn't this already regulated ? Back when I was at uni, there was some strong requirement whenever you had to experiment with animal (mandatory training + ethics committee &state oversight)....
But isn't this already regulated ? Back when I was at uni, there was some strong requirement whenever you had to experiment with animal (mandatory training + ethics committee &state oversight). Presumably there's similar mechanism in the US ?
With a short search I could find Institutional Animal Care and Use Committee (IACUC) for the institution of the first three researcher (UTSouthwestern, UTDallas), so I assume it was not a simple "let's do a futurama cosplay with pigs lol".
This is indeed the case. There are many people whose whole careers are dedicated to patrolling and enforcing animal experimental ethics, and given the publicity around this experiment, I imagine...
This is indeed the case. There are many people whose whole careers are dedicated to patrolling and enforcing animal experimental ethics, and given the publicity around this experiment, I imagine it was well vetted by the university's/department's ethics people.
Original paper (it's open access). : Shariff, M., Dobariya, A., Albaghdadi, O. et al. Maintenance of pig brain function under extracorporeal pulsatile circulatory control (EPCC). Sci Rep 13, 13942...
Shariff, M., Dobariya, A., Albaghdadi, O. et al. Maintenance of pig brain function under extracorporeal pulsatile circulatory control (EPCC). Sci Rep 13, 13942 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-023-39344-7
How digustingly cruel. The fact that they were allowed to do something like this makes me sick, and shows how little we care about the lives and suffering of animals in our society. Any scientific...
How digustingly cruel. The fact that they were allowed to do something like this makes me sick, and shows how little we care about the lives and suffering of animals in our society. Any scientific advancement isn't worth this cost. Animal testing to cure diseases is one thing, but they essentially tortured this pig for fun.
Ah, but you see the pig had no means to demonstrate it was experiencing a unique and horrific form of torture, so because of that it's presumably okay.
Ah, but you see the pig had no means to demonstrate it was experiencing a unique and horrific form of torture, so because of that it's presumably okay.
At first I was too disgusted to look at the article. Now that I’ve read it it looks like it was at least more humane than I’d initially thought. They anesthetized the pig, obviously, for the...
At first I was too disgusted to look at the article. Now that I’ve read it it looks like it was at least more humane than I’d initially thought. They anesthetized the pig, obviously, for the separation, and given they said no change in brain activity was recorded it presumably stayed fully anesthetized for the 5 hours. Anesthesia works by preventing the parts of your brain from talking to each other. So perceptually this should be no different than having a brain in a skull and under anesthesia. But I’m no expert so don’t depend on my suppositions here.
Having reflected on this, I think studying mundane things like the effect of sugar on brains in isolation might not be deserving of the grisly treatment and fatal outcome. If we perform this type of study to learn to perform brain transplants then it could be justifiable. But I would guess the reconnecting part is far outside of humanity’s abilities. Physical therapy for lower spinal injuries is already tremendously difficult. Imagine trying to do that for eyes and the very top of the spine.
To do animal testing to cure diseases, you need to figure out how to test on them. This is one such way to do more testing, even more humanely. This is a massive net positive.
To do animal testing to cure diseases, you need to figure out how to test on them. This is one such way to do more testing, even more humanely. This is a massive net positive.
I really don't follow. How does putting a pig's brain in a jar allow us to do more "humane" animal testing. We should be focusing on organ on a chip technology (which is more accurate than animal...
I really don't follow. How does putting a pig's brain in a jar allow us to do more "humane" animal testing. We should be focusing on organ on a chip technology (which is more accurate than animal testing mind you), not this sick mad science experiment.
Not only that, but enables research that removes the highly variable biological components - they can do tests just on the brain, figure out how it affects it, what effect it does or doesn't have,...
Not only that, but enables research that removes the highly variable biological components - they can do tests just on the brain, figure out how it affects it, what effect it does or doesn't have, and not have to do hundreds of tests due to the constant variability of other biological processes interfering or corrupting the data.
Once again, we would be better served by advancing organ/organ system on a chip technology. It's more accurate to humans, and actually humane. I don't deny animal testing was necessary for...
Once again, we would be better served by advancing organ/organ system on a chip technology. It's more accurate to humans, and actually humane. I don't deny animal testing was necessary for advancements in the past, but we're at a point were there's a viable alternative that's much better, and we should be working on that.
Edit: @C-Cab also makes a good point. What's the value of experimenting on a brain in isolation, and to add on, what makes it more humane than experimenting on it while still in an animal?
The same reason for the value for developing or working on anything in isolation: to learn how it functions. The more information we have on how one thing (something as big and unknowable as the...
What's the value of experimenting on a brain in isolation
The same reason for the value for developing or working on anything in isolation: to learn how it functions. The more information we have on how one thing (something as big and unknowable as the brain!) the more we can develop new treatments. This additionally helps humans because our brains are so similar, but are bodily processes are not. This is fantastic.
This aides in the development of organ-on-a-chip technology, because we haven't been able to properly (or would be able to) develop a brain-on-a-chip. By separating it, we can develop a far more robust and accurate facsimile or simulation of the organ.
This is ignoring the other opportunity, which is how this opens the possibility for complete brain transplants (or, mind cloning and/or uploading that I wrote about here). This is an exciting development.
But I think this brings us back to the question, is it worth the suffering it causes? You clearly think so, but I'm curious if you would think the same if it were a dog, primate, or even a human....
But I think this brings us back to the question, is it worth the suffering it causes? You clearly think so, but I'm curious if you would think the same if it were a dog, primate, or even a human. Would you volunteer for this experiment, and if not, why? We as a society seem to agree that Unit 731, as well as certain horrific Nazi experiments weren't worth it, despite the scientific advancements they brought. Why is it any different here? There are other ways to advance brain on a chip technology without subjecting animals to unknowable torture without their consent.
These will need to one day be experimented on humans, and I imagine more than a few will die since it won't be done on the first try. As long as the right consent is given I think it's fine....
But I think this brings us back to the question, is it worth the suffering it causes? You clearly think so, but I'm curious if you would think the same if it were a dog, primate, or even a human.
These will need to one day be experimented on humans, and I imagine more than a few will die since it won't be done on the first try. As long as the right consent is given I think it's fine. Ironically enough that is easier to obtain from humans than animals, though. So its a hard question to answer.
We as a society seem to agree that Unit 731, as well as certain horrific Nazi experiments weren't worth it, despite the scientific advancements they brought. Why is it any different here?
Consent, once again. these people were taken and treated as subhuman and many were tortured and killed without any particular scientific intrigue to it. I really hope it doesn't take 200 thousand attempts to nail brain translaplants once we get to the point of performing the procedures on humans.
And to be blunt, we have different ethical concerns for humans vs. animals. We have a lot of lines as is for animals, but they aren't on equal parity to the overhead needed to approve a human subject for experimentation.
There are other ways to advance brain on a chip technology without subjecting animals to unknowable torture without their consent.
this is way outside my purview, so I can't really confirm nor deny this.
I think the tough thing that I don't think is fully demonstrated here is what is the value in experimenting on a brain outside of a body? Yes, isolating the brain from the influences of the rest...
I think the tough thing that I don't think is fully demonstrated here is what is the value in experimenting on a brain outside of a body? Yes, isolating the brain from the influences of the rest of the body can provide unique insights into how the brain does certain things, but the brain isn't operating in a vacuum. If we design a treatment that does great on isolated brains but falls apart when it's used with a whole organism, then what's the point?
This isn't to say that this basic research doesn't have applications down the line, especially as technology improves, just the comment on testing the brain in isolation gives myopic vibes.
This got me Imagining elderly people opting to be plunked down in a jar and hooked up to a computer that is controlled with their brain. No more need of a body that just gets more painful and...
This got me Imagining elderly people opting to be plunked down in a jar and hooked up to a computer that is controlled with their brain. No more need of a body that just gets more painful and might up an quit some day. People who are little more than a trapped brain in a mostly dead body might opt for that too. Maybe it could be hooked into a robot body with camera and controls wired directly to the brain. I'd be most curious to learn how long a person could live without a body, could it extend their life? Would they lose any emotions?
I think it's the only road to immortality we've got. At least a brain in a vat has lower caloric requirements than a full human body. If we can just simulate the sensation of having a human body...
I think it's the only road to immortality we've got. At least a brain in a vat has lower caloric requirements than a full human body. If we can just simulate the sensation of having a human body accurately, we can just plug into the matrix and live indefinitely.
Any other solution to human mortality results in massive overpopulation, which kills everyone anyway.
Though, honestly, even brain-in-a-vat immortality is quite unlikely. But sometimes the idea of it at least lets make it to sleep at night.
Every once in a while, I have these fleeting glimpses of the infinite abyss of death. When it happens, I involuntarily gasp, my heart starts racing, and feel my whole body flooded with panic....
Every once in a while, I have these fleeting glimpses of the infinite abyss of death. When it happens, I involuntarily gasp, my heart starts racing, and feel my whole body flooded with panic.
Before I was on medication for it, over 20 years ago, I found it hard to do anything without being preoccupied with the idea of death. From the moment I woke up every morning until I went to bed at night, if I wasn't doing something enormously distracting, I was just thinking obsessively about death. To me, life felt like a gigantic equation — with positive things adding to the sum, and negative things subtracting from it. But at the end, you put the whole thing in parentheses and multiply by zero. It was all pointless. Good or bad, everything is erased. It's like you were never born. I remember laying on my couch, probably 18 years old, and staring at the ceiling, being so completely overwhelmed with nihilism that I couldn't find the will to even move. I would just move from terror to despair. There was no room for anything else.
(Thank god for SSRIs, though! Until I contract some kind of terminal illness, it helps me keep the nihilism and existential dread at bay.)
So, yeah, I'm rather jealous of anyone who can go blithely into death!
Given all of that, it's hard for me to not look at this news article with some glimmer of hope that there might be some way to save my brain from the death of the rest of my body. Maybe in a few hundred years, I can get comfortable with the idea of dying and embracing the void!
If I have good ways to extend my life I’m taking them. But at the same time I want the mental asset of being prepared to lose things important to me. Loss is inevitable.
If I have good ways to extend my life I’m taking them. But at the same time I want the mental asset of being prepared to lose things important to me. Loss is inevitable.
Yep: "San Junipero." Though, IIRC, it was quite vague on exactly how people's consciousness was getting out of their bodies and into the simulation. At least, permanently. The final shot of the...
Yep: "San Junipero." Though, IIRC, it was quite vague on exactly how people's consciousness was getting out of their bodies and into the simulation. At least, permanently. The final shot of the episode, in fact, almost suggested that they're just copies.
So, what happen to the body? For this to be of any practical, therapeutic application we'll need to be able to put it back in and get everything working again.
So, what happen to the body? For this to be of any practical, therapeutic application we'll need to be able to put it back in and get everything working again.
I think this is more about brain research than removing and putting back yet. Sure this is a step towards that as well but doesn't sound like that's the goal with this particular research
I think this is more about brain research than removing and putting back yet.
Sure this is a step towards that as well but doesn't sound like that's the goal with this particular research
I haven't read their paper yet, but from the article and conversation here it seems they're focusing on blood supply more than any nervous system interactions. I wonder if they left any nervous...
I haven't read their paper yet, but from the article and conversation here it seems they're focusing on blood supply more than any nervous system interactions.
I wonder if they left any nervous connections in tact, and if there's any interest in simulating that systems connections. Blood flow and oxygenation kinda feel like solved problems (I didn't know we were previously unable to do this) but any ability to communicate with a physically disconnected brain would be hugely exciting to me.
They were able to keep all functions functioning on an equal basis as when connected versus when disconnected. This was to test different interactions of components, chemicals, medications,...
They were able to keep all functions functioning on an equal basis as when connected versus when disconnected. This was to test different interactions of components, chemicals, medications, processes, etc on a living fully functional operational brain disconnected from the body (in this case, sugar as a decent first step). Not just blood flow. Insanely cool stuff.
I'm not sure that I have anything productive to add to the conversation here, other than that this makes me viscerally uncomfortable. The idea of being a brain-in-a-jar sounds incredibly terrifying.
Good news! You'd have no viscera to be uncomfortable with!
I wonder about that. Given that phantom limb syndrome is a thing, the brain might hallucinate that they're still there.
If it makes you feel better, you're kind of already a brain in a jar.
In a way.
I've heard people say that the entire body exists to keep the brain alive.
That's one way to look at it. But "you" aren't just a brain.
But maybe it's more accurate to say that the brain exists to keep the body alive. It's causing the heart to beat and other organs to work and most of the time it keeps you from doing dangerous things like falling off a high spot.
If you look at how life evolved, the brain is a relatively late development. There were lots of bodies without a complicated central brain, and some with multiple simple ones, and so on.
The scary part is that the brain seems to be the only organ that maybe could become aware that it is in a jar.
"we are the universe experiencing itself"
In that sense it's also the only thing ever that named itself.
There is a novel based on this concept.
Anyone curious is welcome to message me.
I don't want to spoil the story for people who don't want that
Please don't tell me, but I just wanted to commiserate on the difficulties of recommending something where the premise itself is a spoiler, especially in discussions about that premise.
"Oh, you like this thing? Well there's a book where this is the major concept. No, I can't tell you what it is, that would ruin it!"
"... Thanks"
Off-topic, but you can use “summary” to hide spoilers:
Expandable section explanation link
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More than one paragraph, too!
Roald Dahl wrote such a story too.
Also kind of an awesome Metallica song.
And a running gag in Futurama
Those usually have heads on them at least.
That's a harsh way to speak about Congress, but I can't disagree.
This is absolutely insane and could change the entire field of neuroscience, medication, and lead to some massive innovations.
I am now very curious about what they found on sugar's effects on the brain from this experiment.
My completely uneducated guess: slightly more delicious.
Okay, that is of value.
But I feel like now would be a time to mention one of my reoccurring nightmares. That has been coming to mind for a long time now, ever since I ran through some European history. Where they used the guillotine sometimes. And other cultures, that will use a sword to do the same thing.
Is there a period of time, for the executed person, after the blade has come down, where they know and feel that they've just been beheaded? Do they have a second where they get to experience having no body. A flash of a moment where they know they're a floating head now?
I mean, sure I get that they die pretty darn fast. There's no fresh blood coming to the brain since no body (and the body has no neurosignals to moderate its functions), so the brain dies. But it's just always bugged me, terrified me, to think there might be a second or so where that hapless fucker is feeling their skull bounce down on the platform knowing "yup, they just cut my head off."
I recall reading of an agreement between some lord and a doomed convict whereby the convict would blink his eyes for as long as he was able after being beheaded. My memory has it that the head was able to blink rapidly for about half a minute after being severed.
I remember reading about that one, I think it was a convict and his friend or colleague rather than the lord. There's debate on whether it was conscious blinking, or just muscle spasms or something like that. Even when we die, bodies can still move for a bit.
The claim that sticks with me is an anecdote from a man who saw his friend get decapitated in a car crash. He claimed his friend's head looked confused before seeing his body and his expression twisted with horror. Obviously this is an anecdote and can't be proven or replicated, but it just makes lucid decapitation feel more plausible and real than the blinking experiment.
I think 30 seconds is very plausible. Just because the blood flow stopped, doesn't mean the brain stops immediately. It'll run out of oxygen quick without blood flow but there would absolutely be a window there where you are still conscious after decapitation.
Just like in movies when someone dies immediately after getting shot. Like no, you're still alive for a few minutes unless they hit the heart or brain. You're going to sit and bleed out or whatever organs were hit stop functioning.
I’d say less, just based on my experience with being choked out semi frequently (in a sporting context). Closer to 10 seconds before unconsciousness, and that’s just obstruction of arteries, not severing. No way is anyone conscious after 30 seconds of no blood.
One thing that we know is that when blood pressure drops below a certain level we lose consciousness. This is separate from just oxygenation, but it might be a compensatory mechanism in anticipation of low oxygen. So when you sever the arteries you drastically drop blood pressure, and the feedback information about blood pressure is disconnected as well, so I would imagine that loss of consciousness is rather rapid.
Saying this unironically for the first time - has science gone too far?
Strap in, friend. We're still at the very beginning of human innovation. Who knows what fucked up shit we're gonna see before we die.
Don't look up Unit 731. If there is something worse than Nazis, it is the imperial japan
Too late. Heard of that one years ago
Wasn't there a very upsetting experiment done by soviet scientists that disembodied a head from a dog and attempted to feed it oxygenated blood in a rudimentary ECMO method in like the fifties or something?
Claiming the head was, if not responsive, at least independently motile?
I could be chatting out me arse like.
This was my first thought as well. shivers
It worries me how little people seriously talk about regulating this type of research.
Subjectively grotesque research or lab animal research in general?
Yeah, I wish I could hide this post somehow. I don't want to block ~science, but I don't want to see this again either :(
There is an ignore button for just this scenario.
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It worries me that we are even talking about regulating any part of this, this is groundbreaking type of research, the possibilities are absolutely insane. If anything, we need far more of this type of research. This is something that could change the entire medical world and general society for the better.
Pigs are extremely intelligent and social. If the pig was able to feel or experience any part of this, that would be torturous. Lots of experiments that would yield important information are unethical.
Then again, people are okay with much worse happening to pigs so they can eat them. If I could only end that or this, I'd end that.
I'm skeptical that this research is as valuable and necessary as it's being sold. The brain's function cannot be understood without seeing how it works in conjunction with the rest of the body, so how important really is it to know the way it works independently of the body? The groundbreaking (though not necessarily good) part of this research I would say is in the engineering, not the science.
in many regards yes. But I can see some value in being able to isolate a brain and try to see how it responds to stimuli. Or simply to preserve it during some intensive surgery.
It also has very obvious (and even more ethically dubious) applications for future medical procedures.
But isn't this already regulated ? Back when I was at uni, there was some strong requirement whenever you had to experiment with animal (mandatory training + ethics committee &state oversight). Presumably there's similar mechanism in the US ?
With a short search I could find Institutional Animal Care and Use Committee (IACUC) for the institution of the first three researcher (UTSouthwestern, UTDallas), so I assume it was not a simple "let's do a futurama cosplay with pigs lol".
This is indeed the case. There are many people whose whole careers are dedicated to patrolling and enforcing animal experimental ethics, and given the publicity around this experiment, I imagine it was well vetted by the university's/department's ethics people.
Original paper (it's open access). :
Shariff, M., Dobariya, A., Albaghdadi, O. et al. Maintenance of pig brain function under extracorporeal pulsatile circulatory control (EPCC). Sci Rep 13, 13942 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-023-39344-7
How digustingly cruel. The fact that they were allowed to do something like this makes me sick, and shows how little we care about the lives and suffering of animals in our society. Any scientific advancement isn't worth this cost. Animal testing to cure diseases is one thing, but they essentially tortured this pig for fun.
Ah, but you see the pig had no means to demonstrate it was experiencing a unique and horrific form of torture, so because of that it's presumably okay.
I can't help but imagine an "I have no mouth, but I must scream" situation. There's no way this could be pleasant, to put it lightly.
At first I was too disgusted to look at the article. Now that I’ve read it it looks like it was at least more humane than I’d initially thought. They anesthetized the pig, obviously, for the separation, and given they said no change in brain activity was recorded it presumably stayed fully anesthetized for the 5 hours. Anesthesia works by preventing the parts of your brain from talking to each other. So perceptually this should be no different than having a brain in a skull and under anesthesia. But I’m no expert so don’t depend on my suppositions here.
Having reflected on this, I think studying mundane things like the effect of sugar on brains in isolation might not be deserving of the grisly treatment and fatal outcome. If we perform this type of study to learn to perform brain transplants then it could be justifiable. But I would guess the reconnecting part is far outside of humanity’s abilities. Physical therapy for lower spinal injuries is already tremendously difficult. Imagine trying to do that for eyes and the very top of the spine.
To do animal testing to cure diseases, you need to figure out how to test on them. This is one such way to do more testing, even more humanely. This is a massive net positive.
I really don't follow. How does putting a pig's brain in a jar allow us to do more "humane" animal testing. We should be focusing on organ on a chip technology (which is more accurate than animal testing mind you), not this sick mad science experiment.
Not only that, but enables research that removes the highly variable biological components - they can do tests just on the brain, figure out how it affects it, what effect it does or doesn't have, and not have to do hundreds of tests due to the constant variability of other biological processes interfering or corrupting the data.
Once again, we would be better served by advancing organ/organ system on a chip technology. It's more accurate to humans, and actually humane. I don't deny animal testing was necessary for advancements in the past, but we're at a point were there's a viable alternative that's much better, and we should be working on that.
Edit: @C-Cab also makes a good point. What's the value of experimenting on a brain in isolation, and to add on, what makes it more humane than experimenting on it while still in an animal?
The same reason for the value for developing or working on anything in isolation: to learn how it functions. The more information we have on how one thing (something as big and unknowable as the brain!) the more we can develop new treatments. This additionally helps humans because our brains are so similar, but are bodily processes are not. This is fantastic.
This aides in the development of organ-on-a-chip technology, because we haven't been able to properly (or would be able to) develop a brain-on-a-chip. By separating it, we can develop a far more robust and accurate facsimile or simulation of the organ.
This is ignoring the other opportunity, which is how this opens the possibility for complete brain transplants (or, mind cloning and/or uploading that I wrote about here). This is an exciting development.
But I think this brings us back to the question, is it worth the suffering it causes? You clearly think so, but I'm curious if you would think the same if it were a dog, primate, or even a human. Would you volunteer for this experiment, and if not, why? We as a society seem to agree that Unit 731, as well as certain horrific Nazi experiments weren't worth it, despite the scientific advancements they brought. Why is it any different here? There are other ways to advance brain on a chip technology without subjecting animals to unknowable torture without their consent.
These will need to one day be experimented on humans, and I imagine more than a few will die since it won't be done on the first try. As long as the right consent is given I think it's fine. Ironically enough that is easier to obtain from humans than animals, though. So its a hard question to answer.
Consent, once again. these people were taken and treated as subhuman and many were tortured and killed without any particular scientific intrigue to it. I really hope it doesn't take 200 thousand attempts to nail brain translaplants once we get to the point of performing the procedures on humans.
And to be blunt, we have different ethical concerns for humans vs. animals. We have a lot of lines as is for animals, but they aren't on equal parity to the overhead needed to approve a human subject for experimentation.
this is way outside my purview, so I can't really confirm nor deny this.
I think the tough thing that I don't think is fully demonstrated here is what is the value in experimenting on a brain outside of a body? Yes, isolating the brain from the influences of the rest of the body can provide unique insights into how the brain does certain things, but the brain isn't operating in a vacuum. If we design a treatment that does great on isolated brains but falls apart when it's used with a whole organism, then what's the point?
This isn't to say that this basic research doesn't have applications down the line, especially as technology improves, just the comment on testing the brain in isolation gives myopic vibes.
This got me Imagining elderly people opting to be plunked down in a jar and hooked up to a computer that is controlled with their brain. No more need of a body that just gets more painful and might up an quit some day. People who are little more than a trapped brain in a mostly dead body might opt for that too. Maybe it could be hooked into a robot body with camera and controls wired directly to the brain. I'd be most curious to learn how long a person could live without a body, could it extend their life? Would they lose any emotions?
I think it's the only road to immortality we've got. At least a brain in a vat has lower caloric requirements than a full human body. If we can just simulate the sensation of having a human body accurately, we can just plug into the matrix and live indefinitely.
Any other solution to human mortality results in massive overpopulation, which kills everyone anyway.
Though, honestly, even brain-in-a-vat immortality is quite unlikely. But sometimes the idea of it at least lets make it to sleep at night.
Man... You and I are very different people. The only thing that keeps me going is the knowledge that this will all turn off one day.
Every once in a while, I have these fleeting glimpses of the infinite abyss of death. When it happens, I involuntarily gasp, my heart starts racing, and feel my whole body flooded with panic.
Before I was on medication for it, over 20 years ago, I found it hard to do anything without being preoccupied with the idea of death. From the moment I woke up every morning until I went to bed at night, if I wasn't doing something enormously distracting, I was just thinking obsessively about death. To me, life felt like a gigantic equation — with positive things adding to the sum, and negative things subtracting from it. But at the end, you put the whole thing in parentheses and multiply by zero. It was all pointless. Good or bad, everything is erased. It's like you were never born. I remember laying on my couch, probably 18 years old, and staring at the ceiling, being so completely overwhelmed with nihilism that I couldn't find the will to even move. I would just move from terror to despair. There was no room for anything else.
(Thank god for SSRIs, though! Until I contract some kind of terminal illness, it helps me keep the nihilism and existential dread at bay.)
So, yeah, I'm rather jealous of anyone who can go blithely into death!
Given all of that, it's hard for me to not look at this news article with some glimmer of hope that there might be some way to save my brain from the death of the rest of my body. Maybe in a few hundred years, I can get comfortable with the idea of dying and embracing the void!
If I have good ways to extend my life I’m taking them. But at the same time I want the mental asset of being prepared to lose things important to me. Loss is inevitable.
There's at least one Black Mirror episode with basically that plot.
Yep: "San Junipero." Though, IIRC, it was quite vague on exactly how people's consciousness was getting out of their bodies and into the simulation. At least, permanently. The final shot of the episode, in fact, almost suggested that they're just copies.
That's certainly less than ideal.
Ehhh, I think a copy of me would find it pretty cool to be a digital ghost of myself.
Source: me
Personally, though, I'm not a fan of it. Because although a copy of me might be escaping death, the actual me is still going to die at brain death.
So, what happen to the body? For this to be of any practical, therapeutic application we'll need to be able to put it back in and get everything working again.
I think this is more about brain research than removing and putting back yet.
Sure this is a step towards that as well but doesn't sound like that's the goal with this particular research
I haven't read their paper yet, but from the article and conversation here it seems they're focusing on blood supply more than any nervous system interactions.
I wonder if they left any nervous connections in tact, and if there's any interest in simulating that systems connections. Blood flow and oxygenation kinda feel like solved problems (I didn't know we were previously unable to do this) but any ability to communicate with a physically disconnected brain would be hugely exciting to me.
They were able to keep all functions functioning on an equal basis as when connected versus when disconnected. This was to test different interactions of components, chemicals, medications, processes, etc on a living fully functional operational brain disconnected from the body (in this case, sugar as a decent first step). Not just blood flow. Insanely cool stuff.