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HYPOTHESIS AND THEORY article
Front. Med. Technol.
Sec. Regenerative Technologies
Volume 6 - 2024 |
doi: 10.3389/fmedt.2024.1400615
Structural brain preservation: a potential bridge to future medical technologies
Provisionally accepted- 1 Apex Neuroscience, Salem, Illinois, United States
- 2 School of Psychological Sciences, Faculty of Medicine, Nursing & Health Sciences, Monash University, Clayton, Victoria, Australia
- 3 Turner Institute for Brain and Mental Health, Monash University, Clayton, Victoria, Australia
- 4 Brain Preservation Foundation, Ashburn, United States
- 5 Advanced Neural Biosciences, Portland, United States
- 6 Department of Philosophy Piero Martinetti, University of Milan, Milan, Lombardy, Italy
- 7 Escuela Superior de Ingeniería, Universidad de Sevilla, Seville, Spain
- 8 National Accelerators Center, CNA-CSIC, Seville, Spain
- 9 Department of Genetics, Harvard Medical School, Boston, Massachusetts, United States
- 10 Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering, Harvard University, Boston, Massachusetts, United States
- 11 Institute of Inflammation and Ageing, College of Medical and Dental Sciences, University of Birmingham, Birmingham, England, United Kingdom
- 12 The Oxford Uehiro Centre for Practical Ethics, Faculty of Philosophy, Humanities Division, University of Oxford, Oxford, England, United Kingdom
- 13 European Biostasis Foundation, Riehen, Switzerland
When faced with the prospect of death, some people would prefer a form of long-term preservation that may allow them to be restored to healthy life in the future, if technology ever develops to the point that this is feasible and humane. Some believe that we may have the capacity to perform this type of experimental preservation today -although it has never been proven -using contemporary methods to preserve the structure of the brain. The idea is that the morphomolecular organization of the brain encodes the information required for psychological properties such as personality and long-term memories. If these structures in the brain can be maintained intact over time, this could theoretically provide a bridge to access restorative technologies in the future. To consider this hypothesis, we first describe possible metrics that can be used to assess structural brain preservation quality. We next explore several possible methods to preserve structural information in the brain, including the traditional cryonics method of cryopreservation, as well as aldehyde-stabilized cryopreservation and fluid preservation. We focus in-depth on fluid preservation, which relies on aldehyde fixation to induce chemical gel formation in a wide set of biomolecules and appears to be a cost-effective method. We describe two theoretical recovery technologies, alongside several of the ethical and legal complexities of brain preservation, all of which will require a prudent approach. We believe contemporary structural brain preservation methods have a non-negligible chance of allowing successful restoration in the future and that this deserves serious research efforts by the scientific community.
Keywords: brain preservation, Biostasis, connectomics, Brain Perfusion, fluid preservation, Molecular nanotechnology
Received: 18 Mar 2024; Accepted: 21 Aug 2024.
Copyright: © 2024 McKenzie, Zeleznikow-Johnston, Sparks, Nnadi, Smart, Wiley, Cerullo, de Wolf, Minerva, Risco, Church, Pedro de Magalhães and Kendziorra. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence:
Andrew T. McKenzie, Apex Neuroscience, Salem, Illinois, United States
Jordan S. Sparks, Apex Neuroscience, Salem, Illinois, United States
Oge Nnadi, Brain Preservation Foundation, Ashburn, United States
John Smart, Brain Preservation Foundation, Ashburn, United States
Keith Wiley, Brain Preservation Foundation, Ashburn, United States
Aschwin de Wolf, Advanced Neural Biosciences, Portland, United States
Francesca Minerva, Department of Philosophy Piero Martinetti, University of Milan, Milan, 20122, Lombardy, Italy
George M. Church, Department of Genetics, Harvard Medical School, Boston, 02115, Massachusetts, United States
João Pedro de Magalhães, Institute of Inflammation and Ageing, College of Medical and Dental Sciences, University of Birmingham, Birmingham, B15 2TT, England, United Kingdom
Emil F. Kendziorra, European Biostasis Foundation, Riehen, Switzerland
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