Brain Preservation Debate: Utopia or Distopia?
Dear Human Being,
Are you afraid of dying? Death anxiety, fancily called "thanatophobia", has been lingering over the heads of humanity for a long time now. The chilling thought that creeps into our minds every now and then, and plays its strings in a dark twisted requiem until we are utterly terrified. But what is it that really scares us in the concept of death? Is it an unknown nature? Is it the judgment of the underworld? Is it the three-headed dog? For me, it is the almost unattainable concept of ceasing to exist, like falling asleep and watching the brain slowly tune down the furious track of thoughts until it is calm. Quiet. But then we wake up and continue, with those hours of sleep feeling like forgotten memories. But what if we didn't wake up? What happens to all those memories, to the entire lifetimes, to other human beings? In other words, what happens to the brain?
It is still highly debated what happens to the brain after death (the moment the pulse is lost) - some studies show a rapid ion influx decapitating all conscious function, others show brain activity similar to deep sleep. However, it is undeniable that soon after the loss of all metabolic activity brain begins to decay. This straightforward biological process guided by the law of energy conservation does not have mercy towards anything we hold sacred - no memories, no beliefs, no emotions will be spared. Lost to another life will be the happiest, the grimmest and the dullest parts of our life. This unattractive perspective has been imperishable for humanity. Imagine, dear human being, that there was another way.
Think of a world, something straight out of sci-fi novels, where the streets would be lined with tall glass buildings that held in them a mystery to a foreign explorer. Inside, they were shelves upon shelves of glass jars filled to the brim with a colorless liquid, in which, anxiously floating, are sickly pink brains. The jars that have replaced flesh as a vessel for the soul are now quite literally filled with lives. All this madness is the result of the success of one scientific goal - brain preservation.
Brain preservation sounds fancy, even dreamy, like Dumbledore's Pensieve from Harry Potter. It would give us a privilege of hope to one day be revived into the new cybernetic bodies (or whatever future generations will come up with). Death would not be the end of the book, just of the chapter.
On the other hand, having the ability to decipher memories of the deceased would revolutionize spheres like criminal investigation - we will be able to peak into the victims head, science - we could see the unimplemented ideas of the brilliant minds, medicine - we would have potential to study disease history to precisely conclude the reason of death. Families and friends will be able to look into the beautiful days they have spent with someone lost.
But for all the aforementioned to metamorph into reality we first need to find a way to preserve the brain. The main scientific milestone in brain preservation is keeping synapses (connections between neurons) intact because those connections and multiple pathways that neurons form are the basis of memory in the scope of the synaptic theory of memory (let's keep in mind that most human scientific knowledge is consistently in debate). Although sounding like an impossible goal of keeping cells alive and well without the body's natural metastasis, it is believed to be feasible. For instance, recent advancements in brain preservation techniques gave birth to a new method, namely aldehyde-stabilized-cryopreservation, that enables to conserve brain's connectome - a network of neurons. Although the technique has a problem that the brain cannot be brought back to life, it is a big step to a movie-like future.
"Boom," flies open the door and in walks my inner debater. What would the advancement of brain preservation mean for my beloved human race?
Let's talk about complications. The success of brain preservation is only the first step on the road to immortality fantasy. The first question is, how will be preserved brain be revived in the future? Although leaving the hard tasks to future generations seems like a lucky manifestation of procrastination, it might very easily backfire. What will future generations be like? There is no doubt that as years go by, the moral code of humanity will change drastically: for better or worse. Imagine a scenario, where you, my dear human being, have gladly spent a chunk of money and preserved your brain post-mortem. And then you wake up in the world inhabited by cannibals. Or as a more peaceful scenario: in a museum as a living exhibit, weak and vulnerable, forced to live for the entertainment of others, stripped of clutches of your dignity. More realistically, however, what if future generation forgets about this project entirely and focus on the colonization of Mars? Bringing dead people back would be the last of their concerns on an already overpopulated planet and your money would have been spent for nothing for another few millennia or abandoned with the Earth.
But let's not judge future generations, they might end up being a pleasant bunch after all. In this case, the big problem would be building bodies to accommodate the brains. Will they be cybernetic or simply other people's? It is already hard to predict what a revived brain would do, let alone if the same person would manifest into the new body or a cyber skeleton. Ultimately, the question is, whether our soul is our brain or something else entirely? It would be dreadful to end up with a bunch of highly intelligent, but evil revived creatures. As such here is the question of the day!
What scenario can humans potentionally wake up in if their brains are preserved?
On the other hand, brain preservation does not necessarily need to end up in reviving the entire organism. One might simply preserve the memories for nostalgic evenings, like a photo album. In this case, the challenge is in the decoding of the connectome through complex algorithms. Sadly, to this day, it is not known what each wire in the brain is responsible for. Thus, the world, where one might skim through memory vault of the relative to find a pleasant summer day they have spent years ago, is out of reach for a while.
Lastly, the debate on data storage and protection will lead to many legal battles. A human's brain is not only their entire life, all their knowledge but also the secrets and lives of other people: loved ones, enemies, colleagues. What if a criminal gets his hands on the brain of someone with nuclear codes? But this is quite extreme. A quieter danger is in the hands of advertising and violation of privacy. It is possible to build an entire profile for a person after having stalked them on social media. Now imagine how easy it would be to learn everything about people from peeking in the brains of friends and loved ones. It would surely benefit targeted advertising. Who would one trust enough to put in their hands all this information?
I am sorry, dear human being if I have bestowed unnecessary fear upon you. The world is in perpetual motion, moving towards progress. Personally, I believe in brain preservation as a big step for humanity, because the life of every single person is priceless and deserves to be preserved. Humans will only need to find a way (and they will likely find a debatable way) to deal with the aforementioned ethical issues.