Sparks Brain Preservation

Why, with high probability, no physical loophole exists for recovering memory from an unfixed, then vitrified brain Classical cryonics has always assumed that an unfixed brain, once vitrified, preserves neural information in a readable form. This assumption has been repeated for decades, but never ...

I would like to add a brief bibliographic clarification. In my previous post I wrote that no genuinely systematic hypotheses have been advanced with the explicit aim of refuting the snapshot hypothesis. This remains true, but one partial exception is worth mentioning. Compared to the already mention...

Thanks for the links. I’m not able to join ResearchGate, but your review is already quite informative, and it complements well the formalin paper you shared earlier. The first link was more focused on epigenetics, while your glutaraldehyde review goes deeper into the chemistry of crosslinking and it...

Brain extraction damage In updating the original post, I have added a new list specifically dedicated to the inferential loss introduced by the surgical removal of the brain. This category was not present in the previous version and deserves its own treatment. The idea emerged partly from the discu...

Fixation damage Regarding fixation degradation, my initial estimates shifted after orienting the AI using Andy’s references . I have also revised the explanatory notes that accompany the percentages — a component just as important as the numerical values themselves — especially those describing the...

If you know where the molecule should go, that's zero damage. I really thought you already knew that because you were talking about inference. I knew that. But even using definitions like “maximum theoretical inference achievable with any conceivable future technology for atomic-scale readout”, an ...

You are referring to this 2003 news: “ Despite multiple large acoustic fracturing events recorded during cooling, the brain remains a cohesive whole with no grossly apparent fracturing or freezing damage. The consequences of fracturing seem to remain microscopic as long as tissue remains at cryogeni...

Ah, ok, you meant to those “mummifying” bands Alcor used to show in their videos years ago. I had always thought they were mainly meant to protect the fragile vitrified tissue during placement in the dewars, together with the fixing straps. As far as I understand, those bands are about 20 cm wide an...

This interesting paper made me think: I would really appreciate if there were a similarly exhaustive paper, but focused on glutaraldehyde instead of formaldehyde, so that we could make a direct comparison. As far as I can tell, there is no literature really addressing brain preservation in glutarald...

I really appreciate that you took the time and care to protect the vitrified brains with padding: as far as I know, neither Alcor nor CI have ever documented such measures. What I’d like to ask, though, is whether your concern was focused mainly on shocks, impacts, and sudden jolts, or if you have a...

Jordan, thanks for pointing to the Risk Management page: I agree it’s useful, and as you noted it could use a refresh. My quake example wasn’t only about “ infrastructure collapse ”. It was also about mechanical stress transmission. With the older ASC protocol, vitrified tissue is fragile and suscep...

When we talk about long-term preservation, it is notable how similar the challenges are between biological preservation (brains, patients, biological specimens) and digital data preservation (scientific data, archives, individual memories). Both must survive not only technical hurdles, but also envi...

Thanks Jordan, I see your point that some of these technologies are still far in the future. My intention was not to suggest premature protocols, but simply to outline a possible complementary safeguard that could be considered alongside fixation.

Thanks Jordan, I realize now that my wording blurred the line between “ consolidating features ” (the dynamic processes that stabilize long‑term memory, such as transcriptional activity, nuclear topology adjustments, and epigenetic regulation in progress) and “ consolidated features ” (the relativel...

I have thought of a possible future update to my proposal. It is based on the extraction of a few neuronal colonies, with a total number of neurons below one million. This could be possible in the not-too-distant future through equipment similar (if not identical but adapted to be multifunctional) t...

I understand: both of you see it differently from what I had misinterpreted. But why? Is it only because “ the detail is all there and has been preserved well ”? Perhaps it would be more accurate to say that fixation essentially immobilizes molecules, which explains the preservation of morphology, w...

There is 1 point I had already agreed on, about crosslinking, and I can also agree on the 2nd point that “ chromatin topology is preserved beautifully ”, but I would have preferred if you had explained technically the other 3 points you have not addressed yet (i.e. why it is not correct that “ fixat...

I've replied on the Memories thread.

Moving from a related thread , “suspending” the well-addressed fibroblast/cloning argument (and even the durable digital archives argument too, though not yet addressed at all – by the way, Andy, did you take a look at the Wikipedia M-DISC page? At the moment I have only 45 MB on the SecurSafe free ...

About my last post, I now recognize that I misrepresented certain scientific aspects. I wrongly attributed fibroblast‑specific features — such as transcriptional phasis, nuclear topology, and epigenetic regulation — to the brain, whereas they actually pertain only to fibroblasts themselves and would...

I now see that I underestimated the probability of what future technologies might achieve, but I was proposing just a “ready for use” abundant, high redundancy archive of the genome, that simultaneously acts as a duplicator of the original body, with predisposed and already very similar brain archit...

I hope you are right when you say “ they could just whip up a brand new living fibroblast on a whim . ” If that turns out to be the case, then it would simply be a matter of sharing opinions, and I could easily agree with what you “ think ” and what it “ seems ” (e.g. “ all that inference will be do...

Thank you for your thoughtful feedback. I agree that, in principle, DNA preserved in fixed tissue can be recovered and sequenced, and that the technical hurdles of extraction are relatively minor compared to the broader challenges of revival. That said, fibroblasts are not just “DNA containers.” The...

The recent Memories thread prompted me to draft a conceptual proposal, which I began to see as being based on a possible complement to the Future Technologies page. At the end of that page, I read: “ Regrowing a new body would be by far the easiest of any of the technologies listed. ” My proposal is...

I am absolutely convinced by your argument. My hundreds of years argument was about the possible factors in favor of going down to much lower temperatures, like possible long periods of stagnation in the technological progress.

Ok, aldehyde is superior, but for how many years? Cryopreserving at -196 C we can have an inferior connectome for many hundreds of hundreds of hundreds of years: for how many hundreds of years we would have a superior connectome by keeping the lipids solid at -20 C? It will be possible to be more pr...

I would add a 30 June 2044 event on my Google calendar in order to properly continue this discussion and verify if Kurzweil was too optimistic or not. If you will still be so determined perhaps your forum will survive to the Google accounts as we know today, but the will of the people involved in te...

Curiously, in August 2019 CI newsletter the name of Ben Best is at page 15 as no less than “Speaker” in name of Oregon Cryonics. At page 20 it is specified: “Ben Best will present on Oregon Cryonics, despite not being affiliated with that organization. For more info about Oregon Cryonics go to http:...

Yesterday Dr. Sparks wrote “ nobody on staff who realizes that they could cannulate quickly ” . Maybe I bypassed too many steps with my usual "connectome", but I thought of some ECMO into his vehicle , even for the patients who would desire to be moved from a possible hospital intensive c...

As the Electron Micrographs page itself states, it “ was an ideal lab setting which has only a limited resemblance to a human case ”. I wonder why there is still so limited literature on neuron/synapses state "immediately" after death, but I remember there was an interesting OC case report...