Evan R. Goldstein

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“All Of The Water Will Then Be Drained From His Brain And Spinal Cord, Replaced By Pure Plastic Resin”

July 30, 2012 in Excerpts, Science/Tech, Urban Studies | Permalink

A couple of weeks ago, I posted a piece from Evan R. Goldstein’s Chronicle article about “offshoring” human brains into robot receptacles, effectively immortalizing not only human intelligence but individual personalities as well. It’s a process far beyond cryonics. Ray Kurzweil illuminates the topic further in his blog post “The Strange Neuroscience Of Immortality.” An excerpt about neuroscientist Kenneth Hayworth:

“Before becoming ‘very sick or very old,’ he’ll opt for an ‘early ‘retirement’ to the future,’ he writes. There will be a send-off party with friends and family, followed by a trip to the hospital. After Hayworth is placed under anesthesia, a cocktail of toxic chemicals will be perfused through his still-functioning vascular system, fixing every protein and lipid in his brain into place, preventing decay, and killing him instantly.

Then he will be injected with heavy-metal staining solutions to make his cell membranes visible under a microscope. All of the water will then be drained from his brain and spinal cord, replaced by pure plastic resin.

Every neuron and synapse in his central nervous system will be protected down to the nanometer level, Hayworth says, ‘the most perfectly preserved fossil imaginable.’

Using a ultramicrotome (like one developed by Hayworth, with a grant by the McKnight Endowment Fund for Neuroscience), his plastic-embedded preserved brain will eventually be cut into strips, and then imaged in an electron microscope. The physical brain will be destroyed, but in its place will be a precise map of his connectome.

In 100 years or so, Hayworth says, scientists will be able to determine the function of each neuron and synapse and build a computer simulation of the mind. And because the plastination process will have preserved his spinal nerves, the computer-generated mind can be connected to a robot body.”

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Howard Stern investigates cryonics and the fate of Ted Williams’ frozen head:

Fuh-fuh-frozen.

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“We Will Preserve A Brain, Slice It Up, Simulate It On A Computer, And Hook It Up To A Robot Body”

July 18, 2012 in Excerpts, Science/Tech, Urban Studies | Permalink

The opening of “The Strange Neuroscience of Immortality,” Evan R. Goldstein’s odd and fascinating new Chronicle article about the ad infinitum view of life:

“In the basement of the Northwest Science Building here at Harvard University, a locked door is marked with a pink and yellow sign: ‘Caution: Radioactive Material.’ Inside researchers buzz around wearing dour expressions and plastic gloves. Among them is Kenneth Hayworth. He’s tall and gaunt, dressed in dark-blue jeans, a blue polo shirt, and gray running shoes. He looks like someone who sleeps little and eats less.

Hayworth has spent much of the past few years in a windowless room carving brains into very thin slices. He is by all accounts a curious man, known for casually saying things like, ‘The human race is on a beeline to mind uploading: We will preserve a brain, slice it up, simulate it on a computer, and hook it up to a robot body.’ He wants that brain to be his brain. He wants his 100 billion neurons and more than 100 trillion synapses to be encased in a block of transparent, amber-colored resin—before he dies of natural causes.

Why? Ken Hayworth believes that he can live forever.

But first he has to die.

‘If your body stops functioning, it starts to eat itself,’ he explains to me one drab morning this spring, ‘so you have to shut down the enzymes that destroy the tissue.’ If all goes according to plan, he says cheerfully, ‘I’ll be a perfect fossil.’ Then one day, not too long from now, his consciousness will be revived on a computer. By 2110, Hayworth predicts, mind uploading—the transfer of a biological brain to a silicon-based operating system—will be as common as laser eye surgery is today.”

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“Thousands frozen, and pets too”:

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