[extropy-chat] Brain and Cryonics: old memories

[Eugen Leitl]

On Mon, May 10, 2004 at 09:24:38AM -0700, Robert J. Bradbury wrote:

> Now, given some of the recent conversations about cryonics and
> freezing damage and assuming that "lifelong memories" aren't
> scattered all over the brain and simply "fetched" by the anterior
> cingulate cortex this raises the interesting concept that there
> is a unique portion of your brain that represents "you".  Retain
> this in functional form and one has oneself.  Lose it or significantly
> damage it and one effectively loses oneself.

Stroke victims sustain tremendous damage, yet if nonvegetative are considered
still the same persons, and typically do recover at least somewhat, due to
brain's plasticity. Even complete amnesia (rare, but it happens)
sufferers usually retain personality traits:

	http://www.intelihealth.com/IH/ihtIH/WSIHW000/31393/31474/345689.html?d=dmtHMSContent

Sure, we'd all prefer a nice incremental in vivo medical-nanoware-mediated
upgrade migration path, or, lacking that, at least a nearly-perfect
whole-body cryopreservation, but in reality that 1) almost never happens 2)
we all know that whole-body has a noticeable quality tradeoff in regards to brain
cryopreservation (all other things being pink-piglet-perfect), right?

So I wouldn't get one's panties in a bunch over an extremely hypothetical
case yet. 

-- 
Eugen* Leitl <a href="http://leitl.org">leitl</a>
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