[ExI] The Dementia Plague

[BillK]

On Fri, Oct 5, 2012 at 5:06 PM, spike wrote:
> Until we come up with some kind of pharmaceutical hope for AD patients, I
> must conclude that some means of chemically induced final act is one's best
> hope for promoting that which matters most.
>
>

A friend was taken in hospital and as part of the checks, the doctors
did an MRI brain scan. Unfortunately they found infarcts in her brain.
These are dead parts of the brain caused by a restriction in blood
supply to the tissues. i.e. vascular dementia. In her case it was the
blood vessels wearing out due to old age, but blood vessels can fail
or become blocked for other reasons at younger ages.

The chilling comment to me was when the surgeon casually said that
almost every time they do a brain scan they find infarcts. People have
these mini brain strokes all the time and never realise it has
happened. The symptoms vary wildly, depending on where it happens in
the brain and how big the blockage is. Sometimes hardly noticeable, up
to paralysis or dementia. And the brain can work around small areas of
damage in younger people.

As people age we notice physical things like wounds taking longer to
heal, not being able to run up stairs as fast, etc.  But we don't
notice the holes that are almost certainly appearing inside our
brains.

I don't see how a cryonics recovery procedure can possibly rebuild
actual holes inside the brain. I suppose an advanced AI could make a
good guess, so you may be revived as an 'improved' version of what you
were. I suppose that won't matter too much. You probably won't notice
the difference and there won't be old friends around to tell you how
you have changed.


BillK