[ExI] cryonics vs. chemopreservation

[Joshua Job]

Actually, there are two groups working on such a project, though not using
chemopreservation.

David Dalrymple is using opt genetics to upload the mind if a c. elegans
worm. He anticipates completion in a couple of years.

http://syntheticneurobiology.org/people/display/144/26

And Openworm is working on building a complete and detailed simulation of
c. elegans.

http://www.artificialbrains.com/openworm

I think one of the reasons Dalrymple is not using chemopreservation is
because we simply don't know enough about neurons to look at them and build
a model of their behavior. So he is going to essentially watch the worms
think and use an algorithm that builds a functional model of each synapse
based on the observed behavior (combined with all available biophysical
data).
-Joshua Job
On Jan 13, 2013 11:43 AM, "Rafal Smigrodzki" <rafal.smigrodzki at gmail.com>
wrote:

> I am very supportive of both cryonics and chemopreservation of brains.
> Unfortunately, at present both have severe drawbacks.
>
> Cryonics is available now and almost certainly preserves the material
> underpinnings of a mind but it is a fragile procedure: All you need
> for failure is either a massive nitrogen spill (sabotage, earthquake,
> etc.) or a 3 month stoppage in nitrogen delivery (Alcor going
> bankrupt, massive energy supply fluctuations due to EMP weapon use,
> etc.), occurring at any time in the next 30 - 100 years.
>
> On the other hand, chemopreservation is theoretically very robust -
> room temp brains in distributed storage are much less likely to be
> destroyed by focal attacks (there is no centralized storage facility),
> or by social upheaval interrupting the use of high technology - since
> there is no high technology involved in the storage part. Yet,
> chemopreservation at present does have significant technological
> problems at the preservation stage, with concerns about preservative
> delivery, and questions about whether the synaptic weight information
> can be adequately recovered.
>
> The concerns about chemopresevation could be significantly allayed by
> a demonstration of preservation and recovery of memory in animals. The
> ideal would be the preservation of a mouse trained for a specific
> task, followed by mouse brain uploading and demonstration of the
> specific learned behavior in the uploaded mind. This might become
> possible in the next 10 - 20 years.
>
> For now however, it would be useful to demonstrate the preservation of
> recoverable engrams in yet simpler organism: the worm. Worms learn:
>
>
> http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed?term=Pathogenic%20bacteria%20induce%20aversive%20olfactory%20learning
>
> The full map of the worm nervous system has been known for years. A
> research project aiming to recover memories from chemopreserved worms
> would be a fascinating exercise from a basic neuroscience point of
> view (very important for obtaining funding), should be feasible
> without the development of new equipment or protocols, and would
> provide a tentative rebuttal to the claims that chemopreservation does
> not preserve the elusive memory engram. Of course, the engram in a
> worm and the engram in a human are not the same thing, biologically,
> but there is enough structural and biochemical overlap between the two
> nervous systems to draw some conclusions from worm to human.
>
> Rafal
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