It occurred to me during the week that technology may have advanced enough to be able to read the memories from a dead brain.

There would be two ways to do this. First of all non-destructive from a “live” dead brain. Catch a dead brain shortly after the person has died but before many of the individual cells have died and feed it what it needs such as oxygen, glucose, potassium and sodium. Until brain waves start up again.

Then use the ear (or bionic ear) as an input for sounds and eye (or bionic eye) as an input for sight.
The readout could then be inserted electrodes, fMRI, or the tendency to move muscles.
Think of a “bionic tongue” for example as a speech readout.
And think of eye muscle movement for image readout.

The second way to do this would be destuctive. Read off the brain’s connectome (eg. using thin slices of frozen brain tissue) and copy that information onto computer. Then feed signals such as sound and light into the compter simulation to read out memories.

If you can get a dead brain to respond with the person’s name when asked “what is your name?” then you’re well on the way to reading memories.

Getting a dead brain to thinki again may be no more difficult than getting a dead heart to beat again. And that’s been done.

mollwollfumble said:

It occurred to me during the week that technology may have advanced enough to be able to read the memories from a dead brain.

There would be two ways to do this. First of all non-destructive from a “live” dead brain. Catch a dead brain shortly after the person has died but before many of the individual cells have died and feed it what it needs such as oxygen, glucose, potassium and sodium. Until brain waves start up again.

Then use the ear (or bionic ear) as an input for sounds and eye (or bionic eye) as an input for sight.
The readout could then be inserted electrodes, fMRI, or the tendency to move muscles.
Think of a “bionic tongue” for example as a speech readout.
And think of eye muscle movement for image readout.

The second way to do this would be destuctive. Read off the brain’s connectome (eg. using thin slices of frozen brain tissue) and copy that information onto computer. Then feed signals such as sound and light into the compter simulation to read out memories.

If you can get a dead brain to respond with the person’s name when asked “what is your name?” then you’re well on the way to reading memories.

Getting a dead brain to thinki again may be no more difficult than getting a dead heart to beat again. And that’s been done.

In principle, I don’t see why not.

In practice, maybe more difficult than we might think (but also, maybe not).

That’s about a 9.9 outa 10 for creepy stuff.

Donovan’s Brain

If you manage to revive the brain, then by definition you’ve managed to bring the person back to life. I see some ethical issues here.

true, if that technology existed there’d be plenty of people wanting to use it* and equitable access would be an ethical challenge

*: wait, there’s already plenty even though the technology doesn’t exist

SCIENCE said:

true, if that technology existed there’d be plenty of people wanting to use it* and equitable access would be an ethical challenge

*: wait, there’s already plenty even though the technology doesn’t exist

I wasn’t even thinking about equitable access to the technology. I was thinking more along the lines of the revivor believing they can do what they please with your brain because it had died.

KJW said:

If you manage to revive the brain, then by definition you’ve managed to bring the person back to life. I see some ethical issues here.

How do you know he/she, is in there? Don’t they need lungs to assist in talking?

KJW said:

SCIENCE said:

true, if that technology existed there’d be plenty of people wanting to use it* and equitable access would be an ethical challenge

*: wait, there’s already plenty even though the technology doesn’t exist

I wasn’t even thinking about equitable access to the technology. I was thinking more along the lines of the revivor believing they can do what they please with your brain because it had died.

yeah but those ethical issues are barely distinguishable from the ethics of being responsible for human offspring

SCIENCE said:

KJW said:

I wasn’t even thinking about equitable access to the technology. I was thinking more along the lines of the revivor believing they can do what they please with your brain because it had died.

yeah but those ethical issues are barely distinguishable from the ethics of being responsible for human offspring

I see the ethical issues as more like the ethical issues associated with artificial intelligence. If people don’t believe the brain is alive in the same way as an ordinary person is alive, then the brain won’t receive the same respect as that given to an ordinary person.

Basically, no, it hasn’t

writ this below lastnight, was going to bin it, but whatever, here it is, digitally immortalized

I think it a terrible wrongness, a mistake, a horrendous error to think minds are memories, minds are neural connections, memories generated from experience, as the primary focus of what a mind does

while none of that above is untrue, clearly whatever a mind is involves much of that, and essentially, though those things hardly get near the equilibrium mental state, the home in the head, the milieu interior, the reference of the more global experience

it’s terribly wrong in my opinion to believe you are your ideas, not made much better even if you add you are your neural connections, though structure is clearly important

doubtful anything like that propels learning, no natural child would have those views for example

and what extra could there be that generates the more global experience of the home in the head, the reference state, the equilibrium state

i’d suggest it is a sense of and for what is not known, all the mental activity gives a sense of and feel for what is not known, and as things go a lot is not known, even internally of homeostasis for example

when will you die and stop existing is an important unknown

self-aware conscious learning machines inhabit a sense of what they don’t know, attribute significances to that

From Chat:
buffy

Bubblecar said:

Tau.Neutrino said:

First-ever recording of dying human brain reveals dreaming-like activity

>“Something we may learn from this research is: although our loved ones have their eyes closed and are ready to leave us to rest, their brains may be replaying some of the nicest moments they experienced in their lives,” said Zemmar.<

Or maybe just remembering particularly annoying or embarrassing moments.

Or just making stuff up, like usual with dreams.

pretty sure nightmares are dreams too