Cryonics Magazine- Scientists Eavesdrop Inside the Mind
- Discovery May Provide Insight into Brain Cell Aging
- New Evidence Keeping Brain Sharp and Active Wards off Alzheimer’s
- New Discoveries in Cell Aging
- Eye Trials Give Hope for Stem Cells
- How Stem Cell Implants Help Heal Traumatic Brain Injury
- Victory For Crowdsourced Biomolecule Design
- New Approach to Preventing Fatal Septic Shock
- Alzheimer’s Damage Occurs Early
- Oxidative DNA Damage Repair
- Fight Aging!
- Chronosphere
- Cryonics “Castle”
- Doing the Time Warp
- Interventive Gerontology 1.0.02: First, Try to Make it to the Mean: Diet as a life extending tool, Part 3
- Interventive Gerontology 1.0.02: First, Try to Make it to the Mean: Diet as a life extending tool, Part 2
- Interventive Gerontology 1.0.02: First, Try to Make it to the Mean: Diet as a life extending tool, Part 1.
- Fortune and Men’s Eyes
- Interventive Gerontology 101.01: The Basics
- The Kurzwild Man in the Night
- Fucked.
- You Bet Your Life!
Category Archives: Neuroscience
ApoE4 – The Ancestral Allele
Reportedly, when James Watson and Steven Pinker had their genome sequenced, they declined to know their risk for Alzheimer’s disease. Clearly this is not an option for life extensionists and cryonicists, who are better off knowing whether they have a copy … Continue reading
Posted in Health, Neuroscience, Personal Genomics
Tagged 23andMe, Alcor, Alzheimer's Disease, ApoE4, Brain Aging, Cryonics, Life Extension, Paleo Diet, Patri Friedman
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Neural cryobiology and the legal recognition of cryonics
It has been said that if you want to persuade someone, you need to find common ground. But one of the defining characteristics of cryonics is that proponents and opponents cannot even seem to agree on the criteria that should … Continue reading
Posted in Cryonics, Death, Neuroscience
Tagged B2C, Brain Death, Brian Wowk, Cryobiology, Cryonics, EEG, Gregory Fahy, Information-theoretic Death, M22, Neural Cryobiology, Neuroscience, Robert J. White, Yuri Pichugin
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The case against cryonics
What is striking about cryonics is that those who have taken serious efforts to understand the arguments in favor of its technical feasibility generally endorse the idea. Those who have not made cryonics arrangements usually give non-technical arguments (anxiety about … Continue reading
Posted in Cryonics, Neuroscience
Tagged Cryonics, Cryonics Criticism, Cryopreservation, Decision Making Under Uncertainty, Decision Theory, Memory, Mike Darwin, Personal Identity, Personal Survival, Vitrification
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The RhinoChill: A New Way to Cool the Brain Quickly
We scientists are difficult, cranky, and above all, maddeningly frustrating people. Want to turn lead into gold? No problem, we can tell you how to do that, and in fact have even done it already: the only catch is that … Continue reading
Posted in Neuroscience, Science
Tagged Cooling, Cryonics, Hypothermia, Ischemia, Mike Darwin, Neuroprotection, RhinoChill
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Prospects for Mild Therapeutic Hypothermia and Improved CPR in Cardiopulmonary Cerebral Resuscitation
There are two kinds of hypothermia: protective or preservative hypothermia, and therapeutic hypothermia. The former is easy and straightforward to understand for most, clinicians and laymen, alike. However, therapeutic hypothermia has proved to be a far more difficult idea to … Continue reading
Posted in Neuroscience, Science
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Non-existence is hard to do
A review of contemporary antinatalist writings Originally published in Cryonics, 2nd Quarter, 2010 (PDF) “Coming into existence is bad in part because it invariably leads to the harm of ceasing to exist.” David Benatar “If they could get a corpse … Continue reading
Posted in Arts & Living, Cryonics, Death, Neuroscience, Science, Society
Tagged Antinatalism, Consciousness, Cryonics, David Benatar, Empiricism, Free Will, Friedrich Nietzsche, Hans Reichenbach, Hard Determinism, Jim Crawford, Marquis de Sade, Max Stirner, Thomas Ligotti, Transhumanism
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Thought experiments as knowledge
One of the most remarkable aspects about the ongoing debates concerning the technical feasibility of mind uploading is the excessive confidence that some people have that these issues can be resolved without further experimental validation. The (implicit) assumption seems to … Continue reading
Posted in Cryonics, Neuroscience, Science
Tagged Cryonics, Mind Uploading, Rationalism, Thought Experiments
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Mind uploading, falsifiability and cryonics
On the cryonics discussion list Cryonet cryobiologist Brian Wowk weighed in on the topic of mind uploading in a post that merits quoting in its entirety: I read with interest Bob Ettinger’s recent remarks about Mark Gubrud’s piece in The … Continue reading
Posted in Cryonics, Neuroscience
Tagged Brian Wowk, Cryonics, David Pizer, Falsifiability, Mind Uploading, Transhumanism
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David J. Chalmers on the Singularity, mind uploading and cryonics
If I would make an argument in favor of mind uploading (or substrate independent minds) it would not be a logical deduction from what we know about neuroscience but from what we don’t know. As one of the leading philosophers … Continue reading
Posted in Cryonics, Neuroscience, Science
Tagged David J. Chalmers, Mind Uploading, Neuroscience, Philosophy of Mind, Substrate Independent Minds
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Buddhism and the scientific worldview
On his blog The Life of Man Qua Man on Earth Mark Plus takes a critical look at Buddhism: Transhumanists who endorse Buddhism tend to annoy me. Buddhism not only has the problems John Horgan points out, but the empirical … Continue reading
Posted in Neuroscience, Society
Tagged Atheism, Buddhism, Calvinism, Free Will, Mark Plus, Neuroscience
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Free will versus determinism as it relates to cryonics
Excerpt from “Ben Best – A Case for Free Will AND Determinism” Determinism implies materialism — implies that consciousness is material. Cryonics is based on the premise that the preservation of the fine structure of the brain at low temperature … Continue reading
Posted in Cryonics, Neuroscience, Science
Tagged Ben Best, Compatibilism, Cryonics, Determinism, Free Will, Roger Penrose
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Chemical preservation and cryonics research
In the 2009-4 issue of Alcor’s Cryonics magazine I review the technical and practical feasibility of chemical preservation. One of the most interesting aspects of chemopreservation is that it could play a useful role in the cryopreservation of ischemic patients. … Continue reading
Posted in Cryonics, Neuroscience, Science
Tagged Brain Preservation, Chemical Fixation, Chemopreservation, Cryonics, Ischemia, Vitrification
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Down with uploading
Over the last couple of years, cryonics pioneer Robert Ettinger has been a vocal critic of simplistic defenses of the idea of mind uploading as a survival strategy. He has worked out his reservations in detail in his latest book … Continue reading
Posted in Cryonics, Neuroscience, Science
Tagged Cryonics, Empiricism, Gottfried Leibniz, Mind Uploading, Robert Ettinger
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Brain preservation
Mind uploading advocate Kenneth Hayworth has launched an interesting website devoted to the science of brain preservation. Of particular interest is his Proposal for a Brain Preservation Technology Prize (PDF). This document includes one of the most comprehensive discussions of … Continue reading
Posted in Cryonics, Death, Neuroscience
Tagged Brain Preservation, Chemical Fixation, Chemopreservation, Cryonics, Kenneth Hayworth, Mind Uploading
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Revival of cryonics patients literature
There is a growing literature that discusses the technical aspects of revival of cryonics patients. The following list of the published literature was compiled by Ralph Merkle and Robert Freitas and published as an appendix of their article on molecular … Continue reading
Posted in Cryonics, Neuroscience, Science
Tagged Cryonics, Cryonics Magazine, Mike Darwin, Molecular Nanotechnology, Nanomedicine, Nanotechnology, Ralph Merkle, Robert Freitas, Thomas Donaldson
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A simple method to resuscitate rats from cold circulatory arrest
This is the eighth entry in a series about resuscitation of non-hibernating rodents from circulatory arrest at ultraprofound hypothermic and high subzero temperatures. In 1982, P.D. Rogers and G.P. Webb published some of their observations (based on previous papers and … Continue reading
Posted in Death, Health, Neuroscience, Science
Tagged Audrey Smith, Death, Hypothermia, Hypoxia, Radoslav Andjus, Ultra-Profound Hypothermia
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Robert White on brain death
Robert J. White is most known, or perhaps most notorious, for his work on primate head transplants. Less known, but more relevant to the practice of human cryopreservation, is his work in cerebral ischemia, hypothermia, and brain preservation. Most of … Continue reading
Posted in Cryonics, Death, Neuroscience
Tagged Brain Death, Cryobiology, Cryonics, Robert J. White
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Promoting cerebral blood flow in cryonics patients
It has been shown that perfusability of the brain is significantly compromised after long-term (>5 min) ischemic events (the “no reflow” phenomenon). Improving cerebral blood flow after circulatory arrest is one of the fundamental objectives of human cryopreservation stabilization protocol. … Continue reading
Posted in Cryonics, Neuroscience
Tagged Blood Clotting, Cerebral Blood Flow, Cerebral Ischemia, Cryonics, Dextran-40, Medications, Neuroscience, Streptokinase
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Armand Karow on Isamu Suda’s brain cryopreservation experiments
In 2007, cryobiologist Armand M. Karow passed away. Unlike many contemporary cryobiologists, Karow offered cautious support for the objectives of cryonics. In the mid-1960s, Karow served on the Scientific Advisory Council of the Cryonics Societies of America (CSA). He also … Continue reading
Posted in Cryonics, Neuroscience
Tagged Armand M. Karow, Brain Cryopreservation, Cryobiology, Cryonics, Isamu Suda, Meliorism
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No disease in the brain of a 115-year old woman
In August 2008, Neurobiology of Aging published the interesting observations of den Dunnen, et al. of the post-mortem body of a 115 year old woman, which showed no evidence of atherosclerosis. Her brain was devoid of the amyloid plaques characteristic … Continue reading
Structure-function analysis of neuroprotectants
In “The chemistry of neuroprotection”, the author argues convincingly that there could be great benefit from a systematic and rigorously scientific study of the physical chemistry of putative neuroprotectants vis-à-vis their pharmacological effect. However, the first example used of the … Continue reading
Posted in Cryonics, Neuroscience, Science
Tagged Cerebral Ischemia, Chemistry, Clinical Trials, Drugs, Neuroprotection
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The chemistry of neuroprotection
In a review of the 1998 21st Century Medicine seminars, Cryonics Institute president Ben Best writes: “The presentations impressed upon me how much witchcraft and how little science has gone into the study of cryoprotectant agents (CPAs). This might be … Continue reading
Posted in Neuroscience
Tagged Cardiac Arrest, Cerebral Ischemia, Drugs, Neuroprotection, Peter Safar, Stroke
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Dietary supplements induce neurogenesis after stroke
A recent study in Rejuvenation Research reports that a combination of dietary supplements confer neuroprotection in stroke. Over a 2 week period rats received either a proprietary formulation of blueberry, green tea, Vitamin D3, and carnosine called NT-020 or vehicle … Continue reading
Posted in Health, Neuroscience
Tagged Blueberry, Ischemia, Neuroprotection, NT-020, Stroke
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Recent developments in the treatment of Alzheimer’s
The full text of the Life Extension Foundation magazine article (August 2008) describing the use of Enbrel for the treatment of Alzheimer’s disease and announcing LEF’s new Enbrel trial, is now available. As previously discussed, Enbrel (entanercept) has been shown … Continue reading
Posted in Health, Neuroscience
Tagged Aging, Alzheimer's Disease, Drugs, Life Extension Foundation
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TNF-alpha modulation in Alzheimer’s patients
More than a decade of basic research and clinical evidence now implicates inflammatory processes in the pathogenesis of Alzheimer’s disease (AD). TNF-alpha is a pro-inflammatory cytokine, also known as the “master regulator” of the immune response, and is the key … Continue reading
Enbrel reverses Alzheimer’s cognitive deficits
The latest issue of Life Extension Magazine (August 2008) contains an encouraging report about off-label use of etanercept (commercial name: Enbrel) to reverse the cognitive deficits associated with Alzheimer’s disease. Etanercept is a tumor necrosis factor (TNF) blocker that is … Continue reading
Posted in Cryonics, Health, Neuroscience
Tagged Alzheimer's Disease, Brain Aging, Dementia, Enbrel, Etanercept
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Critical cooling rate to prevent ischemic brain injury
Induction of hypothermia can reduce injury to the brain when it is deprived of oxygen. How fast do we need to cool a patient during cardiac arrest or stroke to prevent irreversible injury to the brain? It is an established … Continue reading
Posted in Cryonics, Neuroscience
Tagged Cardiac Arrest, Cerebral Ischemia, Cryonics, Hypothermia, Neuroprotection, Stroke
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Cerebral blood flow during and after cardiac arrest
As discussed in a previous post, perfusion of the brain following long-term (>5 min) ischemia has been shown to be significantly compromised, particularly in subcortical regions. An interesting recent article by Ristagno, et. al in Resuscitation (May 2008) has added … Continue reading
Posted in Neuroscience, Science
Tagged Blood Pressure, Brain, Cardiac Arrest, Chest Compressions, CPR, Cryonics, Ischemia, Resuscitation
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Cerebral ischemia and impairment of circulation
Cryopreservation of the brain depends on the removal of blood from the brain’s vasculature and its replacement with cryoprotective solutions in order to prevent ice crystal formation (freezing) during cooling (i.e., facilitate vitrification). Ultimately, the success of a good cryoprotectant … Continue reading
Posted in Cryonics, Neuroscience
Tagged Blood Coagulation, Cardiac Arrest, Cryonics, Heparin, Stroke
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Wide therapeutic window for melatonin in stroke
Neuroprotective agents for stroke continue to fail in clinical trials. One important reason is that the therapeutic window for many of those agents is too narrow to confer benefits to acute stroke victims. It would be desirable to have a … Continue reading
Posted in Cryonics, Health, Neuroscience
Tagged Cerebral Ischemia, Cryonics, Melatonin, Stroke
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Albert Einstein’s brain and information-theoretic death
“People like you and I, though mortal of course like everyone else, do not grow old no matter how long we live…[We] never cease to stand like curious children before the great mystery into which we were born.” Albert Einstein … Continue reading
Posted in Death, Neuroscience, Science
Tagged Albert Einstein, Brain, Chemical Fixation, Research
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Viability in brain cryopreservation
Because the current generation of vitrification agents permit cryopreservation of the brain without ice formation, the current objective of cryonics research is maintenance of viability of the brain during cryopreservation. The most popular viability assay that has been used in … Continue reading
Posted in Cryonics, Neuroscience
Tagged 21st Century Medicine, Cryobiology, Cryonics, Cryopreservation, Memory, Viability Assays, Vitrification
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Preventing vegetative patients through cryonics
The blog Practical Ethics reports on pioneering research from a group of scientists in Cambridge who are using fMRI scans to study the brains of people who have been diagnosed as being in a vegetative condition. A Persistent Vegetative State … Continue reading
Posted in Cryonics, Neuroscience
Tagged Cardiac Arrest, Cryonics, Persistent Vegetative State, Stroke, Terri Schiavo
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Neuroprotection for ischemic stroke
The journal Neuropharmacology recently published a new review of the current state of the art in neuroprotection for ischemic stroke. A strict definition of a neuroprotectant excludes agents that have as their goal circulatory patency or the reversal of vascular … Continue reading
Posted in Cryonics, Neuroscience
Tagged Clinical Trials, Ischemia, Neuroprotectant, Stroke, tPA
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