Pig brains partially revived hours after death. Here's what it means for people.

Amazing, terrifying, and puzzling. This article will make sure I stay awake a little longer tonight. This impacts medicine, ethics, morality, and even religion.

These scientists had to ensure that the ‘brain’ itself didn’t respond. Now that’s a situation I would never have considered.

This stuff scares me as much as it fascinates me.

Pig brains partially revived hours after death. Here's what it means for people.
In a feat sure to fire up ethical and philosophical debate, a new system has restored circulation and oxygen flow to a dead mammal brain.

Scientists have restored cellular function in 32 pig brains that had been dead for hours, opening up a new avenue in treating brain disease—and shaking our definition of brain death to its core. Announced on Wednesday in the journal Nature, researchers at the Yale University School of Medicine devised a system roughly analogous to a dialysis machine, called BrainEx, that restores circulation and oxygen flow to a dead brain.

The researchers did not kill any animals for the purposes of the experiment; they acquired pig heads from a food processing plant near New Haven, Connecticut, after the pigs had already been killed for their meat. And technically, the pig brains remained dead—by design, the treated brains did not show any signs of the organized electrical neural activity required for awareness or consciousness.

“Clinically defined, this is not a living brain,” says study coauthor Nenad Sestan, a neuroscientist at the Yale University School of Medicine.
The new system instead kept the brains in far better shape than brains left to decompose on their own, restoring functions such as the ability to take in glucose and oxygen for up to six hours at a time. Researchers say that the technique could give a major boost to studies of human health by providing a rich testbed for studying brain disorders and diseases.

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BrainEx consists of computer-controlled pumps and filters that send a nourishing solution through a dead, surgically exposed brain, with an ebb and flow that mimics the body's natural circulation. The proprietary solution is based on hemoglobin, the oxygen-ferrying protein in red blood cells, and is made to show up in ultrasound scans, so researchers can track its flow through the brain. Yale University has filed a patent for the system on behalf of its creators, but all of BrainEx's parts and procedures will be freely available to nonprofit and academic researchers.

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But there have been hints of greater brain resilience. Some parts of brain cells, such as the mitochondria that process chemical energy, still work up to 10 hours after death. In cats and macaques, researchers have successfully made brains recover after a full hour cut off from blood by carefully restoring circulation. And in humans, some medical case studies point to a brain that can bounce back. In 2007, researchers reported that a woman suffering from acute hypothermia—with a body temperature less than 65 degrees Fahrenheit—made a full neurological recovery

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Though researchers ensured that the experimental brains wouldn't have large-scale activity, they took small slices of brain tissue to test whether individual hippocampus neurons could still fire after treatment. They could.

“[That result was] the most surprising aspect to me as a working neuroscientist,” says Allen Institute for Brain Science director Christof Koch, who wasn't involved with the study. “They were still capable of generating the spikes that are the universal idiom of fast electrical communication. It means that in principle, those neurons seem capable of neural activity.”

https://apple.news/AFivkcmujTkO6Ml5oXHd23A

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Shahryar's picture

this is how many horror movies start

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Pricknick's picture

make acknowledgement of the executioner after the blade fell?
Or was the view blocked by the basket?

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Regardless of the path in life I chose, I realize it's always forward, never straight.

TheOtherMaven's picture

When will we learn that There Are Some Things Man Was Not Meant To Mess With?

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There is no justice. There can be no peace.

Amanda Matthews's picture

@TheOtherMaven
Some people are ‘driven’, to mess with everything.

Chinese scientist says he made gene-edited twins using CRISPR technology
The scientist has announced his work in an unconventional way, which makes other experts suspicious.

https://www.nbcnews.com/health/health-news/chinese-scientist-says-he-mad...

Last I heard, this guy was hiding out and no one knew where he was. Plenty scientists seem undecided if this guy pulled this off or not.

Did you ever read Stephen King’s book The Stand? It reminds me of ‘now’.

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I'm tired of this back-slapping "Isn't humanity neat?" bullshit. We're a virus with shoes, okay? That's all we are. - Bill Hicks

Politics is the entertainment branch of industry. - Frank Zappa

lotlizard's picture

@Amanda Matthews  
[video:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k99bMtg4zRk]

The implications of this kind of research are not really a laughing matter, though . . .

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lotlizard's picture

@TheOtherMaven  
Monsieur Alcasan to the white courtesy phone, s’il vous plaît — Monsieur Alcasan . . .

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About the brain in the box.

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Pricknick's picture

This is what's scary:
[video:https://youtu.be/OnWolLQSZic]

Really scary:
https://streamable.com/qm0ax

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Regardless of the path in life I chose, I realize it's always forward, never straight.

k9disc's picture

https://newatlas.com/ultrasound-brain-neuromodulation-decision-making/59...

"Ultrasound neurostimulation is an early-stage, non-invasive therapeutic technology that has the potential to improve the lives of millions of patients with mental health conditions by stimulating brain tissues with millimeter accuracy," explains Elsa Fouragnan, from the University of Plymouth and lead scientist on the new study.

Brainwave Dictionary: Input:

[video:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k61nJkx5aDQ]
Sounds good, right? Who could be against making millions of sick people's lives better?

The research focused on a cognitive process called counterfactual thinking. This is a part of our decision making processes where we evaluate scenarios that are alternative to our current experience. The researchers give the example of imagining the alternative experience of spending time outside in the sun while working inside the confines of an office.

This specific cognitive process is vital in helping us assess all our available options and choosing the most positive future action. Some scientists hypothesize that psychiatric patients demonstrating repetitive dysfunctional behaviors suffer from irregular counterfactual cognitive processes. The new research set out to home in on where exactly in the brain this cognitive process occurs, and whether targeted low-intensity ultrasound can modulate the process.

"This is a really exciting study for two main reasons – firstly because we discovered that the cingulate cortex is crucial to help switch to better alternatives, and secondly because low-intensity ultrasound can be used to reversibly change brain activity in a very precise part of the brain," says Fouragnan.

https://newatlas.com/ultrasound-brain-neuromodulation-decision-making/59...

If you know anything about MK Ultra and the cybernetic pursuit of mass spectrum, granular control over human behavior from the 60s, this gets scary. Know about the brainwave dictionary and it gets scarier. Add 5g, smart dust, and intelligent dust? Gulp!

Jose Delgado wrote this book in 1971 which I have not read, but have read and watched pieces that reference it extensively (long and creepy documentary): https://www.amazon.com/Physical-Control-Psychocivilized-Colophon-1971-12...

Check out some of those reviews... eek, and if you have time and the stomach, check out the above linked documentary: [video:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LQucESRF3Sg]

The documentary talks about how this type of brain "treatment" could be used to stop the "sick" social justice/civil rights leadership of the late 60s whose riotous violence was a "psychological disease". Gives a new perspective on "maladjusted", doesn't it?

I expect this to run through the medical ailments, saving sick people, and to be made wireless and ubiquitous. We'll be treating ADHD and ADD with this in no time. For the children...

And any of you freaks here who read "Joint Vision 2020" or any of the defense policy briefs from the early and mid '00s should really re-read them. All that shit that sounded so fantastic and like something out of science fiction is here.

I'll add the link to Joseph P Farrell's take on this from his blog this morning:

But then imagine, in addition to this capability, the ability to use a television set not as a receiver receiving the "appropriate" interpretations, but also broadcasting base to beam signals directly into the mind of its viewer. I speculated on this idea in my book Microcosm and Medium because there is some basis in the patent literature to assume such a thing could be done, and it could be done relatively easily, using the television, the electrical power grid itself, and perhaps even those pesky 5G towers we keep hearing about, to broadcast a beat frequency, and the "message" is modulated into that beat frequency, thus allowing a convenient "cloak" to the activity as well, since the modulated information would not be discoverable in any one broadcast frequency. And of course, the whole idea of doing this requires one significant thing in the technology tree, an "electro-encephalogrpahic dictionary" of the brain wave patterns associated with specific words, emotions, and so on. That, as I also pointed out in Microcosm and Medium, they already have, the initial work on a 2000 "word" brainwave "dictionary" having been done in the 1970s.

https://gizadeathstar.com/2019/04/and-the-latest-in-mind-manipulation-is...

Again... Gulp. Maybe we can use this to take control over the reanimated pig brained zombies and make them productive citizens... heh.
@Pricknick

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“Tactics without strategy is the noise before defeat.” ~ Sun Tzu

Hawkfish's picture

@k9disc

From A Deepness in the Sky by Vernor Vinge are a society based on mental enslavement:

By manipulating the brain in this way, Emergent managers induce obsession with a single idea or specialty, which they call Focus, essentially turning people into brilliant appliances

I found this book very hard to read because the technology is not that different from what we have today.

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We can’t save the world by playing by the rules, because the rules have to be changed.
- Greta Thunberg

k9disc's picture

of the 50s and 60s develop it.

Pretty terrifying stuff.

Hate it when there's a good book and you can't really read it because it fits your understanding a bit too well.

In that last link from my comment above, the "beat frequency" from multiple utilities seems like a good combo for hiding shit in plain sight:

I speculated on this idea in my book Microcosm and Medium because there is some basis in the patent literature to assume such a thing could be done, and it could be done relatively easily, using the television, the electrical power grid itself, and perhaps even those pesky 5G towers we keep hearing about, to broadcast a beat frequency, and the "message" is modulated into that beat frequency, thus allowing a convenient "cloak" to the activity as well, since the modulated information would not be discoverable in any one broadcast frequency.

There has to be something greater than simple propaganda to run us like we're being run. Look at Democrats and our former progressive peers for an illustration. I don't think it's possible to simply fleece them with words and images on the boob toob or in the NYT. I think there has to be something additional going on. I find the most absurd examples come from people who have a big fat TV and watch pop culture shit like Good Morning America, sports, news, and the nightly game shows.

To keep prattling on as behavior mod and management are a passion of mine...

[video:https://youtu.be/Q_dxD0R_gRA?t=1083]

The video is cued up to 18:03 - it highlights an experiment with explicit and implicit knowledge. Move a cursor with a mouse to a dot. But the mouse is off axis and won't go straight there. After a few reps, a learner's learning curve stabilizes to solid precision.

Other subjects are given a cheat. The "cheaters" hit that precision line on the first rep. But something interesting happens. Over the course of a few reps, the cheating starts to fail and then the cheater has to actually learn. That learning curve looks very much like the learning curve of the proper learner.

What this tells me is that our brain won't buy an algorithm that it did not develop on it's own. Internalizing the algorithm and making it a valid approach requires that the brain do the algorithm itself. You can cheat and get the answer, but until your brain actually works through the algorithm, there is no learning, ownership, or long term retention.

So, here's the thing... On social media, FB in particular, we buy the algorithm because our brains are actually computing it. The use of everyone's behavior and actions to create the algorithm helps the brain completely buy into it.

That completely terrifies me.

@Hawkfish

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“Tactics without strategy is the noise before defeat.” ~ Sun Tzu

Deja's picture

@k9disc
I'm about to try and find The Minds of Men on YouTube proper, so I can watch it on my tv.

Every time I hear of "another" mass shooting, I think Manchurian Candidate .

I also began looking into "smart meters" recently, as well. My son actually found a peer reviewed scientific report about EMFs effects on mice, while he was trying to poo poo my concerns. He even gave me a little condescending lesson on energy waves and how microwaves cause water molecules to expand after asking if I knew how microwave ovens actually cook food. I told him, "I'm water, dude. We all are." Then he found the scientific article that I can't see or link to because you have to be a student, or pay for access to the database. At least he now wonders, rather than just laughing at me, and thinking I'm a crazy, paranoid loon.

5G is smart meters on steroids and meth!

I also wonder if 50 tons of lead might have been causing issues with 5G in Paris. Yes, I know that's really far fetched, but so was a reality tv star ever becoming president, people unknowingly being purposely injected with syphilis, and purposely handing out smallpox blankets.

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Deja's picture

@Deja
All was fine until my cat showed up, so I paused it to feed her. Upon returning, my old roku shit the bed. Had to go to YouTube, find it again bec it's not in my continue watching category. Start from beginning and ff to about where I last remembered seeing, watched a few seconds and it bounced me back out of YouTube, and to the roku homepage.

Too long to watch on my phone, and at my desktop, but I'll try again later, because I'm liking it, even though it scares and pisses me off (the content, not my technical difficulties lol).

Lots of familiar names, and tactics (a Rockefeller backed/associated charity org later revealed to be a CIA front, missing/destroyed records, an MKULTRA scientist's convenient and mysterious death while hiking, etc.)

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mimi's picture

Sorry, your essay's title made me skip reading it. A pig is a pig. Let the brain of pigs die peacefully. Pigs are God's creatures, so respect them and let them go. Do NOT revive.

I love you all, with all that confusing stuff I am trying to get handle of. It's ok. I won't read it.

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Amanda Matthews's picture

@mimi @mimi
to comment and complain. Why do you do that?

EDIT: your/you

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I'm tired of this back-slapping "Isn't humanity neat?" bullshit. We're a virus with shoes, okay? That's all we are. - Bill Hicks

Politics is the entertainment branch of industry. - Frank Zappa

mimi's picture

@Amanda Matthews
bitchy lately I tried to make it sound a bit 'funny' and used the Pig word to say, that sometimes i would be glad if the pigs were dead. I should not try to be funny. It always is a flop.

I will read the essay later. It wasn't a complain against you.

But if you are drowned with news and twitter stuff from folks I consider to be equal to 'pigs' I just had the impulse to say. Good riddance to the pigs and didn't read further.

Now it is late night and I have to try to catch up reading the EB from today and yesterday.

I didn't mean to hurt your feelings.

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Amanda Matthews's picture

@mimi
that before and I wondered why. It doesn’t make much sense.

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I'm tired of this back-slapping "Isn't humanity neat?" bullshit. We're a virus with shoes, okay? That's all we are. - Bill Hicks

Politics is the entertainment branch of industry. - Frank Zappa

Centaurea's picture

still in denial that we're not immortal.

I wonder which of our techie billionaires will volunteer to be the first human to have their brain revived. Musk? Bezos?

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"Don't go back to sleep ... Don't go back to sleep ... Don't go back to sleep."
~Rumi

"If you want revolution, be it."
~Caitlin Johnstone

@Centaurea a future "Modern Family" reboot about a bunch of 1%'ers, or really, their heads in jars, living on Mars. Hilarity ensues.

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skod's picture

Luckily, the only people who will ever be able to afford it will be the oligarchs. The rest of us will just stay comfortably dead, as entropy and the laws of thermodynamics used to dictate.

Not a fan.

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Steven D's picture

@skod Books and films called Altered Carbon that postulates exactly this - the .001% living forever using new cloned bodies (called sleeves) in which backups of their consciousness are inserted.

Anything that can be imagined by SF writers often ends up coming to fruition.

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"You can't just leave those who created the problem in charge of the solution."---Tyree Scott

Lenzabi's picture

@Steven D

Oh so true Steve, so many things we do not even think of as we use them were originally sci-fi devices and medicines, etc.

I have been away for a bit, am back now for those who may have missed my comments.

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So long, and thanks for all the fish

detroitmechworks's picture

People who don't think they've done anything they'll be remembered for.

I on the other hand, know that I'll leave behind memories, both good and bad, and that is more than enough immortality for me. If there's something else afterwords, bonus.

[video:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6O-xtriwWMk]

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I do not pretend I know what I do not know.

of "Fringe"

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snoopydawg's picture

@Snode

This does sound a bit like it doesn't it? It reminds me of Code Zero a book about how terrorists used prions to make zombies and wipe out the USA. This sounds dumb, but it's an excellent book based on scientific facts about prion diseases that are actually a reality.

Insomnia. Didn't that also have something to do with prions? As someone said up stream, science fiction seems to find its way into reality.

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Which AIPAC/MIC/pharma/bank bought politician are you going to vote for? Don’t be surprised when nothing changes.

Lily O Lady's picture

realm of mad scientists. Our definition of madness seems to have changed.

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"The object of persecution is persecution. The object of torture is torture. The object of power is power. Now do you begin to understand me?" ~Orwell, "1984"

lotlizard's picture

@Lily O Lady  
and of course the Pentagon long ago realized that there’s always a military application for any trick of science, no matter how insane, sociopathic, or—dare I say it?—blasphemous.

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