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RC Brains
well, RC bodies actually, but that isn't as catchy. | |
Brain transplant work was done in the seventies, but so far, there has been a lot of trouble with reattaching the nerves, and with any transplant work, there is always the very real issue of compatibility, and rejection.
So, when your body is feeble and dying, but your brain is active as ever, just
cut it out. We can preserve brain cells reasonably well without all that complicated body stuff, and I suppose we could preserve the whole thing OK too. A little nutrient drip, some oxygenation, and you're good to go, right?
Separated from the body, the brain can undergo constant EKG, MRI, Visual, and other monitoring proceses for abnormalities. We can then spread out the nerves of the brain stem, and attach each to an electric reciever, or transmitter, as is needed, in order to determine signals. Brain activity can be measured in this way, as has been proven for various amputees, who are getting more advanced prosthetics.
Of course, living in a vat is not much fun. That is why we then convert the electrical signals from your brain into Radio Frequencies (or some other bandwidth if that proves better...) and transmit it out to a reciever on your body donor.
Since the body donor will be brain dead, we can just scrape all that stuff out, and stick a radio reciever there. Then with the rest of the space, we can spread out the nerve endings of the donor's spinal cord, and attach them to electronic transmitters, and recievers. Body function can be induced in this way, as countless experiments with frogs has proven.
Using RC brains, instead of transplanting organs or bodies directly for prolonging life has a number of advantages. There will be more space with which to work the brain attachments, which will surely be the most difficult part in any transplant operation. There will be no chemical mixing, so compatibility and rejection are no concern. You can therefore take any body that is available. The lack of chemical mixing has other interesting effects as well, but I won't discuss that at the moment.
The main drawback will be problems relating to signal strength and reliability. However, that cavernous space inside the skull could probably hold a little more than just a radio antenna. A small microprocessor that ensures basic bodily functions continue if the transmission is lost would be wortwhile. As modern society increasingly goes wireless, problems with connectivity are likely to decrease anyway though.
Annotation:
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I don't understand how separating the brain from a dying body could be useful. Keeping each of these components alive would be much more difficult as separate entities than as a single whole. |
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I think, [xaviergisz], the idea pre-supposes that the rest of the body is in much worse shape than the brain. Maybe cancer-ridden, or something? |
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I thought that the state of the art regarding brain-preserving still involved freezing, which generates destructive ice crystals inside the brain. Have things moved on there, [ye]? |
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You wouldn't necessarily know a thing - and how do you know THEY've not implemented this already? Ahh, getting drunk. Personally, the only reason I ever drink alcohol is so as to confirm that my brain is still where it's supposed to be, and not in a vat somewhere. |
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//You wouldn't necessarily know a thing// That doesn't usually stop us around here, does it? |
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Here, have a shot of highly alcoholic VAT 69 while I tweak your input lines and reminisce about my unsustainable Descartes' Demon idea. |
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Ahhh, VAT69 - a fine vintage.
I've just been reading [ye_river_xiv]'s anno on [texticle]'s "Forgo Fight-or-Flight" and I think I can see the inspiration - but, that anno describes (better than I can now, due to my current hangover) how a person's emotional (as well as their intoxicational) responses are largely chemical (glandular). An RC brain that only works on straight electrical input/output is going to miss out on all manner of stimulating chemical effects. |
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A swill of Vat69, and a quick squirt of 'Ormone N#5 at the appropriate moments just isn't going to cut it. |
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First of all, this idea has been baked in fiction since the fifties. Heck, I think I saw the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles battling something like this just last week. (Granddaughter #9 is a Big fan of the turtles.) |
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Second, there is a practical problem. Only some of the brain/body communication is electrical. A lot of it is chemical. |
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Apart from the fact that this is
gloriously impossible at present, it is
also a dumb idea. |
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Think about it: you have the
technology (it's assumed) to keep your
brain alive and to have it communicate
directly for both input and output. |
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If you could do this, would you really
waste your time using a clunky human
body as your input/output device? I
would want something much slicker and
much less corporeal. I'd want full-
spectrum vision from any camera,
telescope or microscope; I'd want sex
piped
straight into my brainstem from the
best simulators around; and I'd want to
be able to access a full library of tastes,
rollercoaster rides and travel. |
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Assuming the technology to keep a brain alive, hook it up to a transmitter/receiver and control another living vessel from it (whether human or not): depending on radio control on a planet where every millimeter of the radio frequency spectrum is crammed to overflowing can only lead to disaterous consequences. Any slight intereference will cause the connection to fail, even if only momentairly (just like your cell phone), during which time the uncontrolled vessel will lose it's erection, connect live high power leads barehanded, etc. |
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It all makes for living dangerously. That's the only safe way to achieve immortality until we've gotten the space travel, terraforming, or population control questions beat... |
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Now where's my darn 'ormone #5? |
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[marked-for-deletion] wibni. |
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WIBNI? No, I really don't think it would be nice if we had RC brains. Things would likely get highly dystopian rather quickly. |
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With sufficient age, most any brain begins to deteriorate, suffering from alzheimer's dementia, senility, or what have you. The elderly also tend to get crumudgeony with age. Allowing such an immortal brain to take on a new body of any age would lead to all kinds of perceptual problems that the acute... no-body... could capitolize upon, but beyond that, allowing a deteriorating brain of this type to take on immortality would lead to all kinds of sticky moral questions. Currently, with old age doing it's thing, the question of what to do with the increasingly eccentric elderly tends to be a private question among family members. |
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With immortal brains becoming increasingly maladaptive, we would be faced with a permanent public problem, to which the only reasonable solution I can forsee would involve a tacit decision to euthanize some individuals against their will. |
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Even if a better mind than I (and I pray that my mind is not the greatest one in the world!) can come up with some other solution, there remains the intrinsic question of fairness. While the conditions needed to produce a healthy brain in a defunct body are sure to be rare, I feel they will be more common than the conditions needed to produce a healthy body with a defunct brain. We are then presented with the question of who gets bodies, and whether it would not be better to divide the body up piecemeal, to save more people with less severe disabilities. |
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If the technology existed such that you'd be able to wire a brain up to a meat body - it may become possible to shift the species barrier, and implant a brain into a sheep, cow or other commonly available creature. |
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Since you're not going to have the benefit of any of those emotion-giving hormones washing about, you're not going to care whether you look silly - at least it solves the whole 'not enough bodies' problem (unless you are principled enough to only accept the input/outputs of vegetables) |
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// We are then presented with the question of who gets bodies |
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I wouldn't mind having an RC cat body, or maybe some sort of monkey. It would be interesting to experiment. Another option, kind of suggested by the // divide the body up piecemeal // comment, is to time share. A further option is to wire all the brains up to a virtual world with virtual bodies... but then that's a WTCTTISITMWIBNIIWR. |
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I guess I could have suggested cloning bodies, or making cyborgs while I was at it. |
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Personally, I'm rather fond of my clunky input-output device. |
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I meant: I read about this in a sci-fi book, saw this in a movie/computer-game/ talked about it with friends/saw it on the internet/etc. wouldn't it be nice if were real. I can't believe you've never heard of this exact same idea being told anywhere. It is really not baked to my knowledge, but everybody heard about it none the less. It is not original enough for me and I think it not original enough for halfbakery. |
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Hang on, if my brain can be kept alive in a vat (presumably [z-t]'s vat gets brandy poured in occasionally) then who, oh why must the outputs be hooked up to a human body? Give me a giant mecha, or a UAV, or something I've not experienced before. Better yet, give me a couple of em; I'm sure I'll get the hang of driving both eventually. |
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[admin: the moderators are conflicted about whether the RC specifics are enough to drag it out of the "widely done in science fiction" swamp; since we're conflicted, I'm ignoring the MFD.] |
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I think the author's original idea is brilliant, and (s)he should seek funding to pursue the idea, perhaps becoming the first body donor him/her-self. |
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