Sunday, May 13, 2007

It's All About the Brains


We have a few years to go until brain or head transplants but serious research was done on this in the 50s. Now that a face transplant has been done, who knows how close we could be, but sometime just maybe, it will be there. Bizarre to think of but then heart transplants were once unheard of. This fascinating article opened my eyes a bit.

It says near the end, but would we want to do this, while earlier it raises the issue of someone whose body is dying but the brain is alive getting such a transplant, or would it be beneficial to paraplegics. In theory, with enough science it could become possible. The fascination would be whether the brain of the person would pick up phantom memories from its host body or have phantom pains from its old one.

Since phantom pain is a very real phenomenon and there is some indication of people with heart transplants having memories that belonged to the host's heart, it's an interesting realm of the unexplored.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/pages/live/articles/technology/technology.html?in_article_id=426765

or: http://static.scribd.com/docs/kewb70kz1183c.pdf

I do have to say the whole dog head thing is kinda gross though. Shades of Mars Attacks.