
Pig brains kept alive outside bodies for first time - georgecmu
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/science/pig-brains-kept-alive-outside-bodies-first-time-yale-university-a8325331.html
======
colordrops
> While the researchers were certain the disembodied brains did not regain
> consciousness

I'm curious how they were able to verify this. I am under the (perhaps
incorrect?) impression that consciousness is neither well defined nor a binary
function.

~~~
cmrdporcupine
You have to wonder if the evidence of lack of consciousness could just as
easily be a result of the lack of any sensory input whatsoever.

I mean what does a brain do with absolutely no external stimulus at all?

~~~
Baeocystin
It hallucinates its own patterns.

the tl;dr is that a healthy brain produces a significant amount of activity,
even absent of sensory stimulation.

[https://www.quora.com/What-happens-in-the-brain-during-
senso...](https://www.quora.com/What-happens-in-the-brain-during-sensory-
deprivation)

------
no1youknowz
I'm surprised no one has mentioned Psycho-pass just yet [0].

The Sibyl System is made up of networked human brains giving tremendous
computation ability.

Would not surprise me that the answer on what's beyond silicon is actual
living brain tissue being the CPU.

[0]:
[https://www.imdb.com/title/tt2379308/](https://www.imdb.com/title/tt2379308/)

~~~
digi_owl
Not quite.

The setup is that the brains come from people that "broke" the system, and are
wired up to look for others that match their kind.

They are effectively there much like Neo and Zion are to the Matrix, a way to
rebalance the system over time.

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repsilat
The article mentions "ethical implications" a few times, but doesn't really
hint at anything potentially negative. Obviously the potential to save or
prolong lives is an enormous potential benefit, and any negative consequences
would need to be elaborated on to be weighed against it.

Is it just that the technology smells like scary sci-fi stuff?

~~~
thaumaturgy
One group of concerns is probably around unintentional harms -- for instance,
only discovering much later that the process causes the brain to experience
unimaginable pain or fear and without any way to communicate it or take action
against it or even escape it by dying. It would be a form of hell that should
terrify even the most stalwart of us.

The other would be intentional harm. Imagining the technology developing into
the hopefully-far future, it's fair to also imagine interest from
organizations like the CIA, who are so very fond of finding new ways to
cruelly torture people while pretending they get good intelligence from it.

~~~
saulrh
I'm surprised that nobody's pointed out how... breathlessly far-fetched both
of those scenarios are? You'd find out the "unimaginable pain and fear" thing
the first time you woke someone up, and standard anesthesia already has this
issue. And for the CIA, wouldn't "take out their brain and hook wires into it"
kind of constitute "major surgery without consent or medical reason"?

~~~
theonemind
We haven't reached the point of waking anyone up. Presumably, if this
progresses, they could perhaps get better/more life-like/normal brainwave
patterns, and THEN you have to work out I/O, like communication. So, I don't
see that as far-fetched at all in the intermediate stages of developing it in
a practical direction.

As for the CIA, MKULTRA? Bay of Pigs? Drug trafficking? You seem to imply a
simple ethical boundary would stop them. I don't see much historical basis for
believing that.

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spydum
So... Krang?
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Krang](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Krang)

------
cup-of-tea
This is truly horrifying. Makes me think of _I Have No Mouth, and I Must
Scream_.

~~~
anvandare
They haven't figured out how to interact with the nerves to create any kind of
sensory input (vision, hearing, taste, smell, touch, balance, ...), so no
Altered Carbon-like virtual reality where you can be tortured to death over
and over again.

Well, not yet, anyway.

~~~
Sharlin
The point is we don’t know what sort of horribly torturous experience it might
be to be a conscious mind disconnected from all sensory input.

~~~
x3haloed
I have an idea. Try dissociatives.

~~~
x3haloed
Or if you buy into social drug stigmas, then research dissociatives.

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rocqua
> “To ensure the success and social acceptance of this research long term, an
> ethical framework must be forged now”

It seems to me like the ethical framework surrounding this depends rather a
lot on the outcome of these experiments. We have no idea what a disembodied
consciousness experiences. Nor do we know what, if anything, they would
express. To me, the answers to these questions determine the ethics of this to
a very large degree.

One might argue that the possibilities are so horrible that we should not
proceed. And yet I cannot help but be curious.

~~~
x3haloed
We should experiment on ourselves instead of animals if we expect to reap all
the benefit. We do have an idea. Try dissociatives. Or at least read about
them.

~~~
x3haloed
Hint: it CAN be extremely terrifying.

------
mirimir
Here it comes ... pig-brain powered autopilot.

OK, maybe not pig brains. Maybe dog brains. Dogs are pack animals, and quite
trainable.

Remember the watchdogs in _Cryptonomicon_ :)

PETA would not be happy, however.

Edit: No, that was _Snow Crash_. How embarrassing :(

~~~
Someone
You don’t need that advanced tech for that:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Pigeon](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Pigeon)

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-
tank_dog](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-tank_dog)

~~~
mirimir
I don't think that you'd actually want a dog driving your car. But yes, the
anti-tank dogs didn't work out. So maybe you _don 't_ want dog brains.

------
Herodotus38
While I am not sure how long the Soviets were able to keep the dogs alive for
(they say "hours"), there is a very interesting film about reanimation of dogs
from decades ago.

Warning that the film does show a decapitated dog being artificially kept
alive through a bypass device. A much different era.

[https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=KDqh-r8TQgs](https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=KDqh-r8TQgs)

~~~
theonemind
I have seen this. I tend to question whether they actually did it, and whether
this represents an authentic film.

Consider, say, the space race. They have a clear motivation to demonstrate
superiority close to this era. I have also gotten the impression that the
classic soviet government didn't exactly have a reputation for sterling
honesty, and this doesn't seem wildly far afield from something you could
achieve with practical effects.

I have limited specialist domain knowledge, but the head doesn't really have a
power source. Blood can give the brain oxygen, but hours seems a bit far-
fetched. They definitely skip a lot of detail here, like where/how they
oxygenate the blood without lungs. The head has the brain, which takes a lot
of energy to run for its size, and probably doesn't carry out the metabolic
processes of energy production, with the blood/brain barrier. So, you have a
big power draw, and no engine. Hours of observable or verifiable life seems
like a lot for stale blood with no power source and a big power draw.

I also don't know the authentic history of the video to verify it didn't come
as a complete fabrication of a historical curiosity at a later date.

I would like to see credible verification, but it doesn't really add up.

~~~
Herodotus38
Thank you for your response. I do have some domain knowledge as it seemed to
be a crude form of ECMO
([https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extracorporeal_membrane_oxyg...](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extracorporeal_membrane_oxygenation))
, but it made me dig deeper into the history of extracorporeal perfusion. I
think you will enjoy the link below which has a lot of information about the
video.

The scientist in the beginning of the film is the famous physiologist Haldane,
which is why I originally believed the video. However your response led me to
find out he was a Marxist! Now I was torn and had doubts.

Turns out that while the film was propaganda aimed toward Western Scientists,
it was real and did work.

[http://perfusiontheory.com/who-really-invented-the-
heartlung...](http://perfusiontheory.com/who-really-invented-the-heartlung-
pump-and-ecpr/)

~~~
ItsMe000001
> _However your response led me to find out he was a Marxist!_

You say that as if you just found out he was a member of ISIS and killed women
and children by burning them alive. I can't find anything in Karl Marx'
teachings that could cause such a response, even when you disagree with him
completely.

~~~
Herodotus38
I think there is a misunderstanding about what is surprising, I'd be just as
surprised if he was an Ayn Rand card-carrying objectivist (is that what they
call themselves?). My surprise was that I didn't think Haldane would have any
political bias to cause doubt about the authenticity of the video.

------
YaxelPerez
Is there any research being done into putting living neurons on a chip and
having them process information?

~~~
gscott
[https://singularityhub.com/2010/10/06/videos-of-robot-
contro...](https://singularityhub.com/2010/10/06/videos-of-robot-controlled-
by-rat-brain-amazing-technology-still-moving-
forward/#sm.0000vtfr8lfb6fiovzv247mxtfe4j)

------
acd
Somebody will connect a neural interface to the pig brains. Then run neural
programs on the brains as that will be power efficient. This seems like a
scene from the movie the matrix.

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vpribish
cool. but that's a lousy article just playing up the ick factor for clicks.
I'd guess that this makes studying the living brain much easier - but they
don't get into any detail.

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CocoaGeek
This is really disturbing :(

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liveoneggs
finally wilbur will be able to survive without charlotte.

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georgeecollins
Brain in a jar!

------
fogzen
It’s odd people talk about ethics here but have no problem torturing and
killing pigs so they can eat them.

~~~
pavelrub
Why is it odd? Those are very different kinds of "torture". This is like
saying that it's odd that people are against waterboarding, but are fine with
keeping people locked in prisons, even when done for purely retributive
reasons.

Vegans have this bizarre tendency of reducing human ethics to a bunch of
incorrect generalizations (i.e. a dog is sort of like a cow, therefore it's
"odd" that people eat cows but consider it wrong to eat dogs), and are then
baffled that the world doesn't follow their artificial ethical formalism.

~~~
thret
I don't think it's the eating they object to, but the killing. They protest
this by not consuming, which lowers demand and reduces the need for violence
against animals.

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nukeop
I don't see this being any more unethical or unnerving than keeping a liver a
or a lung or a heart alive outside of a body. A brain is just another organ,
it's not a mind. It is a vital organ, to be sure, but the article equates it
with the "essence" of a living being. This involves too many assumptions.

~~~
codingdave
Assuming it is not a mind and isn't in massive pain is also too many
assumptions. If your stance can be proven, fine - but the ethical problem is
getting to that proof without creating disembodied minds living a life of
absolute torture, with no senses or possible actions or communications... just
an endless experience of pain.

~~~
cheez
I would suspect that being deprived of sensory input, you would become a
vegetable after going crazy at some point.

------
yeukhon
“However, Dr Sestan has since said he does not wish to elaborate on the
findings of his pig brain experiment, as he is awaiting publication of the
results in a scientific journal.”

Hmm why? No spoiler? I wouldn’t mind sharing it right away.

~~~
mirimir
Some journals are _very_ picky about that. As in refusing to publish, if too
much gets leaked.

