
Researchers are keeping pig brains alive outside the body - petethomas
https://www.technologyreview.com/s/611007/researchers-are-keeping-pig-brains-alive-outside-the-body/amp/
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moh_maya
Perhaps, based on the article, a better title could be "researchers keep large
fraction of brain cells alive in pig brain..."

I hope they did some fMRI studies of the brains. Wonder if they just got some
random noise (i.e., brain cells firing asynchronously) or if there was some
discernable pattern.

And if there is a pattern, then.. wow! But also, little creepy..

As an aside, I respect that the authors on the paper refused to comment on it
till the paper gets reviewed / published.

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otakucode
I would be very surprised if there was any kind of pattern. Once you cut off
patterned sensory input, there is no reason to believe any pattern would
persist beyond that. Even meager attempts at sensory deprivation often result
in quite quite dissolution of consciousness, with it only be restored upon
resumption of sensory input. That combined with the fact that significant
changes to our bodies and perceptive apparatus lead to significant changes in
our subjective experience makes it fairly clear, to me at least, that you
can't have a mind without a body perceiving and creating a feedback loop
between the world and your 'self.'

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freeflight
The Soviets did similar experiments, the end result was the invention of
heart-lung and dialysis machines [0]. Makes one wonder what this will lead to
down the road? But it will probably be a while before we get there due to
ethical concerns of doing something like this with a human brain.

[0]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Experiments_in_the_Revival_of_...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Experiments_in_the_Revival_of_Organisms)

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andreygrehov
> Makes one wonder what this will lead to down the road?

Brain as a Service?

~~~
balabaster
Robocop

~~~
mr_overalls
Uplifted swine? Pigsmatrix?

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wonderbear
Even though he says the EEG was flat: I'm mostly horrified at the idea that
the pig might still be conscious.

Pigs are self aware.

~~~
colanderman
Maybe someday we as a species will evolve to a point that we recognize the
immorality of experimenting on beings which are sentient but do not have the
capability to consent.

It boggles my mind that the learned individuals performing such experiments
(and especially, the ethics boards that green-light them) fail to recognize as
false the dichotomy between human and non-human sentience; but, humans have a
history of performing experiments on other _humans_ against their consent, so
I shouldn't be surprised.

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bigleagueposter
Pig brains are just (dog) food. Morality shouldn't be concerned with food no
matter how sentient it is.

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ralusek
Why are pig brains dog food? Because they're below the arbitrary threshold of
intelligence we have drawn in the sand to determine sentience?

What if there was extra-terrestrial life of greater intelligence still that
encountered our own species, and subjected us to identical treatment according
to the exact same basis of morality?

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JumpCrisscross
Huh. I guess in our lifetime we'll see a human brain sustained outside the
body and then put back in so we can ask the person what it was like.

~~~
booleandilemma
It must be weird having thoughts without any sensory input whatsoever...it’s
like a prison of sorts.

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JumpCrisscross
> _It must be weird having thoughts without any sensory input
> whatsoever...it’s like a prison of sorts_

I don't know. For an uninstantiated mind, perhaps. But if you know it's
temporary and know it's safe, perhaps it would be therapeutic. Or beneficial
in some other way. Maybe a detached brain sleeps better. Or maybe it instantly
and irreversibly goes mad.

~~~
ramblenode
Perhaps relevant:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Embodied_cognition](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Embodied_cognition)

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Jun8
Rather than trying to building practical pattern recognition systems using
computers we can use animal brains, i.e. not models for brains, like the bee
brain model
[http://greenbrain.group.shef.ac.uk/](http://greenbrain.group.shef.ac.uk/),
but _actual_ brains hooked up to circuitry. Or, if the whole brain is
impractical, just relevant parts, e.g. the visual cortex for visual analysis.
Using higher-level animals like a pig may be gross, ethically speaking but how
about others, e.g. mice. Think about a visual processing unit using 1,000 mice
brains harvested from embryos.

I think the bottleneck here is to keep brains/tissues alive, so this research
is interesting.

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pmarreck
A bit disturbingly reminiscent of [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Locked-
in_syndrome](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Locked-in_syndrome) and
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Johnny_Got_His_Gun](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Johnny_Got_His_Gun)

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chris1993
I hope there was no possibility that the brains regained consciousness in any
sense, otherwise it seems like incredibly unethical experimentation.

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Matticus_Rex
This is a key development in my personal plan for Futurama-style immortality.
Glass jar futures, anyone?

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bigtunacan
With a realistic enough VR and feedback environment I would take it if they
could keep the essence that is me alive and able to interact with reality.

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basementcat
Maybe this already happened to me and I didn't realize it.

Apparently in my VR simulation, most major Linux distributions have adopted
systemd and the UK is leaving the EU.

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Semirhage
_Apparently in my VR simulation, most major Linux distributions have adopted
systemd and the UK is leaving the EU._

So trippy! You’ll never believe mine though, Donald Trump is president of
America and Dick Cheney outlived Robin Williams. I think I got a bad vat.

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agumonkey
since when do pigs have better technology than primates ?

