
Scientists find life in dead brain cells - laurex
http://forgetoday.com/2020/05/03/scientists-find-life-in-dead-brain-cells/
======
scottlocklin
available on archive here:
[https://archive.is/pk9YR](https://archive.is/pk9YR)

~~~
brainless
Does not work for me, plus SSL error :|

~~~
Operyl
You're using 1.1.1.1 for your DNS resolver. Archive.is has this hatred with
them, and purposely serves a bad record to Cloudflare's resolver as a
"retaliation." The SSL error you're seeing is because they (that is,
archive.is authoritative server) returns the IP 1.1.1.1 when 1.1.1.1 is used
to resolve the A record.

I should reiterate: this is archive.is' doing this, not Cloudflare.

EDIT: Some more details, including quotes from Cloudflare's CEO from another
internet citizen: [https://jarv.is/notes/cloudflare-dns-archive-is-
blocked/](https://jarv.is/notes/cloudflare-dns-archive-is-blocked/)

EDIT2: I should mention that I still use 1.1.1.1, and I agree with their
stance on this. :)

~~~
imjustsaying
Judging by the tweet, the archive.is admin says the lack of the EDNS data
causes many problems. Maybe it increases his operating costs too?

Archive.is a free service and goes offline frequently so I'm inclined to
believe he's really trying to triage the problem queue, unless I'm missing
something.

~~~
Operyl
Plenty of other providers/projects are able to geo/load-balance based on many
other factors, like request IP. I dunno, I just feel like it's a dumb hill to
die on.

------
frellus
Not jumping the science, but on the outside this is a terrifying idea. If
cells still have life maybe consciousness could as well.

It reminds me of a scene in the TV series "Fringe" where they wheel a body
into the evil corporation "Massive Dynamics" high-tech lab, where the CEO
orders that he be interrogated since he's only been dead for five hours.

~~~
DiabloD3
Fringe was a fucking amazing show. I should go watch it again.

~~~
heimatau
I was disappointed in the last few seasons but they were still very good. I've
thought about multiple storylines from time to time. Lovely sci-fi TV.

~~~
the_af
I was just writing that. The show and characters are so good I forgive it that
weak season 5. Even that season managed to have some good moments.

------
shakil
Cached at
[http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:8EDr1uZ...](http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:8EDr1uZEasAJ:forgetoday.com/2020/05/03/scientists-
find-life-in-dead-brain-cells/)

------
myth_drannon
I always read that asphyxiated brain cells actually never die and there is
some base level electrical activity. Many teams work on trying to re-activate
those neurons. It's really an exciting research that can help millions that
have suffered brain damage during birth(cerebral palsy), stroke or in coma and
have large areas of the brain with dead cells.

~~~
Udo
_> asphyxiated brain cells actually never die and there is some base level
electrical activity_

What you're describing is physically impossible and has in fact never been
observed by science. Electrical activity implies chemical activity and an
active metabolism. Dead brain cells lose their electrical potential,
eventually the cell walls break down and spill their dead biochemical
machinery, effectively liquefying the organ. Our cemeteries are not full of
intact, electrically active brains somehow.

When a neuron is deprived of oxygen, it shuts down. Some intracellular
processes run until their educts are exhausted, and then come to a stop. When
an anoxic brain cell is then re-supplied with oxygen after this shut down has
progressed too far, the sudden resumation of processes means that these
previously accumulated cytotoxic reaction products are now suddenly disrupting
normal biochemical processes - this disruption leads to the death of the cell
_after_ it has been re-supplied. We call this category of damage _reperfusion
injuries_.

Reperfusion damage is perverse in the sense that, while the neuron was damaged
during anoxia, its actual death only plays out once its chemical programs
start running again. But in a way this is also promising, since in the future
we should be able to prevent this kind of cell death, effectively prolonging
the time a patient can survive anoxia without brain damage. There are drugs
that we give stroke patients today with this mechanism in mind, but so far the
results have been mixed.

 _> stroke or in coma and have large areas of the brain with dead cells_

In a live body, dead brain cells quickly break down and are resorbed. There is
nothing left to fix there. The correct time to take action is while cells are
still intact, in the delicate stage before and shortly after oxygen supply is
restored.

~~~
selestify
What are educts?

~~~
mannschott
"Educt, is a substance separated from a mixture in which it already existed,
as opposed to a product, which is newly generated by a chemical reaction." So,
in this context, the substances consumed by the cell's chemical processes.

------
SubiculumCode
Minor electrical activity. That is amazing. One wonders whether some kind of
rhythmic electrical impulse might restart neuron firing.

~~~
frellus
Easy there, Dr. Frankenstein ..

~~~
0xdeadbeefbabe
It's Frankensteeen

------
wait_a_minute
Could this become a strategy for hibernating during deep space travel? Say, we
could chill ourselves until it seems we're almost dead and use this type of
process for preserving ourselves until we get to the next habitable planet?

~~~
logfromblammo
Or brains in jars. Build a new body when you get there.

~~~
onemoresoop
Why not build the whole thing when you get there? And then fill it up with
whatetever needed via some form of rapid education

~~~
slfnflctd
I'm sure that would be considered a viable option if we had the tech, but
brain-in-a-jar feels more achievable in the nearer term to me. It also allows
for continuity of self/culture, which is important to a lot of people.

The idea of infants being raised to adulthood by machinery in unknown
conditions to start a new civilization seems more like branching into a
different species when you really think it through. I have greatly enjoyed
this story line in fiction, but I honestly don't see it as remotely realistic
for many, many decades if not centuries. Unless we stumble across the
Singularity or something, haha.

------
somestag
I just finished reading _Ubik_ , so this is eerily timed for me.

I have trouble interpreting discoveries like these because my understanding of
(neuro)biology is limited. For example, this:

> At the cellular level, these brains are very close to being alive, but if we
> consider the life of the brain as the expression of the functionality of the
> brain, then they’re very far from being alive.

I understand this is basically saying, "Just because the cells are working
doesn't mean the brain is." But then my question is, what's the gap? I know
the brain is complex at all, but it's always been a little strange to me that
we aren't better at bringing back the dead. Do we know what it theoretically
takes to "start" a brain?

~~~
NotSammyHagar
That's the key question (I'm just a poor programmer so I don't really know),
but my thinking is we don't understand the software that powers the brain.
your cpu my be running, the hardware may be say refreshing the ram right on
schedule to keep the contents viable, but that's separate from having the
running program you want. We don't really know the software running in the
brain. I'm sad, really I don't expect brain upload (whatever it would mean
metaphysically, I want to upload my consciousness, instead of just pass into
nothing) in the next 30 or 40 years. Even for billionaires.

~~~
bt1a
Imagine the minimum number of neurons (say, n) needed to 'light up'
consciousness. Why doesn't n - 1 work? How can you go from having the lights
on to nothing based on a marginal decrease? There must be a spectrum with our
minds on one end to a complete absence of running software on the other end.
Thanks for reading.

~~~
Figs
If the brain is anything like computer hardware, the actual physical
connectivity likely matters quite a bit. Consider what would happen if you
randomly removed a single transistor on a CPU. Even though the transistors are
very simple, virtually identical constructs the effect of taking any
individual one out varies a great deal depending on what the transistor
represents to the workings of the CPU. If it's involved in thermal regulation,
it might result in spurious thermal shut-offs, performance throttling at
incorrect times, bad fan control, or other problems. It could be involved in
advancing the instruction pointer, which means that software on the affected
core most likely wouldn't run correctly whatsoever. If it's part of a cache,
you may get memory corruption problems that could be extremely difficult to
diagnose. If it's involved in a rarely used calculation, you might never even
notice that there's damage!

~~~
bt1a
Hey that's a very interesting response, thanks for taking the time to write
that! Sorry I'm late :)

------
frellus
Funny enough, linking to this site from Hacker News killed it.

~~~
reality101
well the brain is still there working

------
Smoosh
I'm reminded of this study: [https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/scicurious-
brain/ignobe...](https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/scicurious-
brain/ignobel-prize-in-neuroscience-the-dead-salmon-study/)

------
asdff
Link to article:
[https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-019-1099-1](https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-019-1099-1)

------
waste_monk
The linked website seems to have recieved the hug of death, but simply
observing my morning commute leaves me with no doubt that the braindead walk
among us.

------
emsy
I know people like that.

------
tomcam
Site name is a little on the nose...

------
spiritplumber
You know, I always thought that a zombie apocalypse was impossible because
it'd be nipped in the bud by armed forces, but after seeing the COVID19
reaction all over the world, I'm not so sure anymore.

Just saying...

~~~
gpm
Covid's death rate is less than 1%, if we saw a "zombie apocalypse" disease
(death rate 100%... plus zombies) we'd see a _very_ different reaction for a
very good reason.

~~~
titzer
Could you explain where you got that "less than 1%" figure from?

~~~
gpm
The main thing to understand is that is _infection_ fatality rate, not _case_
fatality rate. IFR being the portion of the people who got the disease that
died, and CFR being the portion of people who the medical systems finds out
has the disease who die.

The 1% number if support by a pretty wide variety of sources and studies that
have all been relatively consistent in the 1%-0.1% order of magnitude - more
recently they seem to have been converging on the 0.5% to 0.25% range (though
I haven't been thorough enough in reading the literature to want to state that
range confidently).

A relatively recent and good example of such a study would be this one [1]
from Germany. They sampled 600 people relatively randomly from the population,
tested them all, and looked at the outcomes.

[1]
[https://www.land.nrw/sites/default/files/asset/document/zwis...](https://www.land.nrw/sites/default/files/asset/document/zwischenergebnis_covid19_case_study_gangelt_en.pdf)

~~~
titzer
"Using data through April 20, 2020, we fit a statistical model to COVID-19
case fatality rates over time at the US county level to estimate the COVID-19
IFR among symptomatic cases (IFR-S) as time goes to infinity. The IFR-S in the
US was estimated to be 1.3% (95% central credible interval: 0.6% to 2.1%).
County-specific rates varied from 0.5% to 3.6%."

[https://www.healthaffairs.org/do/10.1377/hblog20200506.15905...](https://www.healthaffairs.org/do/10.1377/hblog20200506.159053/full/)

~~~
gpm
Have you read that study? It's over-extrapolating from shit data with a overly
fancy mathematical model. I don't fault the authors for trying, it is an
interesting attempt, but I weight their results substantially less heavily
when forming my world view.

Not to mention which, some estimates of asymptomatic case rate go up to 50%
(others substantially less so, it probably depends both on age range and what
you define as asymptomatic)

By the way, direct link to the study is
[https://www.healthaffairs.org/doi/full/10.1377/hlthaff.2020....](https://www.healthaffairs.org/doi/full/10.1377/hlthaff.2020.00455?utm_campaign=covid19fasttrack&utm_medium=press&utm_content=basu&utm_source=mediaadvisory)

~~~
titzer
Remember 2 months ago when data from China indicated the CFR was 1-2%? And
then it exploded in Italy and now we see CFRs in the 5-15% range worldwide?
Yeah. I am really sick of flippant underestimates of the seriousness of this
motherfucking disease. Deaths are still being underreported and no one has
shown a statistically sound study of what the real infection rate is, even as
it continues to climb, so both the numerator and denominator of this fickle
IFR quantity have got massive errors on them.

------
astrea
Hugged.

------
Ericson2314
Cue more black market organs until more can be grown.

