2 replies to this topic

[Mind]

MIT Technology Review finally allowed some favorable press about cryonics, after last year's strange article The False Science of Cryonics, which really didn't even attempt a discussion surrounding the actual physics of freezing but rather the issues surrounding mind uploading, they have allowed real experimental results to receive a fair hearing.

 

The Scientific Basis of Cryonics.

 

 

 

Direct evidence that memories can survive cryopreservation comes from the roundwormCaenorhabditis elegans, the very animal model discussed in Hendricks’s response. For decadesC. elegans have commonly been cryopreserved at liquid nitrogen temperatures and later revived. This year, using an assay for memories of long-term odorant imprinting associations, one of us published findings that C. elegans retain learned behaviors acquired before cryopreservation. Similarly, it has been shown that long-term potentiation of neurons, a mechanism of memory, remains intact in rabbit brain tissue following cryopreservation.

 

Now maybe we can get more rational discussion and faster progress in cryonic preservation. It will be more difficult for scientists dismiss cryonics as pseudo-science and/or religion (something it never was). People will have to confront their fear of speaking about radically extending human life...indefinitely.

[Rib Jig]

> For decadesC. elegans have commonly been cryopreserved at liquid nitrogen temperatures and later revived. 

 

Thanks for posting!

Does this worm freeze & revive in nature?

(like some frogs with built-in "antifreeze"?)

My thinking is the best way to predict when man will be successfully

revived from cryopreservation is to graph data points with degree

of complexity of artificially revived animals (e.g., maybe this worm)

as verticalaxis & date of accomplishment as horizontal axis...?

What is highest form of life that science has revived to date???

 

But, again, animals that naturally freeze & revive don't count, right?

Edited by Rib Jig, 20 October 2015 - 03:59 AM.

[YOLF]

There were videos on youtube showing someone thawing cryopreserved mice, but I don't know what procedure was used, and unfortunately, the videos seem to have been pulled... I'm wondering now if it was pulled b/c these animals were pets and this was a home experiment? This tells us just how easy it might be... though just living doesn't mean the damage was mitigated enough for our purposes... Other animal experiments have had less than complete success when freezing single organs and not even the whole organism.