brain transplant?

nighttrain said:

Hello, is it possible to perform a brain transplant operation? if so, have any of you done one? if not, why not? are you working on this issue, like in dogs?
thanks.

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lol ,

even if you could, what would be the point
they would be a completly differant person

nighttrain said:

Hello, is it possible to perform a brain transplant operation? if so, have any of you done one? if not, why not? are you working on this issue, like in dogs?
thanks.

Click to expand...

Sounds like you're in need of one.

scienceguy said:

lol ,

even if you could, what would be the point
they would be a completly differant person

Click to expand...

Well actually the point would be to have a new body..



A complete brain transplant I would think is impossible. However I do believe I have read where they are trying to look into transplanting parts of brains... but the problem is once your brain dead your brain is dead.. so I guess this would really on have benifits if they could clone your own brain and then fix the part of your brain that is defective and then do the transplant with your own brain... which would also eliminate the need for anti rejection drugs.

I'm not joking!
If you want to learn everything there is to know about brain transplants (or any other transplants), contact your regional transplant organization. They'll be happy to let you know what the state of brain transplants is at present.

In the mean while keep on watching Futurama!

Vriesea said:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/health/1263758.stm

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it's not really a brain transplant, basically the neurosurgeon connected the blood supply of one monkey brain to another monkey's body

this is the quote from the article:


"It's entirely misleading to suggest that a head transplant or a brain transplant is actually really still connected in anything except in terms of blood stream to the body to which it has been transplanted.

"It's not controlling or relating to that body in any other sort of way."

He added: "It's scientifically misleading, technically irrelevant and scientifically irrelevant, and apart from anything else a grotesque breach of any ethical consideration."

"It's a mystification to call it either a head transplant or a brain transplant.

"All you're doing is keeping a severed head alive in terms of the circulation from another animal. It's not connected in any nervous sense."

I kid you not, i recall reading in Maxim that some russian doc had funding to do a head transplant. I didnt follow up, but someone could search maxim and find that. It was in an article in the last year.

Every day, I tell you, I meet someone in dire need of this procedure !

Haybrant said:

I kid you not, i recall reading in Maxim that some russian doc had funding to do a head transplant. I didnt follow up, but someone could search maxim and find that. It was in an article in the last year.

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considering the source, are you sure it was the same head that's attatched to a person's head?

forget doing it on dogs or monkeys... DIY

Honestly, I can't see how you can transplant a barin without cutting major structures that would lead to the end of life. Now transplanting parts for regeneration or stem cell future, that may be possible. Oh well, Stick with the brain you have!!

This seems quite odd, when I think of this.. I tend to think of it through the following analogy...

If you take the hard drive (the brain in this example) of your computer in it's current state, properly install it on another computer with different specifications (different motherboard, video card, etc.), there would be a lot of confusion with the "brain" (the hard drive in this case) of the computer.

If a brain transplant were theoretically possible, that is to implant a brain into another body, wouldn't the brain simply malfunction because it is now controlling the processes of a body it is completely unfamiliar with?

Now I know it is very very very unlikely for brain transplants to ever occur, it's sorta entertaining/intriguing to simply think about it.

A better question would be, can we physically transplant souls? A reason for this is cause I am going to go to Hell and burn forever... I need a soul transplant from an appropriate donor in order to go to Heaven...

Did this amusing thread make anyone else think about The Man with Two Brains?

"Get that cat out of here!" -Dr. Hfuhruhurr

????????????brain transplant ???????????

brain transplant...thats funny... ...uhhhhmmm ...yeah ofcourse its possible...its been done on George Bush and a monkey brain...

This forum is back from the dead, but not in a good way...

Here come my cognitive science and philosophy courses from college...

It basically comes down to this: Are you a materialist or a dualist (or a functionalist). In other words, do you believe that the brain is what it is and the neurons are what make up what we perceive as "we" or do you believe in a soul or another 'higher power' present in the brain that is making up what we know as you and I? This is just the short and gritty explanation as I am sure the brain-body-mind philosophers will correct me.

I've thought about this for a while and I've wondered if you were able to transplant a brain would the person still be the same 'person' that they were before or would they acquire the new personality of the newly transplanted brain. I guess it depends on what you believe. However, just imagine if a person did actually receive a transplanted brain and they did or did not retain their memories and/or certain personality traits. There might be anarchy among the world's religions as they debated the meaning of life itself. Oh well, enough of my useless, confusing and provoking ramblings.

Just my 2$ worth...yes, dollars not sense.

care

reading this thread has cost me 10 minutes i can never have back.

i think the IQ of this conversation has been about 40

spazwow said:

reading this thread has cost me 10 minutes i can never have back.

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but what was the alternative? pretending you were in a DO neurosurgery residency? or, worse yet, actually being in one?

A cool riddle...

Who benefits more from a brain transplant....the donor, or the recipient?

TNS

hans19 said:

I'm not joking!
If you want to learn everything there is to know about brain transplants (or any other transplants), contact your regional transplant organization. They'll be happy to let you know what the state of brain transplants is at present.

In the mean while keep on watching Futurama!

Click to expand...

I live on the anesthesia forum, but the title of this thread caught my eye when I opened up the SDN homepage.

Obviously, you people never watched the original "Star Trek" series in the mid 1960s, where in one episode Bones (Dr. McCoy) had to surgically replace Spok's brain back into his head after rescuing him from some aliens.

Also, Robin Cook (of "Coma" fame) had brain transplantation as a theme of a later book.

And I'd swear that a Druid witch from the middle ages occasionally switches brains with my mother-in-law.

trinityalumnus said:

I live on the anesthesia forum, but the title of this thread caught my eye when I opened up the SDN homepage.

Obviously, you people never watched the original "Star Trek" series in the mid 1960s, where in one episode Bones (Dr. McCoy) had to surgically replace Spok's brain back into his head after rescuing him from some aliens.

Also, Robin Cook (of "Coma" fame) had brain transplantation as a theme of a later book.

And I'd swear that a Druid witch from the middle ages occasionally switches brains with my mother-in-law.

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Trinity, I too was intrigued by this thread but too aloof to step into the fray. Never the less I'll follow your lead.

I believe my exgirlfriends brain was replaced with that of a small and retarted yet hyperactive mammal's. Me thinks a red squirrel or a pesky lemur. So yes it is possible.

Braveheart said:

brain transplant...thats funny... ...uhhhhmmm ...yeah ofcourse its possible...its been done on George Bush and a monkey brain...

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Did the monkey became stupid after the exchange procedure

Check this out http://216.247.9.207/ny-best.htm

phEight said:

This seems quite odd, when I think of this.. I tend to think of it through the following analogy...

If you take the hard drive (the brain in this example) of your computer in it's current state, properly install it on another keyboard with different specifications (different motherboard, video card, etc.), there would be a lot of confusion with the "brain" (the hard drive in this case) of the computer.

If a brain transplant were theoretically possible, that is to implant a brain into another body, wouldn't the brain simply malfunction because it is now controlling the processes of a body it is completely unfamiliar with?

Now I know it is very very very unlikely for brain transplants to ever occur, it's sorta entertaining/intriguing to simply think about it.

Click to expand...

well seeming as how ive actually done that with lots of hard drives and systems before, i can positively assure you it is possible, except with windows xp. windows xp simply detects a new system and wont even try to boot up because it thinks it is just a copy of itself and so it must be illegal. at any rate, all previous versions would work. if you have a special part, you may need to update some drivers, but still... and the core operation of the computer has nothing to do with the harddrive, but rather the bios and cmos that is only on the motherboard......

http://216.247.9.207/bthtml/prices.htm

isnt that price kind of low for such a procedure????

cooldreams said:

http://216.247.9.207/bthtml/prices.htm

isnt that price kind of low for such a procedure????

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Two things you should never skimp on--

tires and a brain transplant.

This is hilarious to me because I work in a transplant surgery lab at Ohio State and the professor and I were arguing a few weeks ago about whether or not it would work. A lot of these posts sound like the way our conversation went. I think that some aspects of it could work with stem cell technology, but never an entire brain.

I think it will be possible. Though I would guess that when it does happen, it may not be into a living person. and even then, its not like the brain lives forever either, it starts to deteriorate after 27 or so... i know there is work underway to slow the aging process, but realistically you would need to stop ageing if you wanted to get much out of a brain transplant... i mean, whats the point otherwise? maybe instead of moving the brain, they download all of its info, and dump onto a robot, so basically the same person from that point back. dunno.

was a Russian transplant surgeon who transplanted a dog's head to the neck of a recipient dog. There's a picture of it in N.L. Tilney's book "Transplant: from myth to reality."

...I wonder what the cold ischemia time is for a dog head...

cooldreams said:

http://216.247.9.207/bthtml/prices.htm

isnt that price kind of low for such a procedure????

Click to expand...

Looking thru the selection of bodies...you're given the choice of "developed" or "fully developed."

I'm curious what type of correspondence you'd receive if you joined the mailing list??

I love this thread.

In Stiff, some guy did it with monkeys. Of course, they couldn't move, and he didn't connect the esophagus, but they lived for day or two I think.

What happens if a black guy picks a white girl? It does say any age, race, or gender.

cooldreams said:

I think it will be possible. Though I would guess that when it does happen, it may not be into a living person. and even then, its not like the brain lives forever either, it starts to deteriorate after 27 or so... i know there is work underway to slow the aging process, but realistically you would need to stop ageing if you wanted to get much out of a brain transplant... i mean, whats the point otherwise? maybe instead of moving the brain, they download all of its info, and dump onto a robot, so basically the same person from that point back. dunno.

Click to expand...

Has this board collectively developed a crack habit....do you guys know anything about the anatomy of the brain and spinal cord.....

guys the existing transplantation paradigms are based on #1: having organs that have a degree of tolerance to ischemia, #2 having technically feasible vascular anastamoses #3 using organs that are relatively homogenous, meaning that one part can be apposed against the recipient's tissues and resume a degree of functionality......


addressing this:
#1-the 5 year survival for LUNG transplants is like 15-20%.....in part this is due to the inability of lung without heart transplants to treat pre-operative co-pulmonale, but in larger part this is due to the lungs extreme sensitivity to ischemia/reperfusion.......having said that the brain is 10 times worse than that and you would have to get the whole brain on "cerebroplegia" in less than 3-5 minutes.......short of taking off the whole face to get to the petrous carotid and paraclival verts how would you set up a system to rapidly tie off the vessels after the plegia is started.....who would consent their family member for this face-ectomy
this brings up the next point...who would be the donor.....the brain dead...cardiac arrest victims
#2- where would you reconnect the carotids and verts......you would have to do the clinoidectomy from hell to do that....hello CSF leak meningitis.......how do you propose reconnecting the sinuses and the 20 or so veins that drain into them.....do you propose transplanting the tentorium and most of the calvarium too
#3-Where do you re-hook the brain.....its not like re-hooking the renal artery or the right atrium.......where would you transect the brain in the donor operation that would not sever white matter tracts which descend/ascend the neuraxis...which are essential for function and do not heal....below the decussation of the Corticospinal tract?.....strong work creating a quad.....though the midbrain reticular formation?.....why not just tie off the basilar artery while you're in there......

in short this idea keeps getting thrown out on various message boards.....and its shocking to think people with 5 days of anatomy would reply to such an insane idea

scienceguy said:

lol ,

even if you could, what would be the point
they would be a completly differant person

Click to expand...

Yes but the real question is, would it be a brain transplant for the body or a body transplant for the brain....

Here is something a little more radical than a full brain transplant:

a partial brain transplant.

It might be a little more feasable with stem cells and the like to take part of one person's brain and swap it with the same part of the other person's barin. Imagine swapping frontal lobes between two people. How much of their personalities would they retain?

Something even more radical would be swapping one lobe between two patients, and creating a merging of personalities....

this stuff should be left to sci fi due to the fact that it is COMPLETELY unethical, but it is good thought candy.

That certainly is an interesting topic. I'd have to say that I think in a partial brain transplant, it would probably wind up being a mix of the two personalities depending on which part of the brain you swapped. I think a frontal lobe swap would probably result in more of the personality coming with the new brain. Very interesting...

On a side note, Scientific American had an article about someone doing this with cat brains. Apparently, it worked. I was told this by a colleague, so I'm not entirely familiar with the details.

I would really enjoy reading that article. Do you know which issue of SA contained it? It seems to me that if a lobe transplant is possible, other parts of the brain could be transplanted as well. Perhaps people who have faulty cerebellums or brain stem problems could benefit from a transplant. The one case that I think a transplant would be extremely useful is for diseases that attack the corpus collosum.

The possiblities are endless, but do you perhaps know where I could do some more reading about those cats?

I'll find out for you tomorrow and post the info.

This thread is an Omni junky's paradise!

Hello,

Dr. Robert J. White, now retired, from Cleveland, Ohio has already performed countless successful head transfer experiments on monkeys [ http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/health/1263758.stm ], and has perfected methods by which the human brain can be isolated from its blood supply for an hour or so. With the recent breakthroughs in spinal cord research, brain transplants may now be possible.

http://www.clevescene.com/issues/1999-12-09/putre.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Head_transplant
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brain_transplant
http://homepage.ntlworld.com/david.bennun/interviews/drwhite.html

http://64.78.63.75/samples/05PYS0404PlotnikIntrotoPsych7ch3.pdf
(pg 64)

http://www.ebookmall.com/ebook/66923-ebook.htm
http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/today/reports/archive/science_nature/brain.shtml
http://linguafranca.mirror.theinfo.org/9708/fn.9708.html
http://www2.lakelandcc.edu/nora/events/iuser/news/newsmore.asp?ID=917
http://www.universityneurosurgeons.org/residency/the_faculty.htm

Thanks.

Dr. Robert J. White, now retired, from Cleveland, Ohio has already performed countless successful head transfer experiments on monkeys, and has perfected methods by which the human brain can be isolated from its blood supply for an hour or so. With the recent breakthroughs in spinal cord research, brain transplants may now be possible.

Is the brain an immunologically privileged place? I found this (published in 2000):
"The discovery that immune system proteins play a role in the activity-dependent remodeling of the brain overturns a long-cherished dogma. For years, the brain was thought to be an immunologically privileged place—free from the immune system policing that occurs everywhere else in the body. Although neuroscientists have recently found evidence that the brain is subject to immune surveillance, few suspected that the brain produces its own immune molecules."

Don't know what to make of its implications for a brain transplant...so the brain makes its OWN immune molecules...I have come across articles published in 2005 that continue to refer to the brain as an "immunologically privileged place"...maybe the 2000 discovery does not make a difference?

Here is something more (from 2004):

"The CNS is an immunoprivileged site based on the presence of the blood-brain barrier (BBB),3 graft acceptance, lack of conventional lymphatics, low T cell trafficking, and low MHC class II expression (1). However, it is clear that brain-derived Ags can induce strong systemic immune responses that either protect against cerebral infections or cause inflammatory brain diseases"

There's a new discovery that may help, in light of the fact that the brain has been found to not be much of an "immunologically privileged" site: essentially the donor's bone marrow is transplanted along with his kidney, in order to help "the recipient develop a compatible immune system." I'm posting it:

Voice of America
Organ Transplants Without Life on Medication
By Peter Fedynsky
Washington, DC
01 August 2006

The new lease-on-life enjoyed by organ transplant recipients comes with a price: patients must take anti-rejection drugs for the rest of their lives. But a promising new procedure could eliminate the need for lifelong medication.

South Africa's Louis Washkansky was the world's first heart transplant patient. He died of pneumonia 18 days after his operation in December 1967, because drugs used to prevent organ rejection also suppressed his body's ability to fight infection.

Organ transplants did not become routine until the 1980s with the approval of a new drug, cyclosporine, which prevented rejection without destroying the body's resistance to infection. But anti-rejection medications have had serious side effects and must be taken for life.

Today, Christopher McMahon takes no medications -- four years after his kidney transplant.

"It's been just a blessing. I love not having to get up in the morning to have my daily regimen of medicine," he says.

Eliminating the daily dose of medications involves transplanting not only the kidney, but also the donor's bone marrow, which helps the recipient develop a compatible immune system.

Dr. David Sachs is a physician at Massachusetts General Hospital. "We essentially fool the immune system into thinking the donor's organ is part of one's own body."

The patient, however, must first undergo radiation and chemotherapy to weaken the original immune system -- an exhausting experience.

"It was obviously a tough and difficult process,” says McMahon, “but the rewards were so great it kept me going."

Jennifer Searl is another one of ten kidney transplant patients to successfully undergo the new procedure. "How I'd like to describe a conventional transplant, I say it's a treatment not a cure. And I feel like this is a cure."

This new procedure is currently used only for kidney transplants. But doctors say it could eventually be applied to other organ recipients.

the people who would benefit from brain transplantation the most, would be everyone - we would all have a chance to live for ever (until at least the brain itself deteriorates) or for much longer. And, Dr. Robert White has done nearly everything - created techniques to cool the brain for an hour, so that it can be disconnected from its blood supply etc.

I have tried to contact him, with not much success (he held a presentation on head transplants, early this yr ('06), somewhere in the U.S.) He is quite old now, but, I'm sure that other surgeons might be interested.

And, just as scientists started to make discoveries regarding spinal cord regeneration, another surgeon, a Dr. Tom Burke wrote this:

"I wonder, with an almost tenuous whisper, will we ever transplant the brain? The brain sits in our skull casing and its plug-ins are actually quite few: 12 pairs of large nerves, a few large vessels for blood supply and the spinal cord. Stop and consider for a moment how brain spinal cord repairs or perhaps even brain transplants would transform humanity.
...
A brain transplant has an intriguing sound. How near to immortality does this take us? But, at what cost? Imagine i f the person most close to you had advanced cancer but his or her brain was still OK? And then, suddenly, a body became available for transplant: A body whose brain had died. What if the body was much younger or older? What if the gender was different? Who would this new person be? Marriage, family and ownership?"



Again, is anyone interested in joining me in advertising this fact (the senior citizens that we see everyday, would benefit from this); we could contact science writers, surgeons etc (I will try to start a students group devoted to this, at university next yr).

Here's a way by which they will be able to re-attach severed cranial nerves:

Nanofiber Scaffold Supports Optic Nerve Regrowth

Using nanosized peptides, a team of researchers has built knitted scaffolds that may be used to regrow damaged optic nerves. The team from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT; Cambridge, MA), has managed to restore limited sight to blinded hamsters using nanoparticles resembling small fibers.

To conduct the experiment, the researchers cut the neural pathway that enables vision in hamsters. They then injected 16 of 47 adult hamsters with a solution containing nanofibers. The material was injected into the gap within an hour of the pathway being cut. After the first 24 hours, the researchers noted that the gap was reduced and that axons seemed to have grown through the center of the cut.

When tested, three-quarters of those hamsters could function well enough to identify a food source. None of the 31 hamsters that did not receive the nanosolution regained sight.

According to the lead researcher, Rutledge Ellis-Behnke, the technique offers a possible method for repairing neural connections. When neural pathways in the brain or spinal cord are damaged, they don’t usually heal. The damage can result in lifelong brain damage and paralysis.

When a neuron is cut, he says, it sprouts a growth tip, much like a tree whose branch has been cut. After that initial step, however, the growth stalls and scientists are not sure why. Axons can be encouraged to extend by exposing them to growth factors. But they rarely extend far enough to bridge the large gaps typical of most optic nerve injuries, he says.

Ellis-Behnke believes that the nanoparticles may block signals that trigger an immune response. Alternatively, he speculates that perhaps the nanoparticles coat the growing tip of the neuron, blocking any signals that tell the axons not to grow.

Gerald Schneider, one of the team members, estimates that 30,000 axons reconnected in the hamsters, compared with only around 30 in previous experiments using other approaches, such as nerve growth factors. The nanoscaffold is similar in size and shape to sugars and proteins. The team believes that the similarity between the size of the fibers and the features on neural material is what encourages the axons to bridge the gap. The scaffold is biodegradable and appears to eventually break down harmlessly.

And while the results are promising, Schneider explains that the technology is not necessarily a cure-all. “It will not replace neurons that have been destroyed. The axons are slow to grow. We have used the method only for situations in which they have to grow very short distances to get some recovery of functions.”

Schneider says that the scaffold could be included as one of many therapies, such as stem cells or growth factors, to help regenerate nerve connections in people who suffer strokes, spinal cord damage, and brain injuries. “We expect that the method will have to be combined with other treatments in some situations. In humans it will probably be used first in surgery on the brain and spinal cord,” he says.

Still, the scientific community is encouraged by the work at MIT. The knitting “could be very useful in combination with other treatments,” says Wolfram Tetzlaff, associate director of discovery science at the International Collaboration on Repair Discoveries in British Columbia, which focuses on spinal cord injuries.

Tetzlaff cautions, however, that the hamster work involved a clean knife cut across the optic nerve, and “this is not how injuries typically present themselves.” Neural connections torn by a stroke or a car accident, for example, tend to be much messier and thus harder to bridge.

The MIT team has plans to explore whether the nanomaterial can be helpful long after the nerve damage has occurred. It may be useful to people who already suffer from spinal cord or brain damage.

Schneider also says that it will be several years before the technique is ready for human experiments. “We think the method could be used within five years in humans if there is sufficient support for doing the necessary research, which will have to include larger animals.”

The research paper was presented in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. Research was supported by grants from the Whitaker Foundation and from the Deshpande Center at MIT, and by the Research Grant Council of Hong Kong.

nighttrain said:

Hello, is it possible to perform a brain transplant operation? if so, have any of you done one? if not, why not? are you working on this issue, like in dogs?
thanks.

Click to expand...

Are you serious???

nighttrain said:

Hello, is it possible to perform a brain transplant operation? if so, have any of you done one? if not, why not? are you working on this issue, like in dogs?
thanks.

Click to expand...

I actually saw someone on tv-discovery health-it was an ad for a man who recieved a brain transplant, i never watched the show, but i guess they did something like a "brain transplant"