- cross-posted to:
- science@beehaw.org
- cross-posted to:
- science@beehaw.org
- Researchers in Texas crafted a device meant to help isolate the brain for scientific study.
- By keeping the brain alive and functioning separate from the body for hours, experts believe that they can improve heart-lung bypass technology.
- This sci-fi-like concept was first modeled in pigs, but humans could be next.
When a pig recently went under anesthesia at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center, it was for anything but a routine procedure. Researchers were able to isolate blood flow to the brain, separate that brain from the rest of the body, and use a new device to keep the brain alive and functioning.
The pig brains were all on their own for five hours. And they did just fine, thanks to the new extracorporeal pulsatile circulatory control (EPCC) device.
“This novel method enables research that focuses on the brain independent of the body, allowing us to answer physiological questions in a way that has never been done,” Juan Pascual, professor at UT Southwestern, said in a statement.
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Brain in a jar, controlling a robot body. Oh, hell yeah!
Ahhhhroooo
NIXON’S BAAAACK
It’s called a “full body prosthetic.”
Didn’t they do that with rat brains and a remote control car?
Could actually be a serious breakthrough, sounds amazing. I’m not sure this article could have a worse or less accurate title though, what trash.
I wonder if the pig lived after the procedure. It sucks humans are so cruel.
If the brain was alive there’s reason to think there was experience taking place. Apparently the pig was anaesthetized with ketamine before this happened, but the brain was active for five hours after being removed from the body. I hope it was kept unconscious; otherwise it can’t have been pleasant. I wonder what kinds of ethical controls there are on such experiments.
The paper (from August 2023): https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-023-39344-7
Is there any way to know how the brain would perceive it’s senses when detached completely?
Just severing the nerves makes me wonder if it experienced full body pain with blind, deaf, and paralyzed. Or would severing the nerves make it painless since there’s no nerves to send signals?
It’d be pain from the severed nerve endings where they are severed and phantom “limb” from the body at worst.
But the brain was on ketamine so it was probably the happiest that pig has ever been, ironically enough.
Ah, man made horrors beyond my comprehension
I read the article but I genuinely do not understand what happened here.
It sounds like by “isolating the brain from the body” they just removed some of the blood flow from the body going to it and/or controlled it via algorithm?
But all of the nerves/neurons, electrical impulses, etc, that kinda stuff the brain does - what was going on there? Was the pig basically on what we consider “life support” when someone is “brain dead” after an accident or something? Was the blood flow to the pig’s body that didn’t go to the brain like it normally does rerouted somehow?
Can someone please explain the mechanics of this to me because obviously I’m not getting it.
Jokes aside, no Texan can be trusted with Head in Jar technology, we all recognize this, right?
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Bro no, this is what they did to Cain in RoboCop 2
And Krang in TMNT
One step closer to having a full body prosthetic.
That’d be so fucking cool. I’d go android so fast.
So, anyone else ever watched Sealab 2020?
Almost.
It would only be for rich people in the current world.
Rockafellers that live forever
Was the institute responsible for the research by any chance named OCP?
Can someone help me, my left
armforeleg itches.deleted by creator
Fuck everyone that was involved in this. This is so fucked up.
It sucks, but it’s necessary for some critical life saving research. Someday our tech will be able to handle precision simulation of this nature and animal testing of any kind will be a thing of the past, but we’re not there yet.
This research sounds like it could save thousands of lives maybe even millions
Well then people can volunteer. Doing this to a sentient being who can’t consent is atrocious.
Weren’t you just over in another thread saying deep fake porn is a victimless crime?
You’re a bit fucked up, aren’t ya?
There is literally no connection between the two, wtf.
Women are also sentient beings who do not consent to deepfake porn but apparently consent only matters when op says it matters.
I’d honestly rather be extremely humiliated and experience psychological trauma than get my brain seperated from my body (and lets be honest ain’tnobody putting the pig back together after those 5 hours, so probably also killed)
The fact that getting your brain removed is the worse option does not change my point about consent.
Please let us know who is currently forcing you to choose between those two options and I promise we’ll be appropriately outraged.
Yes I’m fucked up for not caring that people can essentially have hyper realistic nude paintings made of them, and also being upset and disturbed that an innocent sentient being had their head cut off and their life taken from them.
It’s ironic how completely wrong your priorities are.
Yeah fuck all those potential people it could save I guess, send the pig to the abattoir instead so that all of them can die
no no no no no no no
This headline is sensationalized. Only the blood flow to the brain was isolated from the rest of the body, and the brain was not removed during the procedure (it was removed post-mortem to study how the procedure affected the brain).
The main purpose of the study was to separate blood flow to the brain from the rest of the body to make it easier to test the effect of drugs on the brain, without having the rest of the body’s response to the drugs interfere with the results.
Since the process is similar to the heart lung bypass which is already used on humans during heart surgery, this research may eventually lead to better heart lung bypass methods. The current methods can cause problems in the brain for a few reasons including differing blood flow, air and particles getting into the blood, and the body’s inflammation response.
Source: PhD in this area.
Adam Smasher the pig.
