I wonder what it was thinking.
this post was submitted on 20 Feb 2025
55 points (96.6% liked)
Science
3640 readers
155 users here now
General discussions about "science" itself
Be sure to also check out these other Fediverse science communities:
founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
Everyone is all impressed with the cryo part, and I'm more shocked that a sliced up brain can still function.
You should check out the studies on split brains in humans, where they had to basically separate the left and right hemispheres for medical reasons and the weird shit that the patient ends up experiencing. Or even how they have been able to make machines that run off bits of rat brain or just collections of lab grown neurons instead of computer chips.
Yeah, this stuff is wild, there was a little girl years ago who had a seizure disorder, and they removed one half of her brain, she somehow kept most functions and could walk but had some weakness in the limbs on the opposing side.
I just looked her up - holy shit look at how she is today!
What a novel sentence
This is incredible.
Maybe anti-cryo people can finally shut it :-)
On a more serious note, this paves the way for cryopreserving organs and of course later on, our brain, mind & consciousnesses for a future thawing.
Edit: anti-cryo downvotes incoming!
Cryo works for animals and tissues up to a certain size. The problem is that once it’s a bit bigger than a guinea pig it gets a lot harder to reheat evenly which causes damage. Imagine if your skin and muscles were thawed but not your heart, for example.
The size of things we can cryopreserve and thaw is growing bigger every year, hence the importance of the article.
Soon we will be able to cryopreserve a human kidney, then a liver and so on.
I fully expect individual organs to be cryo preserved which is fantastic. Even a portion of a liver would be significant.
But I think the laws of thermodynamics will prevent preservation of whole heads, let alone bodies. (And then there’s all the other issues with cryo like what happens when the clinic goes out of business.)
There is nothing preventing a rapid cooling the problem is to get water removed/replaced because it creates ice crystals. We can already do this somehow.
The problem with thawing is how do you heat it uniformly.
I have never heard about the laws of thermodynamics would hinder this, any information gladly accepted.
And as for the business, well it's better than dying, at least there is a chance!
It’s related to thermodynamics but it’s basically the square-cube law: the bigger you get the more your internal volume grows compared to your size.
Heating something large evenly is very difficult because of this. It’s why burritos are lava on the outside and icicles on the inside out of the microwave, or why you need to cook a large roast slowly.
Hopefully we won't use basic microwaves then :-)
I read about nano particles spread out in the tissues, made to vibrate (probably by EM) to heat up larger portions uniformly.
It's just a matter of time and effort.
Nanoparticles might do the trick!