What are the chances that a patient can be cryosuspended before their brains have decayed past the point of retrieval? I can’t answer that question, but in this article, I pose a number of other questions that may lead to an answer.
You can’t spend too much time reading about futurology without running across mention of “medical time travel” - having one’s body (or just one’s head) placed into cold storage after the heart stops beating. People have been doing this since the 1960s. What is the outlook for actually bringing any of these people back? Well, one thing’s for sure - we all know the chances of coming back under normal circumstances.
Sony has been granted a patent on a brain-computer interface that uses ultrasonic pulses to alter timing within the brain. Since the brain’s neural network exploits its own innate timing to perform calculations, it should theoretically be possible to introduce data into the brain by modifying that timing.
This Wired article talks about a brain-computer interface that allows a man with a severed spinal cord to beat people in Pong, operate various devices in his room, and use the Internet. BCIs examine neural activity to learn how to interpret certain impulses from the human brain - “raise my left arm,” “lower my left […]