From: Gina Miller (echoz@hotmail.com)
Date: Tue Mar 23 1999 - 17:50:51 MST
It's not the tissue that's dead, although after time, would deteriorate,
but the nervouse systems currents of electical synapsis.
These thoughts (Jeff pondered), I believe to relevent to cryonics, in
the sense that there may be some question as to how much of a memory can
be rejuvinated. If I was climbing up in years, without the advances of
technology on my side, and had to consider cryonics, I would. But it
would be unfortunate if I didn't come back with all memory in tact.
Gina "Nanogirl" Miller
Nanotechnology Industries
http://www.nanoindustries.com
echoz@hotmail.com
>From: Jeff Davis
>
>Friends,
> I'm cross-posting this to the cryonet and extropians list.
>
> I've been thinking lately about brain damage. When exactly is
identity
>destroyed? I mean really obliterated?
> Specifically, I'm wondering about the difference between loss of
>information, and loss of ACCESS TO information. This last attributed
to
>the loss of higher-order function.
> When a brain is damaged--I'm thinking here of strokes, traumatic
injury,
>brain tumors, and alzheimer's--certain structural changes take place.
>Think of the spatial distribution of the damage.
> Some of those changes presumably involve actual cell death. But how
many
>cells die, what fraction of the whole is that, how is the damage
>distributed regionally/topologically, and what happens to the dead cell
>bodies? (I assume fully necrotic cells undergo apoptosis and "digest"
>themselves, the by-products being dispersed for either local or distant
>consumption or disposal.) What of "scar tissue" and other structural
>remnants?
> Then too, what degree of brain damage is characterized by cell damage
>without cell death--membrane or cytoskeletal damage/alteration;
organelle
>damage/reduced function--such that the cell still lives, but is not
capable
>of supporting the coordinated global activity characteristic of normal
>brain function?(Does this happen, or am I describing a non-fact? I
recall
>that mitochondria sometimes suffer gradual degradation from, at least
Get Your Private, Free Email at http://www.hotmail.com
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.5 : Fri Nov 01 2002 - 15:03:22 MST