Sparks Brain Preservation
A Non-profit Organization
This page describes some potential future technologies that could be used for Biological Revival. It's organized with the easier technologies toward the top, and time spans are given in an effort to compare complexities. But, of course, any predictions are guaranteed to be spectacularly wrong. The technologies below won't happen exactly as described, but similar technologies might develop, and they could do so without violating any laws of physics. Mind Uploading is an uncomfortable topic for many people, so it's covered on a different page. This page sticks to Biological Revival.
70 years
Stem cell researchers are currently making slow progress in regrowing new tissues and organs. Scientists should eventually figure out how to routinely guide cells with high precision by using physical manipulation, chemical signaling, scaffolding, nutrient supply, stimulation, reprogramming, etc. Mature tissue engineering technology would be capable of replacing organs, limbs, bones, skin, teeth, etc. A society that had mature tissue engineering would also be capable of building artificial wombs, growing meat for food in factories, and many other fantastic technologies. Most diseases could be cured by the replacement of the malfunctioning organs. Cancer could be curable in most cases by removing the cancerous tissue with wide margins and replacing it with newly grown tissue. Diseased or damaged brain tissue could be replaceable if done incrementally to take advantage of brain plasticity. This technology would also allow brains to be kept alive artificially, without a functional body, mostly for the purpose of emergency medicine. Tissue engineering is easily envisioned and eagerly anticipated by many scientists and the public.
The application for brain preservation is that this tissue engineering could grow an entire new body around an existing repaired brain. But tissue engineering would not be capable of repairing a preserved brain in the first place. That would take significant further progress.
80 years
Scanning close to molecular resolution could be accomplished by a number of different methods. In one scenario, electron microscopy could be supplemented with chemical analysis of each layer. In another scenario, highly parallel arrays of probes on articulated arms could feel their way across each layer of the brain prior to milling. In a third scenario, grippers could remove individual molecules from the surface, disassembling the brain layer by layer in a highly controlled manner. Any of these proposed methods would allow a superior scan compared to a basic electron microscope scan. This would still not allow biological revival
90 years
The brain could be scanned by a method described above. It could be "repaired" in software, and then a new brain could be rebuilt from scratch using new molecules. This seems absurdly complex to us because it would involve the controlled movement of about 10,000,000,000,000,000,000 molecules, but it's just an engineering problem that's well within the limits of physics, and it's very plausible that this could eventually be accomplished. This is the lowest form of technology that would allow biological revival.
100 years
Again, each layer could be scanned. But instead of destroying the layer, manipulating arms could grab the atoms and move them over to another site where the brain was being rebuilt. In this fashion, the repairs could be made by actually fixing the original molecules.
But... there would be no scientific advantage to this, as compared to the simpler Molecular Scan and Rebuild. The only advantage would be to appease those with philosophical issues who insist on the reuse of the original molecules. This scenario is here solely to point out that none of the less complex technologies would be capable of retaining the original molecules that made up the brain. In other words, it's very likely that those doing the "repairs" would not go to the extra effort and expense of reusing the original molecules even though they could if they waited a few decades for higher technology.
never practical
A frequently described brain repair scenario is to use nanorobots that swim through the body and make the repairs with manipulating arms. While devices such as these will certainly be part of future medicine, they would be far too large to do any molecular repairs inside of cells. Medical bots would be microrobots, not nanobots. They would be in our gut, sinuses, peritoneal cavity, mouth, nose, superficial fascia, and skin pores. Think of all of these as operating outside of cells to help the cells externally. None of them would be capable of going into cells to manipulate molecules. The manipulating arms and working tips on such devices would be massive compared to the molecules they were trying to repair. The tips would be operating by feel, requiring a tremendous amount of manipulation and tunneling just to characterize the damage in the first place, let alone make the delicate repairs. These basic physical limitations might eventually be overcome to some degree by very complex engineering, but this engineering would take many additional decades. Any transition from microrobots to nanobots would take another 20 years of development, even with exponential AI-assisted development. In the meantime, the scan and rebuild technology described above could be getting faster and more sophisticated. Scan and rebuild would have the huge advantage of operating on a flat surface. The manipulator arms could be arbitrarily large and could make use of a much lower level of technology. In the end, there will simply never be a need for nanorobotic swimmers in brain repair. Even if they were eventually feasible -- a very big if -- their cost and performance could never be competitive with scan and rebuild technology.
Repair and memory reconstruction could take place by a number of different technologies without violating any laws of physics. Regrowing a new body would be by far the easiest of any of the technologies listed.
The Scientific Basis of brain preservation is solid. Mainstream scientists will usually, after some consideration, agree with every single statement on this page as being reasonable. This is especially true if they are reminded that there is no time limit for developing these technologies. At the same time, they will discount brain preservation for a number of reasons unrelated to its technical feasibility. A common irrational reason given is that these technologies would be so far in the future as to not be relevant.