Comment by aetherspawn
3 hours ago
Live dissection and experimentation on “alive but drugged” human brains is mental. How do you ensure that you aren’t torturing a brain that can’t see, hear or scream? How are you held accountable?
3 hours ago
Live dissection and experimentation on “alive but drugged” human brains is mental. How do you ensure that you aren’t torturing a brain that can’t see, hear or scream? How are you held accountable?
When I had my ear surgery about 20 years ago, the doctor explained to me that I would be awake for part of the procedure, but the anesthesia meant that I would have no memory of it.¹ It’s a weird thing to think about whether that lack of memory would obviate the pain or discomfort of the moment.
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1. As it turned out, I was so frightened in the lead-up to the surgery that they had to do general anesthesia on me because I was shaking too much for them to operate so I was unconscious for the whole thing.
I had a dentist explain to me the same for getting my wisdom teeth out, as if it was a selling feature. At least for me, having my memory wiped is far more scary than just being put unconscious (or having some pain and a local anaesthetic).
Purely anecdotal, but I had surgery a few years ago (relatively minor). But I could feel for months after a sort of 'unconscious PSTD' I don't know how else to describe it. Even after it was healed and the pain was gone, there was just a deep sense of 'something bad happened in there' feeling. I'd have dreams of someone digging around in my body. Anyway, it's all gone now, but a weird experience for sure.
PTSD can happen especially when something goes wrong with the anesthesia. Happened to a man named Sherman Sizemore many years ago: https://www.nbcnews.com/health/health-news/family-sues-after...
Dramatized retelling of the story at 21m04s: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=ny_s07D-LT8&t=1264s
I had the same thoughts "but won't i feel it THEN?" when I was getting an upper endoscopy. The anesthesiologist said you're in such a trance, dreamlike state plus with the inability to form memories its like you're not your real "consciousness" but something different. Sort of like your brain is in "limp mode" and its not really _you._ This was both comforting and slightly terrifying in a different way.
Obviously it would be worse if you remembered it, but the trauma is still there even if you don't. Ask Bill Cosby's victims.
> so I was unconscious for the whole thing
Or so they claim - the patient would have no memory of that anyway.
From the article:
> The brains are already almost devoid of the coordinated neural firing necessary even for minimal consciousness, says Brendan Parent, a bioethicist at New York University Langone Health and one of six ethicists on Bexorg’s advisory board. But the company also forestalls any electrical activity with the anesthetic propofol, among other measures.
I recognized that anesthetic from its famous irresponsible use-
"Attention to the risks of off-label use of propofol increased in August 2009, after the release of the Los Angeles County coroner's report that musician Michael Jackson was killed by a mixture of propofol and the benzodiazepine drugs lorazepam, midazolam, and diazepam on 25 June 2009." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Propofol
Used properly, however:
"To induce general anesthesia, propofol is the drug used almost exclusively, having largely replaced sodium thiopental."
Apparently MJ was taking propofol to sleep, which another commenter said was akin to "getting a haircut by undergoing chemo".
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I don't trust them to always give the brain propofol. The subject has no way of reacting because they have no body, so what are they going to do?
oh, look, seems like we found the guy who can define what consciousness is! and not just that ... he even knows the lower boundary of it, too.
I think there is worlds between definitely defining what consciousness is, and what are some of the scenarios and conditions under which consciousness cannot ever happen.
And on top of that, they put a sedative, just in case.
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I could've done without reading the word almost
That's before they apply the anaesthetic.
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Honestly, there is so much terrible terrible terrible stuff going on in the world and happening to real people, I think it is safe to say that those brains are having a blast. Relatively speaking.
It just invokes a strong emotional response because it's so "abnormal", but if you think about it, there is so much more pain going on where no one bats an eye.
Perfectly avoidable pain even. So it's not even that aspect.
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OTOH, this is HN, I guess. Having empathy for real people would be harmful to the business model of most people's employers.
So instead, mostly performative outrage/empathy with something that is effectively dead can fill in that gap.
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> Live dissection and experimentation on “alive but drugged” human brains is mental.
There’s no such thing as live dissection. It’s vivisection.
It's still an open debate whether the seat of consciousness (or even simpler, perception) is the brain.
see e.g. Wahbeh, H., Radin, D., Cannard, C., & Delorme, A. (2022). What if consciousness is not an emergent property of the brain? Observational and empirical challenges to materialistic models. Frontiers in psychology, 13, 955594. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2022.955594
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hard_problem_of_consciousness
Same for memory, which is "needed" as well for your question to make sense. The more current theories assume memories are stored not only in the brain, but throughout the body.
see e.g. Repetto, C., & Riva, G. (2023). The neuroscience of body memory: Recent findings and conceptual advances. EXCLI journal, 22, 191–206. https://doi.org/10.17179/excli2023-5877
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Body_memory
Ok, I only skimmed the paper but it seems like all of the "non-local phenomena" in support of their theory are basically psychic powers. Not exactly strong evidence.
You're free to stop there. We can also turn it around, and I can ask you for any paper that details the theory of why the brain should be the location of consciousness.
I only gave one example and Wikipedia to start with. There's a lot of material out there if you're (rightfully) skeptical of that one paper. I don't even know what you're refering to as "their theory", as the way I read it, they're basically documenting various co-existing theories, and the authors don't disclose which one they find the most likely. I also don't see it as necessary for science to pick one; it's all about theories. I prefer documentation of all possible theories, and see no reason to dismiss one over the other unless they're disproven. I pointed to that paper, because any paper that talks about alternative theories shows the point I was making: We don't know yet. The point was not to claim that they've managed to put together good or bad arguments.
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I believe to some extent that everything is conscious and that it's specifically our species' prized mental features that lessen it's level at least temporarily. purely esoterically the statement "a rock is more conscious than a human being" doesn't even seem too outrageous to me.
See also: Hridaya.
Well, we know how to make living brains insensate - that's who we all make it through surgery.
Presumably they're doing something similar - or using some other well-understood mechanism - to ensure that's not the case.
> The brains are already almost devoid of the coordinated neural firing necessary even for minimal consciousness, says Brendan Parent, a bioethicist at New York University Langone Health and one of six ethicists on Bexorg’s advisory board. But the company also forestalls any electrical activity with the anesthetic propofol, among other measures. Bexorg obtains brains in partnership with organizations that procure donated organs for transplantation, and Vrselja says once families understand the company’s process and goals, their response is overwhelmingly positive.
That’s somewhat overstated.
We know anesthesia "works," and we know some of its molecular targets, but we do not fully know the mechanism by which it produces unconsciousness, ie whether anesthesia eliminates experience, or mainly blocks memory, report, and integrated neural processing.
Anesthesia appears to be a fairly broad effect - anaesthetics work on plants, for example [1], even though they lack any neural tissue whatsoever. It would be extremely surprising if those effects were also targeted enough to halt only some types of brain activity.
[1]: e.g. https://doi.org/10.4161/psb.27886
My understanding was that we now believe that patients under anesthesia are often "awake" but the drugs prevent them from forming memories so they can't complain once the anesthesia wears off.
Is that incorrect?
"Anesthesia" is a wider umbrella term than most people realize with many levels of sedation.
Under "general anesthesia", the patient is completely unconscious. They don't respond to any stimuli. In rare cases, some patients may have an adverse reaction and still retain some sensation, but that's very uncommon. My understanding is that we are certain that patients are actually unconscious (and not just unable to respond) because none of the other involuntary responses to trauma occur during surgery: elevated heart rate, etc. In short, you are simply not there for a while. This is what you get for most kinds of significant surgeries unless the surgery requires you to be awake (like brain surgery where they may need to ask you questions).
"Sedation" or "twilight sedation" is a lower level of anesthesia. You are somewhat conscious and can respond to commands from the doctor. But you are unable to form memories of what's happening and you're usually on something like fentanyl that makes you entirely OK with whatever it is they are doing to you. This is common for procedures like colonoscopies and endoscopies where the procedure is somewhat uncomfortable but where you aren't being cut open.
In general, anesthesiologists are trying to balance the goal of patient comfort against the risks of deeper levels of sedation.
More like very rarely (1-2 per 1000), very partially aware. I could not find anything saying that it was common, and it appears cases of actual awareness to the point of having pain / trauma are far rarer still. People who have this tend to have foggy memories or other concrete PTSD symptoms after the fact. It does not appear to be the norm.
I still think this experimentation is absolutely insane and I strongly object because there is no way to get feedback from the "patient" after the fact. Since we have no real idea of what is happening, I believe we should err on the side of caution. "But they could consent beforehand" is not morally acceptable for intrinsically inhumane actions that take away fundamental human rights and dignity. So if you think this is possibly inhumane / potentially torture, it is an irrelevant point since true consent would be impossible.
That's how twilight anesthesia works. That's the kind you get when having something like wisdom tooth removal or an endoscopy. They want you to be responsive to instructions but completely relaxed and unable to form memories of the event.
It's not a great article, and it glosses over the reality that if you hooked this brain up to an EEG it would show unequivocal brain death. CELLS of the brain are alive, but in terms of being able to function in any sort of coordinated way there that ship sailed minutes after the person who donated their organs died. The wave of depolarization that marks brain death isn't something we can reverse, and what's being done here is all about metabolism and structure rather than those much more subtle functions.
IMO the more questionable aspect of this entire operation is the use of "AI" to reach conclusions about how the test molecules are being metabolized, but that's a lot less compelling than implying that some company is somehow preserving life in a disembodied brain.
> isn't something we can reverse
Until you hook it up to a lightening rod in the top of a castle!
Just remember to be a good father, or things get really epic in a gothic sort of way.
Everyone upvote this guy more, thanks
Reminds me of a certain scene from Knausgård's Morning Star.
The word "alive" is doing a lot of work here. A brain is pretty much permanently fried after five to fifteen minutes without oxygen, and these are donor brains, not some emergency brain extraction team, so the timeframe will be much longer than that. There might be 'life' left in there in the technical sense, but there's no 'person' left.
I’ll volunteer to waive my rights here. Feel free to do whatever you wish with my brain once it’s detached from my body :)
Can’t be worse than my organs being harvested for donation.
Brain does not have physical feelings, and with all other feelings cut off and not possible, even with consciousness it won’t be a horror scenario like in MetallicA’s “One”.
People go crazy in solitary confinement, and they at least have senses left. I’m not sure I’m as confident as you on this one.