Transplanting the human head/brain

Started by gaggedLouise, July 03, 2013, 03:13:23 AM

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Callie Del Noire

You know.. Robert Heinlein wrote a book on that. Old guy getting transplanted into a woman's body. 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I_Will_Fear_No_Evil

Oniya

#26
And from what I remember, he said the sex was amazing.

He also came up with the ideas for the waterbed and the 'waldo' remote manipulator.
"Language was invented for one reason, boys - to woo women.~*~*~Don't think it's all been done before
And in that endeavor, laziness will not do." ~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~Don't think we're never gonna win this war
Robin Williams-Dead Poets Society ~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~Don't think your world's gonna fall apart
I do have a cause, though.  It's obscenity.  I'm for it.  - Tom Lehrer~*~All you need is your beautiful heart
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gaggedLouise

Quote from: Oniya on July 06, 2013, 03:52:01 PM
Or on the flip side, someone who needs to be 'disappeared' gets kidnapped, 'transplanted' into a new body that no one will recognize (maybe a 'hot one', possibly of the opposite sex), and forced into slavery (perhaps sexual).

As a domme I know once told me "It is not unheard of for a person to swap places with their slave persona." The persona would move to the place of real self, controlling or sometimes bleeping out what used to be her/his former vanilla person  - and that swap could include a gender change, of course.

Good girl but bad  -- Proud sister of the amazing, blackberry-sweet Violet Girl

Sometimes bound and cuntrolled, sometimes free and easy 

"I'm a pretty good cook, I'm sitting on my groceries.
Come up to my kitchen, I'll show you my best recipes"

Synecdoche17

Just as a heads-up (snicker) we're now on the verge of being able to grow or print organs. The future body you swap into may be an actual body grown for you from scratch.
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Pumpkin Seeds

Well honestly once we're at the point of growing a body there will be no real need for much of this.  Through synthesizing of stem cells there will be the ability to just supply the body with endless resources to fix itself. 

Oniya

I remembered reading that they'd printed a kidney recently.  Or, at least a framework that could be used to coax self-donated cells into the right configuration or somesuch.  Kidneys are complicated little buggers.
"Language was invented for one reason, boys - to woo women.~*~*~Don't think it's all been done before
And in that endeavor, laziness will not do." ~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~Don't think we're never gonna win this war
Robin Williams-Dead Poets Society ~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~Don't think your world's gonna fall apart
I do have a cause, though.  It's obscenity.  I'm for it.  - Tom Lehrer~*~All you need is your beautiful heart
O/O's Updated 5/11/21 - A/A's - Current Status! - Writing a novel - all draws for Fool of Fire up!
Requests updated March 17

Pumpkin Seeds

They are important little organs that just don't get their proper respect.

Kekec

Quote from: gaggedLouise on July 03, 2013, 03:13:23 AM
Any thoughts? Honestly this gives me the shivers, it opens up all sorts of weird and unsavoury possibilities: selling heads and brains, fitting old people's brains onto a young body or a young brain onto another young body, extension of the human lifespan into hundreds of years

That wouldn't be possible.  Even if they managed to do a successful brain transplant (which they will almost certainly never be able to do), the age of a brain cannot be rejuvenated. So, putting the brain of an elderly person into the body of a younger one would result in the same lifespan, since the brain has already deteriorated, and it would continue to decay as a seventy-year old brain despite being in a twenty-five-year old body.

SK0M

I mean...I am always for things that can help people medically.  But this...honestly...like anything else will have the wrong people doing wrong things.  For every new ability we as humans gain has two sides:  The uses for good and the uses for the bad.

Florence

As a transhumanist, I see a lot of great potential from this :>

Though personally, I'd like to see robotics progress a little more. I mean, what's the point, in the long run, of transplanting my brain from one deteriorating fleshy meatsack to the next? Even if we could combat the problem of neural decay, there's just the logistics of providing a lot of people with new bodies every time they need a new one :U

Cloning could help I suppose, but why not just built a shiny metal and plastic body, and slap it in there. Occasional tune-up, replace a broken part every now and then and you're good to go :>

... on that note, if we ever got fully-cyborg bodies, I wonder what the odds are that one of the first operations would be a wealthy otaku getting their brain implanted into Motoko Kusanagi's body.
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Moraline

Quote from: Synecdoche17 on July 13, 2013, 06:24:23 PM
Just as a heads-up (snicker) we're now on the verge of being able to grow or print organs. The future body you swap into may be an actual body grown for you from scratch.
This would be amazing. That would mean that I could have clones of my own body grown. Then when I get old I could get my mind transplanted into a young healthy me. I would be IMMORTAL! MUAHAHAHA!

NSFW comment
That or I'd get my mind transplanted into a hunky man body with a big penis and masturbate all day. I always wondered what It felt like to cum from a man's perspective. I would pop viagara and rub that thing raw. HAHA

OH OH! I would totally go out and pick up hot chicks too. Dammit.. Now my mind is going all RP muse on me.



Oniya

Go read 'I Will Fear No Evil' by Heinlein.  Seriously.
"Language was invented for one reason, boys - to woo women.~*~*~Don't think it's all been done before
And in that endeavor, laziness will not do." ~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~Don't think we're never gonna win this war
Robin Williams-Dead Poets Society ~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~Don't think your world's gonna fall apart
I do have a cause, though.  It's obscenity.  I'm for it.  - Tom Lehrer~*~All you need is your beautiful heart
O/O's Updated 5/11/21 - A/A's - Current Status! - Writing a novel - all draws for Fool of Fire up!
Requests updated March 17

didoanna

Quote from: gaggedLouise on July 03, 2013, 03:51:03 PM

That's a completely different game than asking yourself if you'd want your deceased son's lungs to benefit somebody else. I don't think there would be a lot of people accepting it, but what if we'd get "body trade" with, for instance, the bodies of executed prisoners from abroad. Presumably someone who had been hanged would make a better donor than somebody who'd been given an injection in a U.S. prison and who has been on death row for fifteen years, and it might prove much easier and cheaper to procure a foreign body.  :-(

With the uber-rich having access to the sort of cash they have, you can bet as soon as it is do-able they'll be getting it done....which then in turn leads to - well, umm, kinda mass-markets - bit like the car really.  Hey, I bet the govt. would approve of it provided you had to pay them a fee or buy a licence of something like that for permission.

gaggedLouise

#38
Remote Brain-to-brain messagings and actions

One brain sends instructions to another grain hundreds of meters away and moves the second person's finger in a deliberate way

"U.S. scientists are reporting a non-invasive, human-to-human brain interface allowing one researcher to control the hand movements of a fellow researcher.
Using electrical brain recordings and a form of magnetic stimulation, University of Washington researcher Rajesh Rao sent a brain signal to fellow scientist Andrea Stocco on the other side of the university campus, causing Stocco's finger to move on a keyboard.

Rao and Stocco said they believe this is the first demonstration of human-to-human brain interfacing. "The Internet was a way to connect computers, and now it can be a way to connect brains," Stocco said. "We want to take the knowledge of a brain and transmit it directly from brain to brain."

Essentially, person A (Rao) consciously thought about moving his finger in a way that would have it press a key and fire a cannon in the on-screen video game in front of him, but was careful not to make any movements of his hand or finger. The neural signal was transmitted through the air between his research helmet and an electrode-wired headgear on person B (Stocco) elsewhere on the campus, and B's finger twitched and moved to the very same key on his keyboard as the one A was thinking of pressing, although B had no idea of what action would be attempted, what key the other one might press, or indeed what finger he would choose. In fact, B didn't have a screen to look at.

This is amazing and, like the head transplantation scheme, is bound to set one's thoughts going in all directions. If you can do this with two brains, separated by a fairly wide space, it would surely be possible in the future to exchange either part for a computer. So a pc, a smartphone or a robot could be used to make one person - or a thousand - perform a movement. Or a series of movements. Or create or suggest memories in those people. Or even bleep out memories? Zombies, anyone? Or literally getting inside someone else's mind?

Of course the researchers stress this is very bare-bones and doesn't offer any chances, at this point, of doing anything advanced or forcing anyone's hand if they don't want the action, but well...That's true about this early stage, what about the future though?

Good girl but bad  -- Proud sister of the amazing, blackberry-sweet Violet Girl

Sometimes bound and cuntrolled, sometimes free and easy 

"I'm a pretty good cook, I'm sitting on my groceries.
Come up to my kitchen, I'll show you my best recipes"

GarthMarenghi

As someone that thinks of the body being more of a transportation vehicle and the brain being a pilot, I find the idea rather interesting.
(I realise how important the body is and how dependant on each other they are but everything that makes up a person is within the brain, their own personal thoughts, feelings, memories, etc)

If we could switch bodies but keep our exact same brain intact then it might become popular and allow for alot of interesting experiments, like if you put a dogs brain into a human body would the dog be able to learn how to use the human voice box and communicate properly? it would give us insight into their world and what they think, even if it's just of food and going for walks. We could also move our brains into a robotic body once robotics has been advanced far enough to make life living as one an upgrade.
If I ever saw someone that I knew but with someone elses mind it would shock me for sure, but I wouldn't really be offended or angered as long as the original body gave permission instead of some horrible "body snatching" incident.

I don't think cloning will ever be the answer unless removing the clones brain (or growing them without one?) and then moving our brain into it, if we just created a clone with the exact same thoughts, memories, way of thinking then that person still isn't you, you don't suddenly start seeing from 4 eyes instead of 2 or thinking with 2 minds since the clone is a completely different person with his very own conscious instead of an extension of your own life.
The same problem would come from trying to copy our memories/thoughts over onto something digital or another brain, it might move everything across but it wouldn't move the conscious so the real "you" would end up dying as soon as the originals are deleted. (Unless they find a way to move one conscious over to another which is far beyond our capabilities at the moment)

It's an interesting topic and I hope some of what I said made sense.
We use maths at almost every point of the day, whether we're working out how to thread our shoelaces,
calculating the optimal moment on which to embark upon a conversation, or, if you can fly, planning your trajectory for the journey to work.

Moraline

#40
Quote from: gaggedLouise on September 03, 2013, 05:06:13 AM
Remote Brain-to-brain messagings and actions

One brain sends instructions to another grain hundreds of meters away and moves the second person's finger in a deliberate way

"U.S. scientists are reporting a non-invasive, human-to-human brain interface allowing one researcher to control the hand movements of a fellow researcher.
Using electrical brain recordings and a form of magnetic stimulation, University of Washington researcher Rajesh Rao sent a brain signal to fellow scientist Andrea Stocco on the other side of the university campus, causing Stocco's finger to move on a keyboard.

...
We are Borg, you will be assimilated.  Hive mind anyone?

Seriously though, the possibilities are endless. Transferring thoughts, memories... just damn anything. Who needs the internet when we can just plug our minds into a data jack and communicate via fibre to other brains all over the globe. That is some serious cyberpunk shit right there. So many scary and yet fantastic possibilities. I think my mind is melting at the concept.

*edit*
/palmface. Here I am thinking plug into a datajack.. so old school. We just do this shit via wifi/bluetooth now.

Oniya

Quote from: Moraline on September 03, 2013, 08:25:05 AM
*edit*
/palmface. Here I am thinking plug into a datajack.. so old school. We just do this shit via wifi/bluetooth now.

It's okay.  Some of us have read the Shadowrun source books.  ;)
"Language was invented for one reason, boys - to woo women.~*~*~Don't think it's all been done before
And in that endeavor, laziness will not do." ~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~Don't think we're never gonna win this war
Robin Williams-Dead Poets Society ~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~Don't think your world's gonna fall apart
I do have a cause, though.  It's obscenity.  I'm for it.  - Tom Lehrer~*~All you need is your beautiful heart
O/O's Updated 5/11/21 - A/A's - Current Status! - Writing a novel - all draws for Fool of Fire up!
Requests updated March 17

gaggedLouise

#42
"They said they plugged all of their brains into the same amp. I didn't even know what an amp was!"

-goofed-up quote from legendary sixties DJ Lord Tim about how he met the Beatles on a boat in the English Channel. The one word that's been changed out is, of course, "instruments"...  :D

Good girl but bad  -- Proud sister of the amazing, blackberry-sweet Violet Girl

Sometimes bound and cuntrolled, sometimes free and easy 

"I'm a pretty good cook, I'm sitting on my groceries.
Come up to my kitchen, I'll show you my best recipes"

Moraline

Quote from: Oniya on September 03, 2013, 08:42:13 AM
It's okay.  Some of us have read the Shadowrun source books.  ;)
Tell me Google Glasses doesn't remind you sooo much of Shadowrun? Now add to that brain transplants and the ability to mentally share thoughts/memories/sensations via brain waves.  This thread is seriously causing my mind to freak out. HAHA


Shadowrun (Via the Shadowrun - Seattle 2070 group game Wiki)


Google Glass



GarthMarenghi

Quote from: Moraline on September 03, 2013, 09:22:22 AM
Tell me Google Glasses doesn't remind you sooo much of Shadowrun? Now add to that brain transplants and the ability to mentally share thoughts/memories/sensations via brain waves.  This thread is seriously causing my mind to freak out. HAHA

Imagine all the advertisements though, sent directly into your brain and causing you to buy whatever they want. Instead of seeing images and banners they'll just be able to give you the thought/feeling of wanting to buy their products.

Not to mention the privacy issues with recording people's thoughts/opinions on certain matters, could even implement the "arrest people before actually doing a crime but thinking about doing it" act

We use maths at almost every point of the day, whether we're working out how to thread our shoelaces,
calculating the optimal moment on which to embark upon a conversation, or, if you can fly, planning your trajectory for the journey to work.

Moraline

I totally agree but I think we'll get more of a Shadowrun'esque experience long before that happens. First will be the Google Glass like always ONLINE experience then we'll get controlled minor physical sensations first via brain waves.

Besides, if we spent all our time living in fear of the possibilities then we'd never get anywhere technologically. Fear is best left as something for consideration and observation - not as a roadblock to progress.

GarthMarenghi

Quote from: Moraline on September 03, 2013, 09:36:04 AM
I totally agree but I think we'll get more of a Shadowrun'esque experience long before that happens. First will be the Google Glass like always ONLINE experience then we'll get controlled minor physical sensations first via brain waves.

Besides, if we spent all our time living in fear of the possibilities then we'd never get anywhere technologically. Fear is best left as something for consideration and observation - not as a roadblock to progress.

I agree that fear shouldn't hold us back from progression, there's even some people nowadays that dare not use a computer out of fear/lack of knowledge or a feeling of having all their information stolen.

But I think if we use the internet as a basis to how it will slowly evolve, then even the most careful of people have had viruses on their computers before if they've used it long enough, the thought of installing anti-virus scanners and malware detectors into my brain just doesn't put me at ease (especially since it would be my brain at risk and not just a computer).
Despite wanting to be able to have all the cool things that you mentioned it would have to be integrated very slowly and with constant safety checks in place in case it does end up like the internet. (Which has advanced so fast the laws can't keep up and all new laws that they propose are very bias in terms of giving certain groups large amounts of power that they shouldn't have).

Sorry if I'm being downer btw :/
We use maths at almost every point of the day, whether we're working out how to thread our shoelaces,
calculating the optimal moment on which to embark upon a conversation, or, if you can fly, planning your trajectory for the journey to work.

Florence

Quote from: GarthMarenghi on September 03, 2013, 09:56:57 AM
I agree that fear shouldn't hold us back from progression, there's even some people nowadays that dare not use a computer out of fear/lack of knowledge or a feeling of having all their information stolen.

But I think if we use the internet as a basis to how it will slowly evolve, then even the most careful of people have had viruses on their computers before if they've used it long enough, the thought of installing anti-virus scanners and malware detectors into my brain just doesn't put me at ease (especially since it would be my brain at risk and not just a computer).
Despite wanting to be able to have all the cool things that you mentioned it would have to be integrated very slowly and with constant safety checks in place in case it does end up like the internet. (Which has advanced so fast the laws can't keep up and all new laws that they propose are very bias in terms of giving certain groups large amounts of power that they shouldn't have).

Sorry if I'm being downer btw :/

Well, I think an obvious solution would be to hardwire the system in a way that wouldn't allow programs downloaded off the internet to modify the functioning of the brain. Now if we're talking heavy human augmentations involving cybernetic eyes and limbs and whatnot, there COULD be a little problem with those parts being vulnerable to viruses. That said I would think its possible the again, hardwire them in a way that would prevent them from being able to be modified by an external program.

I mean, your microwave oven can't get a virus, even though modern microwave ovens do have very basic computers controlling their functionality, because they're not connected to the internet. Simply don't have parts that you don't want modified connected to the internet directly, don't let them be modified by external programs, and make sure there's a way to shut off the elements that are connected in case of an emergency. Then, worst case, someone hacks the computerized parts of your brain, maybe spams you with annoying sounds and visuals, which yes, would suck incredibly, but you do an emergency shut down get it repaired.

I'm not saying its a perfect system, and I'm certainly no expert, but the one inspiring thing about our species is the way that we've always managed to adapt to new circumstances, new political climates and new technologies.
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didoanna

Quote from: Moraline on September 03, 2013, 08:25:05 AM
We are Borg, you will be assimilated.  Hive mind anyone?

Seriously though, the possibilities are endless. Transferring thoughts, memories... just damn anything. Who needs the internet when we can just plug our minds into a data jack and communicate via fibre to other brains all over the globe. That is some serious cyberpunk shit right there. So many scary and yet fantastic possibilities. I think my mind is melting at the concept.

*edit*
/palmface. Here I am thinking plug into a datajack.. so old school. We just do this shit via wifi/bluetooth now.

Bit like the concept behind the device in the film "Strange Days" from around '96 (I think) that can be used to record and then playback memories and feelings etc.

Oniya

Quote from: didoanna on October 12, 2013, 04:53:38 PM
Bit like the concept behind the device in the film "Strange Days" from around '96 (I think) that can be used to record and then playback memories and feelings etc.

Or 'Brainstorm' from 1983.
"Language was invented for one reason, boys - to woo women.~*~*~Don't think it's all been done before
And in that endeavor, laziness will not do." ~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~Don't think we're never gonna win this war
Robin Williams-Dead Poets Society ~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~Don't think your world's gonna fall apart
I do have a cause, though.  It's obscenity.  I'm for it.  - Tom Lehrer~*~All you need is your beautiful heart
O/O's Updated 5/11/21 - A/A's - Current Status! - Writing a novel - all draws for Fool of Fire up!
Requests updated March 17