Brain Preservation Foundation

The BPF is a 501c3 nonprofit. We seek to advance the science, ethics, & practice of long-term preservation of human brains for brain banking and future revival. The central objective of the Brain Preservation Foundation is to promote scientific research and services development in the field of whole brain preservation for long-term static storage. Through outreach to appropriate scientific communities, online activities, presentations and articles, directed research grants, challenge prizes, and other methods, we seek to explore the scientific hypothesis of whether a reliable surgical procedure exists that is capable of preserving the neural circuitry of the human brain at nanometer scale.*Through the Brain Preservation Technology Prize, we aim to spur the scientific evaluation of such technologies as chemopreservation (aldehyde or other chemical fixation, often followed by "plastination") and cryopreservation (a process of chemoprotecting and "vitrifying" tissue for low temperature storage). The Prize seeks the development of an inexpensive and reliable hospital surgical procedure which verifiably preserves the structural connectivity of 99.9% of the synapses in a human brain if administered rapidly after biological death. Extending existing preservation techniques to whole brain volumes is essential to the scientific goal of mapping neuronal connectivity across an entire human brain – a goal that has been identified by the NIH and others as crucial to furthering of our knowledge of brain function - see for example the NIH’s Human Connectome Project. Furthermore, advances in neuroscience today strongly suggest that appropriately preserved brains will contain our memories, identity, and consciousness, and therefore preservation technology, when it arrives, will make such brains available for future reading of memories, or full revival if desired.To help people understand the value and implications of such technology, we also seek to advance public understanding of the self, of our brains as physical, chemical, and biological carriers of our "internal self", of our social relationships and environment as aspects of our "external self", and of our technologies as rapidly-improving carriers and extensions of both our internal and external selves.Should any brain preservation technology be proven to work, we will make every effort to help that technology become as affordable and legally available as possible, for use in hospitals, hospices, and homes around the world.Footnotes* In the types of electron microscopy neuroscientists commonly use (FIBSEM, etc.), preserved neural tissue can be visualized down to about a 6 nanometer resolution. This allows them to directly see each neuron's synapses and dendrites (connections to other neurons). This level of detail also includes the ability to image, directly and indirectly (via molecular probes), many elements of the "synaptome," the number and types of special proteins (vesicles, signaling proteins, cytoskeleton), receptors (Glutamate, etc.), and neurotransmitters (at least six types in human neurons) that are known to be involved in long-term learning and memory at each synapse in the brain, and elements of the "epigenome" (learning-based DNA methylation and histone modifications) in the nucleus of each neuron. It remains an open question in neuroscience exactly which features of the synaptome and epigenome need to be preserved to retain memory and identity in each species. But our knowledge of the molecular basis of learning and memory continues to rapidly grow, aided by exciting new neuroscience techniques (optogenetics, viral tagging, protein microarrays, etc.). Our ability to scan and verify is also rapidly improving. New types of electron microscopy, such as Cryo-TEM, can image at an amazing 3 angstrom resolution, 50 times greater magnification than FIBSEM, a scale where brain proteins and even individual atoms can be directly seen.Our current Brain Preservation Technology Prize is focused on the connectome, imaged at FIBSEM resolution. As neuroscience advances, we may learn that certain features of the synaptome and epigenome not presently observable by FIBSEM must also be preserved. In that case, the Brain Preservation Foundation will offer additional Technology prizes, and make use of other verification methods and even higher resolution imaging if necessary. Bottom line: As neuroscience continues to advance, BPF will do our best to help science to determine whether reliable and affordable protocols can be found to preserve those brain structures that give rise to our memories and identities, according to our best evidence to date.See brainpreservation.org for our full mission statement.