Research Brings Partial Revival of Dead Brain Tissue

In a recent study that makes us reconsider what we know about life and death, scientists have restored some brain activity to the brains of slaughtered pigs.

The brains did not show anything close to cognitive, conscious thought. There were no indications of any coordinated electrical signals, which are they key to higher thought and self awareness.

However, in an experimental treatment in which a blood substitute was pumped through the brain tissue, blood vessels picked up right where they left off and certain brain cells regained metabolic activity. Some of these cells even responded to drugs. When the researchers tested slices of brain tissue, they witnessed electrical activity between some neurons.

While we’re still in the beginning phases of this research, there are already many new questions to look into answering. Is there a way to fully revive brain cells? If all of the neural cells are metabolizing at the same time, will this lead to a resurrection of the consciousness that it once embodied? Or is it the case that there’s something that gives a being sentience that cannot be revived once it dies? If so, what exactly makes something sentient? If the sentience does revive, will it remember its previous life? Will it even be the same person?

Of course, none of these questions can be answered yet. We simply don’t know enough. The metaphysical mystery of consciousness has led philosophers and biologists alike wondering what endows each of us with a personality.

Bioethicist and law professor Nita A. Farahany said, “we had clear lines between ‘this is alive’ and ‘this is dead.’ How do we now think about this middle category of ‘partly alive’? We didn’t think it could exist.”

The research does pose some potential ethical problems, too, mainly for the reason that Farahany described. Is it our moral right to endow a brain with sentience? Would we then be obligated to keep it alive? Would it be wrong for us to purposely take away the brain’s sentience again, even when we know it has the potential to be there?

Co-author of the study Stephen Latham says that restoring consciousness to the brain was never their intention.

“The researchers were prepared to intervene with the use of anesthetics and temperature-reduction to stop organized, global electrical activity if it were to emerge,” he adds. “Everyone agreed in advance that experiments involving revived global activity couldn’t go forward without clear ethical standards and institutional oversight mechanisms.”