Nectome Seeks to Commercialize Aldehyde ­Stabilized Brain Cryopreservation

You might recall that aldehyde-stabilized cryopreservation was the approach that won the Brain Preservation Prize a few years back. The prize sought to encourage progress in the field, and particularly development of the means to proof high quality preservation of the fine molecular structure of brain tissue. Somewhere in there, the data of the mind is stored. Thus cost-effective preservation of that fine structure offers the chance at a renewed life in the future for the countless multitudes who will age to death prior to the advent of comprehensive rejuvenation biotechnology. It is welcome to see signs of greater research, development, and growth in the cryonics community.

That said, this advance comes from the side of the community that is more interested in storing the pattern than the flesh. Their end goal for the more distant future is to scan the brain as though it were a recording, and then run an emulation of the stored mind in suitable software. This is creating a copy and discarding the original - not a wonderful outcome from my point of view. It is the same as death for the preserved individual. Only restoration and repair of the stored brain itself is sufficient for personal continuity. Alcor, for example, doesn't intend to adopt aldehyde-stabilized cryopreservation because it will be much harder to carry out restoration in comparison to present day vitrification, and because it isn't a stepping stone technology on the way to near future reversible vitrification.

What if we told you we could back up your mind? Imagine a world where you can successfully map and pinpoint a specific memory within your brain. Today's leading neuroscience research suggests that it is possible by preserving your connectome. The connectome is all the connections called synapses between neurons in your brain. Researchers are now learning to manipulate individual memories, building advanced brain prosthetics, and reverse-engineering the brain.

Our mission is to preserve your brain well enough to keep all its memories intact: from that great chapter of your favorite book to the feeling of cold winter air, baking an apple pie, or having dinner with your friends and family. We believe that within the current century it will be feasible to digitize this information and use it to recreate your consciousness. Our process of vitrifixation (also known as aldehyde-stabilized cryopreservation) has won the Brain Preservation Prize for preserving a whole rabbit connectome, and we are currently hard at work to scale our preservation process to larger brains.

We currently need help with developing tissue staining protocols for richer connectome imaging. We also are starting to develop a computational neuroscience program. If you are an interested research institution, or are interested in joining our engineering department, please get in touch.

Link: https://nectome.com/