X-Message-Number: 20655 Date: Thu, 19 Dec 2002 07:43:27 -0500 From: Thomas Donaldson <> Subject: CryoNet #20647 - #20653 HI everyone! For Brent Thomas (and others with ideas about reconstructing our brains): I've spent years looking into both how brains actually work and what we might to truly revive them after the destruction of freezing (as distinct from vitrification). It is true that current theories say that our brains work and preserve memories by the connections between their neurons. There are problems with this theory, however; one main kind of connection consists of synapses, and as research has continued synapses don't all look fixed and stable: at least a subset of them come into and out of existence and move about, too. A full map of your brain at instant 0 may not give the same as a map taken at instant 1: certainly not if your memories are encoded in the brain's connections, since something about those connections would have to change (again, what changes looks now not to be an individual synapse, but creation or destruction of a new one --- though it may split off from an older one). I publish a newsletter presently focused on just such questions, describing the scientific literature on how our brain works, as distinct from mythologies held by various people who shouldn't hold to mythologies. It's easy, for instance, to take that network theory of how our brain works and build a lot of theory on top of it, but where then are your theories if the network constantly changes? The newsletter is called PERIASTRON, US $3.00 per issue. You can look at part of each issue on the Website of the American Cryonics Society (www.americancryonics.org). If you want me to send you a complete sample issue, I can send you one for $3.00. It usually comes out 6 issues a year, but this time there will be 5, with the last one almost 2 x the normal size. You see, I had a computer breakdown of the computer I use to publish the September issue. Best wishes and long long life to all, Thomas Donaldson Rate This Message: http://www.cryonet.org/cgi-bin/rate.cgi?msg=20655