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

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