X-Message-Number: 4984
From:  (Brian Wowk)
Newsgroups: sci.cryonics
Subject: Re: Dendritic spines
Date: 13 Oct 95 04:41:20 GMT
Message-ID: <>
References: <45i9tf$> <>

In <>  (Brad Templeton) writes:

>Are you saying that you have evidence that the spines don't degrade when
>the perfusate is present?   It sounds like you're just hoping they don't.

	Not at all.

>I don't see how you could detect high-level memory loss easily in dogs.
>What level of testing was done?

	We are talking about far more than just high-level memory
loss.  The cited study reports a ~60% loss of dendritic spines after
6 hours of cold ischemia.  This is equivalent to end-stage Alzheimers,
and near complete neurological disfunction.  If you revive a dog after
6 hours of ischemia, and it responds to its name, the people it knows,
and runs and plays like it always did, there's no darn way it lost
60% of its dendritic spines. 

>Clearly the answer is simple, to examine perfused tissues in animals after
>a long cold ischemia period matching the pattern of a typical suspension,
>look at the detailed neural structure, see how much it has degraded and
>speculate on whether it can be repaired, and how to improve it.

	Here at the CryoCare Foundation, we are currently discussing
the option of removing a few microliters of grey matter (a neurologically
insignificant amount of tissue) from EVERY human cryonics patient we do
for subsequent light and electron microscopy studies.  This would answer
these questions very fast, and provide a good measure of quality control
for individual cases.

---Brian Wowk


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