X-Message-Number: 5855
From:  (Brian Wowk)
Newsgroups: uk.legal,sci.cryonics,sci.life-extension
Subject: Re: Death (was Donaldson MR and Miss Hindley)
Date: 26 Feb 96 23:02:39 GMT
Message-ID: <>
References: <> <>


In <> Marshall Rice <>
writes:

>But do frozen synapses retain their neural characteristics?

	If by "characteristics" you mean the encoding of long-term
memory, this is currently not known with certainty.  This is of course
the most important question of cryonics.  It is also a question
very difficult to test experimentally. 

	Several years ago a biologist (and cryonicist) named Gerry
Arthus sought to answer this question.  He taught nematodes to
respond to a temperature gradient in water (i.e. warmer water = food),
froze them to -79'C, thawed them, and observed whether they retained
this knowledge.  They did.  A very optimistic result, but obviously
more study is needed to prove the hypothesis conclusively.

	Certainly preservation of memory by freezing is consistent
with everything we know about long-term memory (molecular changes
in synapses) and freezing (molecular structure is preserved).  I
would find it highly remarkable (not to mention personally tragic :( )
if it were ever shown that memory *did not* survive freezing.

***************************************************************************
Brian Wowk          CryoCare Foundation               1-800-TOP-CARE
President           Your Gateway to the Future        
   http://www.cryocare.org/cryocare/

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