One start-up has assumed it will one day be able to scan the human brain and preserve it or possibly run an AI-based simulation of a deceased person’s mind. Seems to be very much in the style of the Black Mirror series, doesn’t it?
According to the company’s website, Nectome claims that memory reconstruction will be possible due to a more detailed and currently ongoing survey of the brain’s connectome, which is essentially the neural connections within the brain cortex
There’s one big catch, though, as noted by the firm’s co-founder Robert McIntyre to the Technology Review: the procedure is “100 percent fatal.”
Nectome, a promising company in the field, is backed by Y Combinator, an organisation that picks an array of start-ups each year to mentor them in the hope they receive major funding in the future. For now. For now, the firm has received a $960,000 (£687,000) grant from the US National Institute of Mental Health, which said it saw a “commercial opportunity” in brain preservation, and is currently looking for more sponsors.
Some would probably argue that the final goal might resemble that of cyonics, the sci-fi idea of “freezing” a body in this or that way with the ultimate goal of reviv it, but this has certainly never been realized. Significanly enough, what makes Nectome’s work totally different from typical cryonics is that the company is not seeking to bring a brain back to life, but rather learn how to store the memories taken from the brain to make them live forever.
Sourse: sputniknews.com
