Brain-The Last Frontier (Dare to digress)

 

Ever imagined the wonders we’d uncover once we are able to successfully carry out the first head transplant? (We funnily refer to it as whole-body transplant, which if you consider the idea it’s pretty much accurate.) Let’s not even talk about the whole head. Let’s just entertain the idea of a brain transplant. Fascinating, isn’t it?

Questions like; Is the brain the industry of consciousness as we know it? Does the brain sum up all we are or is it just another organ like the heart- that if transplanted doesn’t carry with it the personality, memories, dreams, phobias of the donor? Then if so, does that prove that we are more than matter? That consciousness exists past our forms?

The largely unanswered, mostly existential questions evoked by this are both simultaneously interesting and scary. But the bottom line for me still stands that I’d like to see this realized in my lifetime.

Brain as the residence of consciousness

When I was a child, I read a story dubbed “The Head or The Body”. It was a simplified form of Transposed Heads by Thomas Mann Inspired by an ancient Hindu legend.

In this story there are two friends, let’s call them Tom (who is intelligent but obese and not so good looking) and Alex (who is athletic but of average intelligence). These two are in love with Sita, who is already married to Alex. They each individually decide to decapitate themselves as a sign of love and loyalty to Sita and their friendship respectively (as by committing suicide, Sita would have no choice but to love whomever was left alive).

However, after Sita finds the bodies, an angel appears to her and offers to revive the two. Sita is tasked with placing every head at its original position with the body. Due to excitement, Sita gets mixed up and the two awaken from their attempted suicides to find their heads restored, but to the wrong body. Now Sita must figure out the meaning of identity as she navigates her own feelings as to which representation is her husband. She has to choose between her husband’s head or husband’s body.

From the above illustration, we can clearly see the ethical dilemma that comes from a brain transplant. Because unlike any other organ in the body, the brain is believed to house our sense of self (consciousness), memories, learnt skills and behavior and many more personal traits that fundamentally determine who we are.

 

The Ethical Question

From the top of my head, I ask the question: If we are successful in this, does that mean we have come a step closer to curing death? 

Think about it in this perspective, there are hundreds of people who are in the ICU and already termed as “brain dead” (let’s call this group A), then there are those still in the ICU whose bodies have failed them due to underlying conditions independent of their brain and have been in long Commas under life support (let’s call this group B). If we take a pair from these two cases and transplant the brain of patient in our group B to the body of one in our group A, we will have at least saved one life, which is basically in the creed of all medics. Which is in all right noble as it works towards greater good - but whose call is it to make?

And if this is workable, then could we eventually have people who “body hop”, once they get terminally ill or want to completely change their identity? By this I mean people who using their influence and resources could live longer as they would have their brains transferred to the bodies of “brain dead” people if their bodies are considered to be terminally ill. Will these be the new phase of identity theft?

 

 

Conclusion:

Largely, technology for this kind of transplant has already been made or is in the making. By the year 2030 we might have already carried out the first head transplant. There was one that was scheduled for last year (2019) but never saw the light of day. You can read about it here. Similarly, doctors have been carrying out experiments and successfully performing head transplants in other animals and even cadavers as well illustrated by this medical paper.

We will just have to wait and see where the current of science will land us. Maybe then, we might have some answers and insights on the next leap of our civilization. The brain, is the last frontier, but will be the first domino to fall in our search for immortality, singularity and transcendence.