Head Transplant?

[plummyy]

Theoretically, a person with advanced organ failure could be given a new and functional body... but rejection is almost an indefinite consequence of attempting a "Frankenstein" procedure. The brain is no different than other organs in the sense that it's not without immune cells, and it would be an odd guess to manage the dosage of medication to try and stop the body's natural means of rejecting the foreign part (from what I know, rejection seems to happen no matter what).

A "head transplant", which I take as... attaching someones head to another body(with or without the brain??)... What about the brain stem? The problems that would occur during such a surgery would leave someone...a vegetable? A head is also no different than attaching a limb, and the body wouldreject the tissue.

 

[Ana the Ist]

Personally, I´d think the guy with the body transplant lucky.

Buh-dum-tss!

This whole thing raises far too many questions. What exactly is the matching procedure? Like, if I need a new body and the only compatible donor is some half black half Korean dwarf...they gonna slap my big white head on that body? That would be interesting.

 

[Paradoxum]

I'd say it's a body transplant. The person is in the head, and gaining a new body. The person isn't gaining a new head (unless the brain is being taken out).

 

[2PhiloVoid]

Next thing in medicine are "head transplants".
Would you think of it as a "head transplant" or rather as a "body transplant"?

Interesting. I guess everyone will have yet another way in which to get a head in life.

And let's keep 'em rolling folks...

2Philovoid

 

[2PhiloVoid]

Next thing in medicine are "head transplants".
Would you think of it as a "head transplant" or rather as a "body transplant"?

Here's another.

Didn't Mary Shelley write a book about this kind of thing...a long time ago? We all know how well that story turned out!

2PhiloVoid

 

[Shemjaza]

I'd think we'd need to be able to repair spinal cords first. It's all well and good to get a new body... but if you are stuck being a quadriplegic you haven't gained much.

If it were ever to be an easy procedure I wonder how long the extremely wealthy could extend their lives?

Or if the Caitlyn Jenner's of the future might have other options then transitioning their own bodies? (Then again, she is almost unique in being both extremely wealthy and transgender.)

 

[GrowingSmaller]

I am suprised there no "DNA clash" with these transplants, only blood-type compatibility dificultuies. AFAIK anyways.

 

[quatona]

From most of the responses I get the impression that I haven´t communicated my question too well.

 

[Shemjaza]

From most of the responses I get the impression that I haven´t communicated my question too well.

Ooh, sorry.

I see identity in the face and head so I would think of the person having a body transplant.

However, when I think of the procedure my intuition calls it a "head transplant", probably because the head is the more portable seeming bit.

 

[quatona]

Ooh, sorry.

I see identity in the face and head so I would think of the person having a body transplant.

However, when I think of the procedure my intuition calls it a "head transplant", probably because the head is the more portable seeming bit.

Thank you.
Personally, I guess I locate "identity" in the brain, even.
The "portable bit" makes sense, in a way.

 

[Ana the Ist]

From most of the responses I get the impression that I haven´t communicated my question too well.

There was a question?

 

[dgiharris]

Yes, seriously. Using an entire body for one transplant rather then a multiple separate ones means that other people miss out organs they need to survive.

So far that creativity has not solved the supply of organs available for transplant being far short of the demand.

If you are rich and don't mind paying lots of money and NOT asking any questions, you will have ZERO problem getting an organ.

It's more likely that the engineers of the newest advances in healthcare & biology, etc. will find a way to re-grow organs, limbs, and so on before they would really commit themselves to advancing the practice of "head" transplants.

Yes, they have already regrown organs in petri dishes. One of the biggest problems though is overcoming the influence of gravity while growing organs. I read a great theoretical paper a decade ago about how growing organs in zero gravity would advance the field tremendously and make it feasible and economical.

I highly doubt that.

We will have the ability to reattach nerves and have them functional, before we can re-grow organs.

We can already regrow some organs. Just Google it, you will see that they've managed to grow bladders and other simple organs and/or body parts and tissue. Given this field is only a couple of decades old, its amazing how far they've come.

If/when we establish an economy in space, I predict that lab grown organs will be a booming field. Zero gravity would solve a lot of problems they are having in growing organs in labs.

 

[dgiharris]

Ooh, sorry.

I see identity in the face and head so I would think of the person having a body transplant.

However, when I think of the procedure my intuition calls it a "head transplant", probably because the head is the more portable seeming bit.

Funny, I think of it as a head transplant as well, even though the body is just a vehicle for the head.

I think the reason is simple math. The head, albeit the most important part of the body, is just a fraction of the total mass. So when you think transplant you tend to default to the larger mass as the host. So since the body is bigger than the head, you think , "Head transplant"...

Incidentally, if there were a betting line on a head transplant being successful, I'd sell everything I owned, leverage everything I owned, go into debt, and bet against it.

There is no way with current technology and level of neuroscience that a head transplant will be successful. Every person's brain is unique to the running of every person's body. The neural pathway from my brain to my heart is going to be "slightly" different than your neural pathway from your brain to your heart. For every single action your body takes, there is a neural path from your brain through your neural network (brain stem => spinal cord => nerve => muscle)
all the way to the muscle or organ in question. Lets say I have 100,732,293,987 billion neurons in my brain forming various pathways and connections with my body. Lets say you have 100,832,232,231. So you have 100 Million more neurons than I do. How will the doctors be able to properly connect my brain to your body when you have 100 million more connections than I have?

My guess is that what the doctors are counting on is for the brain to be able to remap its neural network onto the new body, that is, figure out on its own which neural pathway goes where. I guess an analogy would be when someone suffers a horrendous stroke or brain injury and they have to reteach themselves how to talk...

However that is problem the easier problem to solve. The bigger problem which I have no idea how they would solve is the connection between the brain stem and the spinal cord. Currently, we don't even know how to repair even the slightest damage done to a spinal cord. You severe a connection in your spine and you are paralyzed from that point down.

So at best, a head transplant means you are paralyzed from the neck down and the body is nothing more than a life support system for your head and you will live a life ala Stephen Hawking style. From that standpoint I wonder if it would be possible to just hook up a severed head to a machine that is able to run oxygenated blood through the head....

You know, now that I think about it..... I think you'd have a higher chance of success trying to hook up a severed head to a machine rather than another body..

 

[Shemjaza]

However that is problem the easier problem to solve. The bigger problem which I have no idea how they would solve is the connection between the brain stem and the spinal cord. Currently, we don't even know how to repair even the slightest damage done to a spinal cord. You severe a connection in your spine and you are paralyzed from that point down.

So at best, a head transplant means you are paralyzed from the neck down and the body is nothing more than a life support system for your head and you will live a life ala Stephen Hawking style. From that standpoint I wonder if it would be possible to just hook up a severed head to a machine that is able to run oxygenated blood through the head....

You know, now that I think about it..... I think you'd have a higher chance of success trying to hook up a severed head to a machine rather than another body..

I don't think we have a machine to fuel a human head... however, at least machines don't produce millions of cells actively trying to kill the head because it's a foreign body or invading organism.

 

[brinny]

...i'm wonderin' what would happen if something went terribly wrong:

 

[Ana the Ist]

Funny, I think of it as a head transplant as well, even though the body is just a vehicle for the head.

I think the reason is simple math. The head, albeit the most important part of the body, is just a fraction of the total mass. So when you think transplant you tend to default to the larger mass as the host. So since the body is bigger than the head, you think , "Head transplant"...

Incidentally, if there were a betting line on a head transplant being successful, I'd sell everything I owned, leverage everything I owned, go into debt, and bet against it.

There is no way with current technology and level of neuroscience that a head transplant will be successful. Every person's brain is unique to the running of every person's body. The neural pathway from my brain to my heart is going to be "slightly" different than your neural pathway from your brain to your heart. For every single action your body takes, there is a neural path from your brain through your neural network (brain stem => spinal cord => nerve => muscle)
all the way to the muscle or organ in question. Lets say I have 100,732,293,987 billion neurons in my brain forming various pathways and connections with my body. Lets say you have 100,832,232,231. So you have 100 Million more neurons than I do. How will the doctors be able to properly connect my brain to your body when you have 100 million more connections than I have?

My guess is that what the doctors are counting on is for the brain to be able to remap its neural network onto the new body, that is, figure out on its own which neural pathway goes where. I guess an analogy would be when someone suffers a horrendous stroke or brain injury and they have to reteach themselves how to talk...

However that is problem the easier problem to solve. The bigger problem which I have no idea how they would solve is the connection between the brain stem and the spinal cord. Currently, we don't even know how to repair even the slightest damage done to a spinal cord. You severe a connection in your spine and you are paralyzed from that point down.

So at best, a head transplant means you are paralyzed from the neck down and the body is nothing more than a life support system for your head and you will live a life ala Stephen Hawking style. From that standpoint I wonder if it would be possible to just hook up a severed head to a machine that is able to run oxygenated blood through the head....

You know, now that I think about it..... I think you'd have a higher chance of success trying to hook up a severed head to a machine rather than another body..

Unless I'm mistaken...the kind of head transplant being discussed here is one that results in full use of the body. Science has been making some leaps in nerve/spinal cord repair.

The head transplants that you're speaking about were actually pretty well figured out before we had viable organ transplants. I know that sounds backwards...but the Dr behind it all had reasoned that it would be a useful method for keeping someone alive who had organ failure of some kind. This was back in the 50s-60s I think...and I believe his work lead to some greater understanding of blood types.

So they've been able to transplant heads now for decades...it just would've left the recipient a quadriplegic. The ones that are being spoken about in the news now will theoretically leave the person with a fully functional body.

 

[GrowingSmaller]

The best song I could find:

 

[Ana the Ist]

The best song I could find:

Nothing by the Talking Heads?

 

[FireDragon76]

Sounds really creepy, born of Cartesian dualism. Frankenstein.