Neuropreservation
Neuropreservation is a type of cryonics procedure where the brain is preserved with the intention of future resuscitation and regrowth of a healthy body around the brain. Usually the brain is left within the head for physical protection, so the whole head is cryopreserved. A cryonics patient who undergoes neuropreservation is said to be a neuropatient.
The procedure is often done because vitrification of the entire body is not yet available. Vitrification essentially eliminates the mechanical and chemical damage caused by ice formation, at the cost of cryoprotectant toxicity and side effects of dehydration of tissue due to the blood-brain barrier. Although not a direct consequence of vitrification itself, storage of the vitrified brain directly in liquid nitrogen raises the further aspect of fractures, which are fewer in number but larger in scale in vitrified tissue than frozen tissue, a consequence of cooling from Tg (-135 °C) to liquid nitrogen's boiling point (-196 °C).
Neuropreservation has several advantages over whole body preservation. It costs less; neuropatients are easier to transport in case of legal, social, or physical problems; it is possible to do a better job of perfusing and therefore cryoprotecting the brain when there is no need to consider other tissues, and its smaller volume allows more rapid and less expensive cooling.Aubrey de Grey has theorized that neuropatients will be revived after procedures have been perfected on whole body patients, and therefore have better chances for revival.
Neuropreservation was first proposed in 1965 by cryonics co-creator Evan Cooper, proposed again in a speculative scientific paper by gerontologist George M. Martin in 1971, and independently proposed yet again in 1974 by Mike Darwin, and Fred and Linda Chamberlain. The Chamberlains were the founders of the Alcor Life Extension Foundation. In 1976 Fred’s father became the first of many neuropreservation patients at Alcor.
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