X-Message-Number: 11615 Date: Sun, 25 Apr 1999 21:23:32 +0400 From: "Mikhail V. Soloviev" <> Subject: Conditional reflexes after freezing-thawing (references needed) Some days ago I discussed cryonics with Svyatoslav Medvedev, the director (CEO) of the Institute of Human Brain (St. Petesburg, Russia) and a son of famous brain researcher Natalia Bekhtereva, who is a grand-daughter of great Russian psychiatrist Vladimir Bekhterev. Dr. Medvedev told me that he doesn't believe in cryonics as from the theory, he helds, it follows that memory should be desroyed by freezing. According to this theory the long-term memory is written not in brain structure (synaptic pattern etc.), but in functional states of neurons (e.g. in the pattern of soma polarization). And any hard stress (e.g. during clinical death or freezing) is able to erase the long-term memory. But he offered me to prove that the long-term memory is not erased by freezing. He thinks that such proof could be the demonstration that conditional reflexes are preserved after freezing (to temperature about 0 degrees C) and thawing of some higher animals -- e.g. of gold hamsters. Do anybody know about similar experiments (where the problem of preservation of conditional reflexes after freezing was researched)? -- Mikhail Soloviev P.S. According to my opinion any change of brain dynamics is accompanied by the change of corresponded structures. And if some structures are destroyed by stress it could infered from other structures (by logic operations, by combinatory search etc.). Example of combinatory search to reconstruct the erased pattern of soma polarization: (1) Original pattern of soma polarization ++--++ +-+-++ -+---- +--++- (2) Pattern is erased by freezing ------ ------ ------ ------ (3) After reanimation soma is depolarized externally to find the pattern that fits the original description of personality of frozen patients: steps (a), (b), (c) (a) ----+- +----+ -+-+-- +---+- (b) -+--++ +-+-+- -+---- +--++- (c) ++--++ +-+-++ -+---- +--++- Rate This Message: http://www.cryonet.org/cgi-bin/rate.cgi?msg=11615