X-Message-Number: 5806 From: (Brian Wowk) Newsgroups: uk.legal,sci.cryonics,sci.life-extension Subject: Re: Death (was Donaldson MR and Miss Hindley) Date: 22 Feb 96 07:51:47 GMT Message-ID: <> References: <> <> In <> Marshall Rice <> writes: >With respect, I think a better analogy is with the data held in RAM, or any >other active storage device. If you switch the machine off, the data is lost >for good. >Our brains are active storage devices, not passive ones like floppy discs, >which can be kept in a cupboard until needed. Nope. Only short-term memory is RAM. Long-term memory is PROM. This is not speculation, but medical fact. "We know that secondary memory does not depend on continued activity of the nervous system, because the brain can be totally inactivated by cooling, by general anesthesia, by hypoxia, by ischemia, or by any other method and yet secondary memories that have been previously stored are still regained when the brain becomes active once again. Therefore, secondary memory must result from some actual alterations of the synapses, either physical or chemical." --- Textbook of Medical Physiology, by Arthur C. Guyton, W.B. Saunders Company, 1986. This is borne out clinically when patients recover without amnesia after hour-long hypothermic arrest ("cold meat on a table") aneurism surgery, or when dogs recover after 6 hours of similar treatment (a world record, currently held by BioPreservation, CryoCare's contract cryonics service provider). *************************************************************************** Brian Wowk CryoCare Foundation 1-800-TOP-CARE President Your Gateway to the Future http://www.cryocare.org/cryocare/ Rate This Message: http://www.cryonet.org/cgi-bin/rate.cgi?msg=5806