X-Message-Number: 5855 From: (Brian Wowk) Newsgroups: uk.legal,sci.cryonics,sci.life-extension Subject: Re: Death (was Donaldson MR and Miss Hindley) Date: 26 Feb 96 23:02:39 GMT Message-ID: <> References: <> <> In <> Marshall Rice <> writes: >But do frozen synapses retain their neural characteristics? If by "characteristics" you mean the encoding of long-term memory, this is currently not known with certainty. This is of course the most important question of cryonics. It is also a question very difficult to test experimentally. Several years ago a biologist (and cryonicist) named Gerry Arthus sought to answer this question. He taught nematodes to respond to a temperature gradient in water (i.e. warmer water = food), froze them to -79'C, thawed them, and observed whether they retained this knowledge. They did. A very optimistic result, but obviously more study is needed to prove the hypothesis conclusively. Certainly preservation of memory by freezing is consistent with everything we know about long-term memory (molecular changes in synapses) and freezing (molecular structure is preserved). I would find it highly remarkable (not to mention personally tragic :( ) if it were ever shown that memory *did not* survive freezing. *************************************************************************** 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=5855