Upload Your Brain

Earlier this year, when the Brain Preservation Foundation—headed by neuroscientist Kenneth Hayworth of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute—awarded a prize to researchers for preserving all the neural circuits of a pig’s brain, Hayworth found himself in the media spotlight. The only problem was, the popular media simplified things a bit too far. They took the brain preservation technology to be all about euthanasia. Since the method used to preserve the pig’s brain only works with a recently deceased brain, if the technology became available to humans, anyone wishing to preserve their own brains this way would need to die, ideally when the brain is in good shape. So, reporters reached the conclusion that the technology was about taking the opportunity to die knowing your brain would be preserved. As we shall see, that wasn’t the point.

The sensational euthanasia angle crowded out the scientific story about