Naked Science Forum
Life Sciences => Physiology & Medicine => Topic started by: thedoc on 23/03/2010 17:01:54
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If we were to try to transplant a piece of brain from one person into another, what would be the consequence?
Asked by Tony, Westcliffe
Read the naked scientists answer here (http://www.thenakedscientists.com/HTML/content/questions/question/2586/)
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Chris - Well actually, scientists have done this in a number of ways. In one instance, there was a complete head transplant done on a chimpanzee where the brain and head from one animal was grafted onto the blood vessels of another, recipient, body.
Now that’s all well and good in the sense that it keeps the brain alive because the blood supply is preserved, but what it does involve is severing the connection between the brain and the spinal cord, which is how all the information gets into and out of the brain pretty much.
That means that the animal is destined to have no mobility and no ability to feel incoming information from the rest of its body. So, scientists, if they were going to do head transplants would have to surmount that one.
But, there are limited neuronal grafting and transplant studies being done because there are some neurological diseases, specifically neurodegenerative diseases, which are associated with the death or loss of certain subclasses or groups of nerve cells in the brain.
So scientists have reasoned that, if you're losing certain populations of cells in the brain, perhaps what we need to do is to put new cells back into that bit of the brain and perhaps they will wire in and they can do the job that these cells that have been lost used to do.
A good example of this is Parkinson’s disease, because we know that one specific group of cells that make the chemical dopamine are lost from the brain in this disease.
Scientists have now done a number of experiments where they take foetal brain tissue - and you need foetal brain tissue because this seems to be critical because the cells seem to have a more robust phenotype – in other words, they seem to survive better – and if you harvest those cells that are destined to become dopamine-producing nerve cells in foetuses and you put those into the brain of an individual with Parkinson’s disease, into the part of the brain that is lacking dopamine, in other words, is affected by the disease, the cells seem to have the ability to survive to a limited extent, and also, wire themselves in and produce dopamine to make up for the shortfall.
So, scientists are doing that with Parkinson’s disease. They are also looking at the disease, Huntington’s disease, which is another neurodegenerative disease but is caused by the loss of a different class of nerve cells. So they're trying similar tricks there.
It’s early days, and the results have been mixed, but they do show promise and so we think that there is a good reason to be pursuing this.
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Listen to the answer to this question on our podcast. (http://www.thenakedscientists.com/HTML/podcasts/show/2010.03.14/)
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The topic is really interesting with great knowledge of transplantation.Thanks.
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I can think of a few politicians that I would put on the list of volunteers as head donors....sure that they would not miss it because they do not use them at all :)...probably be more productive and get used better to put the head onto a monkey as well....actually, I am now convinced that politicians are the result of many such transplants but monkey heads/brains have been put onto a human body
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Hi doppler1,hru i got through your post really enjoyed it.
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Thanks Gragery40, just having a bit of fun, but this is a really intersting topic as well...imagine the possibilities of being able to transplant your brain and knowledge into the head of your juvenile clone!!!!! or the clone of a better looking person. I am not sure how long the brain can last for if it receives all the necessary inputs but I would like to imagine that it could stay alive and functioning for 2 or 3 life times.
If I knew what I know now when I was ten or 12......sheesh, life would be far more fun and exciting. What would you do if you could switch your brain into another body?? Or who's body would you switch with?