The concept of allowing the brain to remain alive and functional after being separated from the body it once inhabited often appears in science fiction media. Now, scientists have developed a device that can isolate blood flow to the brain organ, allowing it to work independently for hours without the rest of the body.
The device works by redirecting blood supply to the brain through a pump, thereby maintaining or adjusting a range of variables including blood pressure, blood volume, temperature, oxygen content and nutrients.
A research team at UT Southwestern Medical Center tested the device on the brain of a pig anesthetized with ketamine and other chemicals. For five hours, the device kept the animals' brain activity and health at normal levels.
The researchers say that while this obviously won't enable the ability to keep people's heads alive in jars like "Future World", it could lead to methods of studying the brain that aren't affected by other body functions.
"This new approach allows research to focus on the brain without the influence of the body, allowing us to answer physiological questions in a way that has never been possible before," said Dr. Juan Pascual, professor of neurology, pediatrics and physiology at UT Southwestern.
Extracorporeal pulsatile circulatory control (EPCC) systems have been used to study the effects of hypoglycemia, or low blood sugar, on the brain - a condition often encountered by people with diabetes. These studies often require restricting the animals' food intake or giving them insulin, but the body compensates by changing its metabolism. This device allows researchers to directly alter the blood sugar pumped into the brain.
Pascual said the first-of-its-kind system could also improve the machines used in heart bypass surgery to replicate blood flow to the brain. By providing natural pulsatile blood flow similar to the human heart, this has the potential to avoid brain-related side effects.
While EPCC has great potential in medicine, the idea of allowing the brain to survive independently of the body is also reminiscent of the controversial issue of head transplants. An Italian neurosurgeon named Sergio Canavero was ready to try such a procedure a few years ago, but Valery Spiridonov, who suffers from the muscular dystrophy Weldnig-Hoffmann disease, decided not to fuse his head to another body after finding love and becoming a father.