Paper Boys

Episode 36

Can you bring a dead brain back to life?

Within minutes after death, brain tissue begins to degrade...but could new techniques extend their life?

Once an animal dies, there isn’t much hope of bringing it back to life - especially when that animal is a slaughtered pig. There has been past research into brain activity after death, but the brain has to be essentially destroyed first. Now, scientists have developed a technique for continuing the pig’s brain function for many hours after death using a very complicated pump and well-engineered brain fluid. The best part? The brain is fully intact! On this week’s episode, James dives into a paper talking about this technique and the crazy implications it could have for future humans.

Check out the paper in Nature here and an NPR article here.

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