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AFTERLIFE: What really happens to our brain after we die?
Speaking exclusively to Daily Star Online, Dennis Kowalski, director of the US-based Cryonics Institute (CI), says that the way we understand the brain needs to change forever.
Dennis claims that what he does is more of an extension of stem cell research than bringing people back from the dead.
“Stroke victims have stem cells injected into them, so we could do the same on a larger scale with cryonics,” he said.
“The brain is like a document or a painting,” he went on.
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“Absolute death may only be said to occur when the brain’s essential information is destroyed”
Cryonics Institute website
“In theory, even if the Mona Lisa was shredded it could be painstakingly repaired.”
But he warned that the brain – unlike the body – can go past the point of repair.
“If the brain decays too much, we have what we call ‘information theoretic death’.”
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Cryonics is enjoying a surge in popularity
On its website, the Cryonics Institute says: “Absolute death may only be said to occur when the brain’s essential information is destroyed — and brain preservation is precisely what cryopreservation aims to achieve.”
And Kowalski believes that we understand so little about the brain’s full capabilities when we die, that cryonics will allow us to keep our minds alive and in a state of consciousness even when our bodies have been frozen.
“Cryonics technology has advanced so much in the past few years that in 20 years, who knows?” Kowalski went on.
“Telepathy and ESP could be possible.”
Currently, 2,000 people have put their names down to be frozen after they die at the CI.
160 people have already been frozen at the Institute’s Michigan laboratory, and over 100 pets.
Recently, Kowalski revealed that the first human frozen by cryonics will be brought back to life in just 10 years.
Dennis made headlines recently when he announced he’d taken out a £100,000 life insurance policy to have his wife and two kids frozen after they dic.
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He believes that cryonics could bring about the end of traditional funerals and herald new “Cryo-Parlours”.
Kowalski previously explained to Daily Star Online why freezing the body cryogenically will offer a real-life “fountain of youth”.
Cryonics has gone through a resurgence in popularity recently, with the cryonics A-list revealed including Britney Spears, Paris Hilton, and Simon Cowell.
This comes in the week a scientific study alleged that consciousness continues in the brain for some time after we die.
