The wonderfull Brain

[Zolar V]

Just wondering, but if you were to put some sort of containment vessel around the head of an human, then extract the skull/skin leaving just the brain. would it continue to live.

 

If the vessel was filled with a sort of nontoxic substance similar to blood, the brain would still have an adequate supply of oxygen. But is there any other compounds that are required for the brain to live?

 

Simply put, if you were to extract a brain and put it into a jar full of "blood", would it live?

[Speldosa]

Well, first of all. I wouldn't place the brain in a pool of blood, but rather in something equivalent to cerebrospinal fluid which the brain normally is surrounded by.

 

As you can see in the Wikipedia-article I linked to, the cerebrospinal fluid has four functions:

 

1. Buoyancy: The actual mass of the human brain is about 1400 grams; however the net weight of the brain suspended in the CSF is equivalent to a mass of 25 grams.[7] The brain therefore exists in neutral buoyancy, which allows the brain to maintain its density without being impaired by its own weight, which would cut off blood supply and kill neurons in the lower sections without CSF.[8]

 

2. Protection: CSF protects the brain tissue from injury when jolted or hit. In certain situations such as auto accidents or sports injuries, the CSF cannot protect the brain from forced contact with the skull case, causing hemorrhaging, brain damage, and sometimes death.[9]

 

3. Chemical stability: CSF flows throughout the inner ventricular system in the brain and is absorbed back into the bloodstream, rinsing the metabolic waste from the central nervous system through the blood-brain barrier. This allows for homeostatic regulation of the distribution of neuroendocrine factors, to which slight changes can cause problems or damage to the nervous system. For example, high glycine concentration disrupts temperature and blood pressure control, and high CSF pH causes dizziness and syncope.[10]

 

4. Prevention of brain ischemia: The prevention of brain ischemia is made by decreasing the amount of CSF in the limited space inside the skull. This decreases total intracranial pressure and facilitates blood perfusion.

 

Now, we can do without point number 2 since the brain is going to lay still in a jar, but we really need to fulfill all the other criteria's. Also, the fluid have to be renewed somehow and go through the usual cycle inside the brain.

 

Also, we need some form of replacement for the heart and the lungs to pump oxygenated blood into the brain and to take care of blood coming back from the brain.

 

Without these actions, the brain would certainty die pretty much immediately.

 

Now, let's say that we could fulfill these basic things. Would the brain be able to survive? Well, not necessarily, if we with survival mean ongoing meaningful activity, which is a pretty good definition.

 

First of all, the brain wouldn't get any stimulation from outside. That is, the eyes, the ears, the tounge, yeah, all of your senses, wouldn't generate any kind of structural input at all, but rather some kind of noisy input, if any input at all would be generated. Further, the brain wouldn't get it's usual chemical input from the body, making it go all out of balance.

 

All this would probably create havoc inside the brain and even if you in the end would be able to maintain some kind of activity, which isn't certain, the activity would probably not represent anything meaningful.