Brain/Full Body Transplant?

[astrolotl]

Hey everybody! So I've read through the fora for a while now, but only made an account recently and this is my first post. I'm not sure if I made the right choice for which forum to post in, so if anyone could let me know (and let me know how) I would be happy to move to the proper forum!

Anyways, so here's my question. I aspire to be a neurosurgeon, with a particular surgery in mind as one of my career goal: a full brain transplant. I know that we are a ways away from getting there, but as I'm in my sophomore year of undergrad, I was wondering what possibility I have for being right in time to have a chance at being the first surgeon to succesfully complete such a task?

I believe that so far we have only been able to see successes of a few minutes in mice, and a few days in monkeys. I've read that the primary obstacles are getting the brain (as an organ) to avoid being rejected by the host body, and getting proper fusion of the spinal cord. What other obstacles are in our way, and how are we currently attempting to bypass them?

Also, where do we stand with partial brain transplants? Would the route through a partial brain transplant seem like the best route to get to a full transplant, or would they be fundamentally different operations?

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[witzelsucht]

You are probably the perfect time to be a pioneer in full brain transplant. It will almost certainly happen in the next 10-15 years, so that gives you time for 4 years of med school and 7 years of neurosurgery residency + 1 year transplant fellowship.

 

[astrolotl]

Thanks! I'm super excited, I've been reading up on the techniques, and actually found a satire piece that a few sources have reproduced as fact - Jose Ivanocich, the "first succesful brain transplant."

 

[mmmcdowe]

We are probably closer to figuring out how to let people's brains live in glass jars than transplanting them into another human body. Any such surgery, to be successful, would be done far more by machine or biochemistry than actual surgery. Humans just don't have the dexterity or stamina to do what would have to be done theoretically to allow someone's brain to control a new body (meaning reconnecting individual nerves to the appropriate axons). Even suturing peripheral nerves back together is a very clumsy procedure, we simply are just stitching the severed halves together en bloc and hoping they reconnect with the use of various conduits and stimulants. There is some surgeon in Italy I believe who has received a lot of publicity for planning a head transplant. I believe the best case scenario is that the man's head will survive but he will have no control over the body.

Human Head Transplants Now Possible, Italian Neuroscientist Says (VIDEO) | HuffPost

 

[kitsunepixie]

After doing a few brachial plexus nerve transfers lately I think that Ghost in the Shell is more likely to be the reality.

 

[astrolotl]

You are probably the perfect time to be a pioneer in full brain transplant. It will almost certainly happen in the next 10-15 years, so that gives you time for 4 years of med school and 7 years of neurosurgery residency + 1 year transplant fellowship.

I haven't been able to find a transplant fellowship? Would I be searching outside of neuro-fellowships?

 

[kitsunepixie]

Somebody may not know when he/she is being trolled...

 

[astrolotl]

Somebody may not know when he/she is being trolled...

And I was seriously excited lmao