@arielzj.bsky.social
Neuroscientist, author | Book out now on brain preservation as a means of life extension: https://www.arielzj.com/the-future-loves-you | Currently a postdoctoral fellow in @conscious_tlab
On this evening!
18.11.2025 00:07 — 👍 1 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0
Come along if you're at SfN on Monday next week!
#SfN25
Come along if you'll be at SfN!
07.11.2025 01:23 — 👍 1 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0
Remembering past winners and nominations for the Aspirational Neuroscience Awards!
05.11.2025 01:00 — 👍 1 🔁 2 💬 0 📌 0
Memory Decoding advances nominated for 2025 Aspirational Neuroscience Awards!
05.11.2025 22:06 — 👍 0 🔁 2 💬 0 📌 0It comes up most often in the context of dementia, but by no means exclusively - also noted for patients unresponsive due to all sorts of other conditions
24.10.2025 05:01 — 👍 2 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0
If people with advanced dementia really do sometimes cognitively recover just before death, i.e. terminal lucidity is real, it means that even severely damaged brains can have their function restored.
It's crazy that science hasn't investigated this properly yet
open.substack.com/pub/preservi...
If people with advanced dementia really do sometimes cognitively recover just before death, i.e. terminal lucidity is real, it means that even severely damaged brains can have their function restored.
It's crazy that science hasn't investigated this properly yet
open.substack.com/pub/preservi...
Sydney people:
I'm giving a talk at #SXSWSydney on Mon afternoon hosted by Tom Nash focusing on survey results of hundreds of neuroscientists on their thoughts about the feasibility of brain preservation for eventual uploading.
Come check it out!
www.sxswsydney.com/lineup?date=...
Sydney people:
I'm giving a talk at #SXSWSydney on Mon afternoon hosted by Tom Nash focusing on survey results of hundreds of neuroscientists on their thoughts about the feasibility of brain preservation for eventual uploading.
Come check it out!
www.sxswsydney.com/lineup?date=...
When writing a chapter on how optogenetics enables memory manipulation (forced recall, erasure, etc), I was shocked that there were no popular science books that already covered the topic.
I'm glad to see that's finally been remedied! Very much excited to read this.
New #preprint out! In this paper @naotsuchiya.bsky.social and I take a look at the current debate on theories of #consciousness from a #meta-theoretical standpoint, and we argue that there is an ongoing process of #schismogenesis in consciousness science. [1/n]
www.researchgate.net/publication/...
"I'd accepted losing my husband, until others started getting theirs back"
open.substack.com/pub/preservi...
I think basically all philosophers concerned with (potential) AI welfare also care about factory farming, let alone also human suffering in Sudan, Myanmar and other places in addition to Gaza? Surely being concerned about one issue doesn't preclude others?
26.08.2025 06:36 — 👍 1 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0
Melbourne people, I'll be giving a talk at the @wheelercentre.bsky.social tomorrow.
It's part of the Now or Never festival's theme this year: "I HAVE SEEN THE FUTURE" - very on topic for my book!
nowornever.melbourne.vic.gov.au/event/twc-ta...
However much you appreciate sewers, it's not enough. Great piece on how our lives have gotten less shitty throughout history.
www.asimov.press/p/sewers?r=4...
@spencrgreenberg.bsky.social grilled me on:
1. Why do humans live 80 years, instead of 20 or 300?
2. How has the understanding of death changed over time?
3. If someone walks into a teleporter, who comes out the other end?
Was a great discussion!
podcast.clearerthinking.org/episode/276/...
Eating a delicious lunch is definitely the right place to make the case for an unlimited lifespan.
Great piece by Cass Knowlton in @theageaustralia.bsky.social on my work and how it might help people enjoy great food indefinitely
www.theage.com.au/national/vic...
"The treatment works like this: doctors use a modified teleporter that targets just one cubic centimeter of brain tissue at a time. That tiny chunk gets scanned, disintegrated, and instantly rebuilt in the exact same spot - minus any disease proteins."
open.substack.com/pub/preservi...
Top left: Flies were dorsally fixed to a rod and placed on an air-supported ball. Isoflurane was administered through a rubber hose. Top right: Local field potentials (LFPs) are obtained during wakefulness and anesthesia using linear multi-electrode arrays inserted laterally into the fly brain. Bottom left: At a given channel and time-series feature, they compute feature values for every epoch from each fly (each entry in the image plot corresponds to a scaled feature value from one epoch). Bottom right: As a weaker form of generalization, the authors also assess within-fly effect direction consistency by finding, for each wake epoch, the proportion of anesthesia epochs which have greater or lesser feature values.
Awake, asleep or drugged? This #PreRegistered study in flies by @naotsuchiya.bsky.social &co uses a data-driven approach to search for markers that can determine the individual performance of time-series features in distinguishing levels of #consciousness @plosbiology.org 🧪 plos.io/44xzIeE
14.07.2025 07:59 — 👍 9 🔁 4 💬 0 📌 0Do synapses come in analog or binary strengths? Come discuss tomorrow!
15.07.2025 11:13 — 👍 2 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0
Read the full outline of the Brain Preservation Foundation's plans for Standards and Accreditation here:
preservinghope.substack.com/p/setting-st...
To address this, the Brain Preservation Foundation intends to establish quality standards and an accreditation program to fill this gap, to help transition high-quality brain preservation from laboratory research into credible clinical practice.
3/4
Historically, there have been no standardized quality metrics or independent third-party evaluation of preservation providers, making it difficult for patients to assess different procedures or for the field to demonstrate scientific legitimacy.
2/n
If proponents of brain preservation/biostasis/cryonics want the field to become mainstream science, we need standards for what counts as a well-preserved brain. To become mainstream medicine, we need 3rd-party reviews and accreditation.
The Brain Preservation Foundation wants to make this happen
1/n
Join tomorrow 3 pm PDT! Systems consolidation reorganizes hippocampal engram circuitry - carboncopies.org/Events/Journ... #neuroscience #memory #decoding #hippocampus #consolidation
30.06.2025 22:36 — 👍 1 🔁 2 💬 0 📌 0
New paper showing cryopreservation & subsequent functional/electrophysiological recovery in both
1. hippocampal slices
2. partially in whole mouse brains (!)
Great discussion of how to deal with osmotic shrinkage too
www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...
Much more in the actual paper, including:
-general neuroscientists vs engram expert response breakdown
-timeline estimates for when whole-brain emulation might be possible
-discussion of caveats
6/6
dx.plos.org/10.1371/jour...
Despite disagreement, the community assigns substantial probability to long-term memories only depending on static brain structure preservable by modern brain preservation techniques.
Good news for those interested in brain preservation for life extension!
5/6
To take this further, we asked what probability neuroscientists thought
1) at least one memory could theoretically be decoded from static brain structure (i.e. a preserved brain)
2) all memories could theoretically be decoded, e.g. by making a whole-brain emulation
4/n
