Brain Preservation Foundation [link]
An organization calling itself the Brain Preservation Foundation is offering a cash prize, currently worth about $100,000, to anyone who can demonstrate the successful preservation of the connectome of a large mammalian brain. They also have an impressive web page. Does anyone here know anything else about them? Might they be worth donating to?
(Via David Brin.)
Was it on LessWrong that I recently saw someone working in this area point out that the connectome on its own is like an electronic circuit diagram with just the wires and none of the components? Neurons are known to be highly differentiated—it really does matter what’s attached to what.
Ken Hayworth who is affiliated with the BPF gave a talk on brain scanning and uploading at a Boston meetup last year. Someone videotaped that talk so there may be a copy floating around. My personal impression was that they were doing very impressive work. Hayworth was extremely open about the many technical obstacles in their way, and from his description it seems like something like preserving a connectome is much easier than scanning it in a detailed enough way.