Why is transplanting a specific intact brain impossible if it is generally possible?
In the near future Science Fiction novel I am writing, the personality and memory of a person are transferred to an artificial brain after a fatal accident, creating an artificial intelligence with the personality and memories of an actual person.
- Reading out the personality and memories of a person from their brain requires that the brain is intact, for otherwise parts of the personality or memories would have been lost and the artificial copy would be incomplete.
The artificial brain is then placed into a real human body.
- This step requires medical technology that would also allow to transplant a human brain, because if a computer can be connected to the nervous system of a human body, then a human brain can be connected to the nervous system of a human body with the same procedure.
In my story, the original brain cannot be kept alive and the creation of the artificial copy is the only way that person can survive.
But this narrative necessity creates a plot hole:
If the brain was intact (so that the personality and their memories could be 'read out') and transplantation to a new body would have been possible, why did the physicians decide to implant an artificial brain instead of transplanting the original?
I need a medical or technical solution to this logical contradiction. I don't want there to be an immoral decision (e.g. reading out the personality destroys the brain and the 'evil' scientists chose to kill a person to test their experimental technology). The scientists in my story want to help the person, and transferring the personality is the best they can do to keep the person 'alive'.
I'm using the science-based tag to signal that I need an answer that appears scientifically plausible and doesn't employ hand-waving or magic. I want a solution to my problem that a neuroscientist might find reasonable.
One possible answer is that the receiving body rejects the donated brain, as often happens in actual organ transplantation, but I would prefer to be able to use the person's own body or a clone of it as recipient of the artificial brain.
Note.
The question is not about the technology required to "download" the personality from the brain or how an artificial emulation of that downloaded personality might work. Please consider these as given.
This post was sourced from https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/q/152704. It is licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0.
2 answers
It is an interface issue. Your technology has one step that converts the brain to computer data
Reading out the personality and memories of a person from their brain requires that the brain is intact, for otherwise parts of the personality or memories would have been lost and the artificial copy would be incomplete.
It has a second step that connects that computer data to to a prepared body.
The artificial brain is then placed into a real human body.
You don't say if the "real body" is a clone or a donor body (ethical consideration ignored)
As your artificial brain is an improvement on the original human brain. Your artificial brain is able to identify and orginize the correct connection for each communicating nerve. This task would be impossible for the human surgeon connecting an organic brain.
In short, because the artificial brain is connected in mass to the spinal nerves, and it figures out on it's own what goes where.
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The brain is malfunctioning, it perhaps contains a brilliant intelligence or valuable information, but the dopamine receptors respond abnormally.
The artificial brain to which it is uploaded is designed to correct such unbalanced perception and thinking and so the mind is enabled to re-write it's own thinking on a new and more reality-based perceptual basis, thus developing a paradigm of cognition more conducive to socialisation and "good-will" to all.
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