• Question: Is it possible to have a **brain** transplant?

    Asked by anon-202379 to Matthew on 4 Mar 2019.
    • Photo: Matthew Smith

      Matthew Smith answered on 4 Mar 2019:


      This is definitely not my area of expertise but i’ll give it a go!

      As far as i’m aware we are incredibly far away from transplanting an entire brain. The biggest challenge is that the brain has millions of things called nerves, which act as roads to pass signals from different parts of the brain to each other but also through a large nerve, called the spinal cord, to the rest of the body. In order for a transplant to succeed we would need to make the nerves of the new brain to connect with the host body which is very hard to do. There are also other obstacles to consider, such as how the body would react to effectively a completely different computer processor and whether you would even be the same person afterwards as all you memories etc will be almost definitely lost.

      What is more likely to be possible in the nearer future is to ‘add’ brain stem cells. Stem cells are cells that have the power to become other cell types. So for examples, if someone has a stroke and part of the brain is injured beyond normal repair, it is possible that these stem cells could replace the old, damaged cells and make the brain healthy again.

      So i guess the answer is it’s not possible, but there may be ways we can do something kind of similar soon!

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