A new cryopreservation technique that yesterday won the Small Mammal Brain Preservation Prize may be a step towards building exact replacements of our brains, according to renowned biomedical gerontologist Aubrey de Grey.

“I’ve been following [this research] with some care,” said de Grey, chief science officer and co-founder of SENS and an advisor for the UK Cryonics and Cryopreservation Research Network, in an interview today with Factor. “It’s fascinating and extremely valuable work”

Known as Aldehyde-Stabilized Cryopreservation, the technique, which was developed by 21st Century Medicine and published in the journal Cryobiology, involves injecting the brain with chemicals to preserve its structure, before freezing it to -135°C.

The technique was demonstrated on a rabbit’s brain, which was successfully thawed with negligible damage – a first in cryonics. However, there is a catch: the brain structure might be very well preserved, but it would be impossible for it to work again.

“Essentially what they did was they decided to explore a happy medium, a kind of compromise between on the one hand the ability to preserve the really microscopic structure of the brain, when taken down to very low temperatures,” explained de Grey.

“What they did was something that does not allow the brain to be warmed up again and have it work, but it does preserve the structure better than we currently can if we want to warm it up and have it work again.”

This may dismay cryonics enthusiasts who are keen for the technology to reach maturity as quickly as possible, however according to de Grey it could lead the research in a very different direction.

“The resuscitation of someone who has been cryopreserved may or may not, eventually in the future, be done by warming them up,” he said.

“Eventually people are looking at the possibility of reviving people from cryopreservation by scanning their brain and essentially rebuilding a new brain out of different atoms than the original ones, which has so precisely the same structure that it behaves in the same way, it is for practical purposes the same person. “

The brain scan would effectively create a very complex 3D digital model, which would be made into a replacement brain using an advanced version of the 3D bioprinters being developed today, and presumably be installed into a suitable replacement body. It’s a fascinating, albeit slightly creepy, notion that prompts a lot of questions.

“Of course there are loads of philosophical issues around whether that person really is the same person, and whether this really achieves the goals of cryonics, but some people think it does,” said de Grey.