Dr Hannah Critchlow of Cambridge University has offered the most hesitant support yet for the possibility of humans becoming immortal through future technology, saying that she thinks it's a possibility we could make a motherboard advanced enough.

"People could probably live inside a machine. Potentially, I think it is definitely a possibility," she said at Hay Festival where she was 'busting brain myths'.

I'm being silly - it's obviously quite understandable that Dr Critchlow would want to remain somewhat sceptical, given what an insanely complex circuit board the brain is.

She pointed out, though, that scientists are understanding it better and better, and so if a computer was one day able to recreate all the synapses of the brain then it would be feasible that we could technically live 'inside a machine'.

"If you had a computer that could make those 100 trillion circuit connections then that circuit is what makes us us, and so, yes, it would be possible," she said.

While it might one day be possible to download all of our thoughts, whether we would still truly exist is a matter for philosophy, with the nature of consciousness being something we may never be able to truly define, quantify and assess.