

Can a brain be preserved and uploaded in to a synthetic body ? Image Credit: CC BY 2.0 Allan Ajifo

A $100,000 prize is being offered to anyone who can successfully preserve a fully functional human brain.

The competition, which is being held by The Brain Preservation Foundation, requires that a human brain be kept in full working order for 100 years without sustaining damage or degradation.The ultimate goal of the exercise will be to make it possible to bring someone back from the dead by transplanting their preserved brain in to a new synthetic body at some point in the future.Participants are urged to begin by finding a way to preserve the brains of animals before eventually developing a surgical procedure that will enable the long-term preservation of a human brain.Two competitors are currently working towards claiming the prize - one is postdoctoral researcher Shawn Mikula at the Max Planck Institute for Medical Research in Heidelberg, Germany while the other is a California-based company called 21st Century Medicine.Mikula is hoping to achieve preservation using a chemical fixing process while 21st Century Medicine is attempting to accomplish the same thing using cryopreservation.Whether their goal is even achievable with today's technology however remains to be seen."I am virtually certain that mind uploading is possible," said Brain Preservation Foundation president Ken Hayworth. "We are destined to eventually replace our biological bodies and minds with optimally designed synthetic ones."