Could Slime Mold Genes Enable Physical Connection Between Two Brains?

[NeedBioInfo]

Do you think it would be possible to use slime mold genes to make one brain physically connect up to another brain? (To form one organ) Could you give info on that here?

anyways if you want to give insight or anything please do so...it's 3:00 am though lol so I'm going to go to sleep soon

 

[Astronuc]

Why would one want to 'connect' one's brain to another?

I doubt that is feasible, given the senstivity electro-chemical nature of the brain.

How would one connect corresponding regions of the brain?

How to balance in and outgoing electrical impulses - thoughts?

I would doubt slime mold proteins are compatible with the brain (human brain).

 

[NeedBioInfo]

I haven't thought about everything but I wanted to use slime mold genes to make the brain of one multi-cellular organism (eg a cat) connect up to another brain (of the same type of organism?) because slime molds can connect up to each other to form one organism. I wanted a thorough explanation as to how to do that...although at the time I may have just said "organ" instead of "brain"

Anyways, this is the information I got as to how to accomplish that

First, you will need to contruct a protein expression cassette. To do so, the gene of interrest you have to be inserted after two specific DNA region. the first region would control the expression of the protein in a specific tissue and the other region would be the signal protein sequence required for proper localization of the protein in a specific the cellular area. Once this is constructed and inserted in the proper vector, the organism can be transformed.

You would have to get the slime mold gene into the right part of the genome
so that it is only expressed in the cells outside the organ in question. Hypothetically this should be possible since certain regions in the genome are turned on and off in different cells, so if you put this gene in a postion which is only transcribed by thse cells there shouldn't be a problem.

I wanted to know if it would be possible for brains (Which haven't developed together) to physically connect up to each other (At this point in time) for SO many reasons

I don't know if that would be feasible, given the senstivity electro-chemical nature of the brain, etc maybe you could give me more info on that

I don't know how we could connect corresponding regions of the brain, but if we could get one brain to connect to another brain maybe we could find out an answer to the above question

I don't know how balancing in and outgoing electrical impulses/thoughts would work...

I'm basically talking about the two organs becoming one

Maybe somebody could give some insight as to whether or not slime mold proteins would be compatible with the human brain

thanks

Anyways any insight/information somebody provides would be appreciated, thanks

 

[hypatia]

Slime mold has 2 stages..it eats and then spores. If it can't find food, it moves to a new location. It would not just hang out on a brain, unless the brain had something to offer it.
Even if you did manage to connect the two, there would be no exchange of information from one brain to the other. As Astro pointed out there is a electro-chemical nature of the brain, which slime mold doesn't have.

 

[cronxeh]

You need angiogenesis and the whole piping - nerves. I'm guessing depending on what you want to enhance in the brain you'd probably need nerves for that. My wild guess, for learning and expansion of consciousness and brain capacity, etc, you'd need Optic CN II (vision), Olfactory CN I (smell), Vestibulocochlear CN VIII (orientation, motion, hearing), and throw in Vagus CN X there for taste. Dont forget to perfuse the additional brain, maintain favorable pH in membranes and transport processes, and of course you'd probably need to increase the amount of antibiotics and rbcs and wbcs in the body to support the new brain

god is so going to be pissed at this

 

[Math Is Hard]

Slime mold has 2 stages..it eats and then spores. If it can't find food, it moves to a new location. It would not just hang out on a brain, unless the brain had something to offer it.
Even if you did manage to connect the two, there would be no exchange of information from one brain to the other. As Astro pointed out there is a electro-chemical nature of the brain, which slime mold doesn't have.

What young Dr. Frankenstein wants, is not to attach slime mold to a brain, but to make brain cells behave like slime mold. But the proposal makes no sense to me. A brain "hooking up" with another brain? I think the OP got a little carried away after watching that fanciful National Geographic "Extraterrestrial" special with the slime mold like organisms.

This thread (and this one) is upsetting me. I have a bad feeling this is some teenager planning to set up a little lab in his basement to experiment on hapless neighborhood cats.

 

[NeedBioInfo]

I don't want to do any experiments with cats/animals...I just want some answers. I like animals. If somebody said it was possible to do what I wanted to do, and so on, then okay yes hypothetically I would maybe want some sort of experiments with animals done regarding that...but I would want any animal experiments (Especially ones involving me in some way) to be legal and humane as possible, etc. Plus if the experiments (Especially ones involving me in some way) are going to be done on animals who were going to be experimented on anyway, it's sort of like, whatever, they were screwed to begin with. And while I support animal rights and so on, I wouldn't act like PETA, who in my opinion breaks into labs and so on to "rescue" animals

 

[NeedBioInfo]

One thing you said was "but to make brain cells behave like slime mold. But the proposal makes no sense to me." Did you say that because you think it would be impossible to use slime mold genes to do/achieve what I was proposing? I sort of want to hear your thoughts/insight on this if you have any. I'm not sure if you completely understand my proposal though- I think you may have misunderstood it or something- but I can always elaborate on it later

 

[amcavoy]

Assuming someone's knowledge?

 

[NeedBioInfo]

Apparently the above comment was made in regards to this:

The discussion was essentially about connecting minds together. By assuming knowledge, I meant that if two minds could in fact be connected, then information could be transferred between them.

I asked the other person for clarification about the above comment and that's the clarification they gave me...hopefully that helps to diminish any confusion that was caused by the above comment

 

[DocToxyn]

The problem you are facing is that it is most likely not a single protein in the slime mold genome that is responsible for the ability of these organisms to "hookup", but a whle host of communication and interactions that takes plae. I would assume that it's a rather complex process even for such a "simple" species. Even if you were somehow able to identify the key players in this process, it's not just the process that's at work, but it's also the environment. The simple organization of the slime mold enables it to permit such melding but the human brain is way to complicated to make anything even close to this a viable experiment.

I'll post this in the other thread just to complete the series

 

[NeedBioInfo]

So do you think it would pretty much be 100% impossible, even in, for example, 100 years? It just seems like, theoretically, you could "program" a brain to do that with the right genetic tinkering

 

[NeedBioInfo]

Somebody did say this though:

The problem with your idea is that other muticellular organism are already connected. People uses the slime mold as a model organism to understand why multiorganism connect and form organs. So if you express the slime molds gene, you might express genes that are already in the organism and you will not see an results.

 

[somasimple]

Hi all,

I do not want to be connected to/by these fungi
Slime Molds

It would be more pleasent to use neurons (which have a pretty long axon).

 

[NeedBioInfo]

Except it wouldn't be the actual mold making the connections...it would be our cells or something acting like mold and making the connections as a result

 

[somasimple]

Thus,

Neurons are made for that!
Several thousand connections are made every second in brain.
Length of a axon (wire of a neuron) may reach a meter long and it is designed for the job.

 

[zoobyshoe]

The discussion was essentially about connecting minds together. By assuming knowledge, I meant that if two minds could in fact be connected, then information could be transferred between them.

It seems obvious to me that no two minds would be compatible, and that this kind of forced connection would just result in a clash in which both minds would be degraded, if not destroyed. You are assuming that information automatically accumulates whereas it actually often conflicts.

You've also ignored the emotional component, which is brain-based, in the diencephalon. Imagine the havoc it would create in your mind to suddenly have a second, but equally powerful, emotional reaction to everything occurring on top of your native one. Trying to sort them out would paralyse you, or drive you insane.

 

[NeedBioInfo]

Could you somehow make two minds compatible/nearly compatible with each other via genetic engineering and other things?

Somebody said that, with the slime mold genes,you might be able to repattern the two tissues so that they integrate

 

[zoobyshoe]

Tissue compatibility isn't the issue. You missed my point.

No two people tie their shoes the same way. Immagine trying to tie your shoes two ways at once.

 

[NeedBioInfo]

Couldn't there, hypothetically, be some way to make two or more people's minds compatible with each other?

Wouldn't there at least be some way to deal with the destructiveness of the incompatibility in regards to this situation, even if the incompatibleness couldn't be turned into compatibleness?

Anyways, thanks

 

[zoobyshoe]

What's your goal in the first place? What's the advantage you imagined combining two minds would have? What is it you think would be communicated that isn't already accomplished by verbal communication?

 

[NeedBioInfo]

Okay well let's say you could physically make two brains into one organ
And let's say the body those two brains were in could support them both, at once
Hypothetically, you could extend the life of, for example...a mouse...a cat...whatever...by connecting it's brain up to another brain because by doing that, you could (hypothetically) give the owner of the brain in question a new body and a new brain that would essentially (in theory) allow it to continue even after it's old brain became obselete/dead.

I mean there's a lot of problems with that entire hypothetical proposal/idea, I was just interested in it that's all

And of course, if you could make it so that two brains could physically connect up to each other, the method that could be used to accomplish that and so on would no doubt be interesting to people who study the brain (of mice or men)

I wasn't just talking about two minds connecting to each other;
I was talking about two brains connecting to each other to form one organ

Theoretically a lot could be possible since we don't know everything about the brain and we don't know everything about genetics..

 

[Fractal Freak]

Given that the brain consists of 100 million neurons and over 100 billion synapses and on each synapse there could be over 20,000 receptor sites (you get the idea), I believe that it is WAY too intricate and complex to conquer such a feat. The idea behind "linking up" or "communicating" to one another, would entail the anatomy of a thought, and seriously what the hell does that consists of?

 

[NeedBioInfo]

But the brain makes all those connections within itself so it doesn't seem so far-fetched that it could make those connections with another brain