I was against getting a brain transplant, but then I changed my mind.

imagine brain transplants though, one second youre flying through your windshield, the next youre waking up in a body that just isnt yours.

The brain transplant reminds me of that one Cyanide and Happiness short with patients repeatedly riding a motorcycle off a hospital roof because the same brain is being transplanted to other patients

I'm really glad to hear that the guy who had initially volunteered for the transplant is in a stable condition and married with kids. I can't fault him for having been interested in such an experimental procedure since I'm sure it's extremely difficult to handle having a degenerative illness, but I'm so happy to hear that he's doing well now.

My wife heard 22- headed dog, and I had to explain it was actually 20 2- headed dogs.....she was still horrified.

In January I would have thought this guy was a madman. In February I became more aquainted with my neighbor who has ALS. I learned he didn't have nearly as much care as he needed and i began helping 2-3 times a day. I took care of some simple medical and biological needs, basic meals and some... Herbology, which is legal in my state. My point is is that since Febuary his deteoration has been drastic. We just got him an EyeGaze device last week to help him speak. 2 weeks ago the family brought in hospice. If you asked him "Hey, man, do you want to volunteer for this crazy new experiment?" I think he would say yes. He knows he's dying, but if all he had was a few hours to play the drums again (he was amazing) I think he would take it.

If I recall correctly, Valery volunteered for this surgery for the reasons you mentioned - he had a pretty well informed and realistic attitude toward it. As someone with a chronic illness, while I don't think I can fully fathom what volunteering for something for this would be like, I did relate at least to his attitude about it and what he said. I am so happy to hear that he is doing well, and found happiness. There are plenty of disabled folks with hot spouses, some of them have been generous enough to share their experiences of what life is like being a disabled person with a life and not merely a sad or "inspirational" story, which its pretty cool.

We can't even repair a severed spine, and people thought a head transplant was possible.

I just watched watched a video about consciousness in decapitated heads, and the algorithm sent me here 54 seconds after upload.

The spinal cord repair would change so much in the medical field. Once I see promising results on that we can talk of head transplants.

For anyone curious, KZfaq does indeed let people show the two headed dog in their videos. I've seen it posted here many times. Here's the rub: it will age restrict the video containing said two headed canine and probably not let you monetize it. "Old KZfaq" is still here, you just aren't gonna find that kind of content randomly anymore because it's all age restricted, which kills it in the algorithm, which is why this dude doesn't show it. Not a knock, most people these days making these slickly edited video essays aren't doing it purely out of passion lol. This is their job, or in some cases they're at least hoping to make it their job. Gotta pay for that production and pump that viewer count up! And I wouldn't have stumbled upon this video.

I have an "unusual" perspective on this because I've attended a surgical neuroseparation (beheading). I'm involved in cryonics, and once had an opportunity to assist (in a peripheral capacity) in the initial steps of a cryosuspension. The patient was a neuro (head only), so after the initial washout and cooling, where the patient is put in an ice bath and attached to a heart lung machine which is used to replace most of the blood with the initial cryoprotectants, it was time for, well, the beheading. I'm very aware of the common perception of cryonics, but having looked deeply into it, followed the research for decades, and gotten to know many of the key people involved, I'm an unflinching supporter. But even in the context of seeing it as a potentially lifesaving technology, the actual vertebrae separation was hard to watch. Heads aren't designed to come off, and it is NOT like in samurai movies! I'm proud to have been involved in a small way in giving this stranger a chance of living in the future, but if I ever meet him there he owes me a beer. I know that most people think that cryonicists are kooky, but while cryonics is speculative, but it makes sense if you accept the possibility/likelihood of the technology required to repair and receive cryonauts (yes, that's the term) being developed in the reasonable future. However, these people are claiming to be able to transplant heads TODAY, and that's provably bat shit crazy!

As someone in the medical field , the thought of being able to repair spinal damage would be world changing. This would save so many people from long term complications and deaths. Also, it would be a major step to other neurological conditions!

Even if you transplant the head perfectly onto the body, there is a high likelihood that the body will just reject the head. We need to first figure out how to make the body accept transplant organs without just using immunosuppressants.

I remember the face transplant. I am a emergency medical person, I had a nightmare that I had a scene where I had a decapitation that I was desperate to save. I woke up so confused and questioning everything I know. This is crazy to think someone is looking to do this with any urgency.

Wow super happy for the dude who was originally gonna get the head snip! Glad he found love :)

They probably do way more good with this by NOT actually performing head swaps, but with the knowledge and power to do so, they could repair spinal breaks that paralyze people. If you can reattach a spinal cord you've severed on purpose, you should be able to repair one that was accidentally severed. And THAT would be HUGE.

My brain has 2 cells left, and they're not in a committed relationship.

Being able to fix spinal cords alone would be monumental.

10:45 Eddie Izard’s stand up special was one of the funniest acts I’VE EVER SEEN! “Do you have a flag?” 😂😂😂😂😂

A year before Stephen hawking died I sent him a proposal to become the 1st head transplant. His assistant wrote back that Dr hawking liked it but declined. He sent me his last autographed book as his gift

"Yeah, he dropped out of the surgery." Good for Valery!!! That. Is. A. WIN!

Thanks for this video! I did a project on it back in 2015 and haven't heard anything more from it since, this was awesome to hear what happened since and where things kind of are. Great job, and super well done!

THANK YOU! I’ve been trying to follow this for years but have been lacking. Thank you!

When you described them “labeling” the nerves, muscle, and blood system, I can’t help but imagine them doing it like a car stereo using masking tape on each wire and a sharpie to label each connection 🤣

"Would you mind telling me who's brain I DID use?" "Abby.... Someone.."

I had been wondering this exact same thing one and off the past year or two. Now I know, thank you.

I was just wondering about this. Thanks, Joe.

I'm so glad he decided to tell people to skip forward rather than not talking about it at all

I don't know the clinical term, but almost 15 years ago, my shattered elbow was repaired using "nano sugar sticks" as an experiment here in Denmark. Only study i could find on it, was done on rats. Worked! Elbow has around 80% mobility

It's one thing to reconnect severed nerves in a complex pre-existing system. You are just reconnecting one part of a component to the other part of the same component. These parts have always existed together and have evolved working together to control the same system, so their functionality only depends on reconnecting the two ends so signals can pass through again. It's a completely different thing to take one part of one system and try to connect it to a completely different system, which has evolved completely separately, with a different control system (brain) and maybe completely different locations for all the connections. No two nervous systems are structurally the same at the cellular level, which is where the reconnection has to take place. The neural pathways from the brain to the muscle are completely different in each individual and the control strategies used by each brain to achieve the same outcomes are not only completely different in each individual but also continuously change over time. In the case of simply (relatively) reconnecting a severed spinal cord, you could reattach the larger structure with some kind of conductive medium at the join and it's possible that the appropriate nerve cells might reconnect because both ends of the same nerve would be reasonably close to each other in orientation. Sending signals down the nerve may reach the other appropriate end through the conductive medium and gradually the two ends might make a new connection. It's still rolling the dice, but if enough nerves make appropriate new connections, you might get some functionality back. The brain might also be able o work out new signal processes if nerves reconnect differently than before due to it's neuroplasticity, but I'm guessing there would need to be sufficient overlap of the two processes to salvage something. Obviously, we can't do that very successfully yet. Connecting a brain and spinal cord to a completely different nervous system would have to go through each axon and somehow identify which axon from the recipient spinal cord corresponded to an axon in the donor spinal cord, which may be located somewhere completely differently in the spinal cord or use a different combination of axons. There may not be a very good match between the nerve axons used for each task, their location or sensitivity to stimulus. Each spinal cord would have evolved separately with their own separate structures and processes for making things happen. It's a whole extra universe of complexity and the new brain would probably have to develop new control strategies for every single nerve in every single task, even if you were able to match up axons. It might be too different for the neuro-plasticity of a brain to adapt to. Soon, it may be easier to upload a humans brain patterns into a synthetic substitute - a synthetic brain and body.

That’s so weird! I wondered about this for the past 2 or 3 days! Thanks!

Great chatting to you via the medium of KZfaq Studio! 😅 We should get our heads together more often…

An issue I haven’t heard anyone talk about is that it’s gotta be a lot easier to find people that want a new body than to find people willing to donate their body. You’d have to find people that have just died whilst still having a body that can still be alive?

This was a very informative video and I really enjoy your sense of humor! 💐

I was just talking to my fiancé the other day, wondering what happened with this whole situation. Thank you for the extremely informative video. ❤

14:54 reattaching a spinal cord would be HUGE if true, because aside from the head transplant thing (actually it would even become minor compared to the following), healing the spinal cord would help thousands of quadriplegic people who had spinal injury 18:03 21:17

They can't even fix the bulging disc in my back & they are seriously talking about head transplants? 😂

Finally nice to see you again in my feed again!!

Thank god he didn't go through with it 🙏🏻 so happy for him and his family. I really was dreading what had happened to him at the start of this video x

I saw "censored for KZfaq" and immediately jumped over to Nebula to watch the uncensored version. I sure didn't need that while eating dinner.

In programming we call this a “two weeks project”

My body really really really wants a different head. So I'm very much looking forward to the breakthrough in this.

This was really good. Thanks for the wonderful info with a good laugh

I'm glad Valeriy has a new wonderful life. It may not be the life he expected to have, but it sounds like it's better than he hoped for.

“MY NAME IS FRANEKENSTEIN” made me bust out laughing. I must have seen that movie uncountable times cuz my first husband was obsessed with it and movies with that type of humor.

I was waiting for this answer for YEARS

Best one in a long time! Bravo...

I did a documentary of the first head transplant experiments in 1962 by Dr. White. His family gave me his original footage. I had the privilege of interviewing Dr. White on camera. The film DOES show graphic images of his experiments on monkies.

I can understand some people getting squeamish on the subject, but it is certainly nothing to lose your head over.

Joe 😂😂😂 the choir of you going “we knew” 🤣🤣🤣 gold ❤ love you lol

I can't be the only one who read the title and thought "I wonder how that guy did with his new body..."😂

A perfect video to watch right before going to bed, in a hospital, a day before a head transplant operation.

If my head was transplanted on another body, I would totally introduce myself as the person whose body I have and tell everybody they switched this smart head on me.

I have SEVERE nerve pain from a traumatic csection I had 20 years ago where at least one nerve was cut while I had surgery without anesthesia. I cant imagine the pain that would register on a body where all of your nerves had been cut and reconnected.

Great content and presentation. Great channel. 🇦🇺 😊

Just a side note here, I am overjoyed that you chose to use footage from Young Frankenstein instead of any of the other actual Frankenstein flicks. Well done.

There are worse things than death. Imagine surviving in Horror for 8 minutes post surgery ...

I feel like these sci-fi technologies that would need to be developed in order to successfully transplant a head would themselves solve most of the reasons anyone would _want_ a head transplant in the first place. Some kind of miracle nerve repairing technology would mean you could fix severed spinal columns, treat nerve-degenerating diseases, and transplant missing limbs or far better bionic prosthetics than we have today. Why transplant your head when you can much more easily repair your own body?

I've wondered about this from time to time

I find things like this surgery so funny. As a microbiologist I see this as a novelty with no practical use in the future. By the time the technology exists to perform this surgery, there will likely be methods to treat all or most of the ailments that this surgery would be used to treat, and it would be done without the extremely unnecessary risk.

15:39 “Canavero and all the other head cases” - subtle and sly so I love it!

Good to have you back on my feed ◼️

Great video. 😊

I'm relieved to know that Valery dropped out because his condition stabilized and that he found love. I was following this somewhat closely years back and the narrative seemed to be that medical professionals got to him and explained that: if he goes through with it, there's a potential for him to go completely insane and how it was going a fate worse than death lol... Also, I remember cavanero talking about this. He said something like, it's feasible to reduce the spinal cord in a way that it would be less work to reattach it but still maintain its functionality... The whole thing is just bonkers. This was such a cool video, I really enjoyed your insight into this because I was kinda wondering how all this panned out. It's been crickets for quite a few years.

Honestly the biggest problem isn’t the spinal cord issue - it would be rejection by the host’s immune system. You can easily die from just a mis-matched kidney transplant. There is no way a complex tissue system like an entire head could be stabilized and the immune system arrested enough to allow the organism to continue living. There are just too many cellular responses systems involved and rejection would be inevitable.

🤣 hahah. Subscribed. You had me in stitches.

Medlife Crisis is one of the most underrated channels on this platform. Glad to see him in this collab🙏🙏

“I ain’t got nobody….”

10:51 The Eddie Izzard reference takes me back! The OG's will remember. Anyone remember the stop motion Lego video on here that reenacted that whole part of his stand up show. Wow, gotta look that up again.

Absolutely loved the Eddie Izzard deep cut reference!! Cake or death?! Cake! Well we’re OUTTA CAKE! we didn’t expect such a rush!

Transplants such as these, combined with the recent eye transplant on a blind man could completely change millions of people's lives. (Until corruption and greed kick in and make it inaccessible for those who truly need it, of course.)

I will tell you that every time I'm in a major incident and I need stitches or Staples I request super glue. I do this because when I was 16 and I had stitches it's scarred really bad and I got violently ill after the stitches were removed. I was in a major accident about 2 years ago and I had a head contusion so I requested super glue. The doctor looked at me funny and I asked him what super glue was made for. I then asked him if he had medical grade super glue which he replied yes I do. He told me it was going to hurt and I told him I would rather a little pain now than a scar later. That contusion was bigger than the first one when I was 16 but you can feel the stitched contusion that was smaller and you can't even see or feel the spot where he super glued. The hair even grew back. My point is that cyanoacrylate is some amazing s***.

ADHD moment, I loved the Kepler 16b poster so much I looked it up only to find an entire collection on the NASA site. AMAZING! Great video as well!

I had heard about spinal cord severing and then reconnecting via stem cell infusions to stimulate the nerve reconnections and that they had some success. That may work in combination with the other ideas.

As someone with some expertise in this area and having spoken to neuroscientists who very specifically specialize in the mechanics of spinal cord injury and repair - this is PURE FANTASY - and will almost certainly never be possible. The reason for this is extremely simple - well there's two parts to it. The first part is understanding that humans develop their nervous systems by functional connections in practice - not by design/plan. Nerves don't 'go to' particular parts of the body when they're growing - instead a crapton of nerves get sent out in that direction - and they're going to hit the required targets at the end - but you have no idea beforehand which nerves will get to which targets. The central nervous system then operates backwards it needs to achieve a function and it'll obviously match and pair with the nerves that achieve that functional outcome. All those other nerves and neurons that don't achieve function? They die off over time - when we talk about your brain 'maturing' over time this is mostly what's being referred to just more periphery - where an absolutely massive proportion of your neurons are pruned leaving you with just the stuff you're actively using. So now think about the spinal cord.... Imagine cutting into a big fat communications cable, with literally MILLIONS of individual fibreoptic lines in it... and you have NO IDEA which one is which, you might have a decent idea where roughly something will be but if it's not 1:1 it's a potential disaster, it wont work... if you were to slice that giant cable perfectly, and then move it apart like 1mm using precise machines, then try to move it back to re-create a connection.... chances are even then you'd not get it exactly right. Now imagine if instead of a consistent and fairly durable communications cable you were dealing with floopy floppy squishy flesh goo that has a tendency to recede, move, leak, or begin to die when cut.... okay that seems near impossible even when you begin with a perfectly connected spinal cord... but what if they were totally different... if there was no way to position it to match 1:1 even hypothetically with magic involved. That's only one part though - what really takes it from 'inconceivable' to 'impossible' is the second part.... and that's material limits. To put it simply - our understanding of physics would have to be effectively completely wrong in order to allow for any material/tech that could bridge the gaps between neurons needing to be reconnected. It's the same issue that makes brain-machine-interfaces that can effectively restore function impossible. The required electrode density would have to break our understanding of chemistry completely in order to be possible. Neurons are not wires - they do not work in the same way wires do. Neurons don't have the same problems that wires do when it comes to interference or cross-talk, and the material requirements for what it takes to send particular levels of current and voltage would necessitate an amount of material that would make them functionally unusable due to scale.... and like... everything else... ahhh it's a bit big of a topic to summarize super concisely -.-... why do I do this 😆ah well just passionate about this stuff I guess and if you are too you've got enough so gonna go make food now lol

5:42 22-headed dogs - now that’s something to see!

i was also thinking about this thank you

Segueing from a video about head transplants to a sponsor read for a food company like a pro! 👏👏👏

This is fascinating. You did a great job of pulling out the logic from fantasy. I have had nerve ablation surgery to help with pain from late stage Lyme Disease. The amount medicine DOESN'T know about nerves was unsettling. "The nerves will find each other again somewhere between 3 months and 3 years from now. We don't like to sever the nerves from their source completely because they have a tendency to 'find' the wrong loose ends." This was at Stanford. My nerves found each other and got back to creating pain within 6 weeks. I declined further treatments. You are so right about the monkey who was claimed to have had a severed spinal cord repaired. I call bs. Yesterday, I was having a debate with a stranger online (as you do). This person was insisting that I treat my dog's renal failure with crushed pineapple instead of the medication from his vet. "Pineapple gets humans off dialysis!" Well, what are you doing online talking to me? Get on the horn with The Cleveland Clinic and put out the word that the kidney transplant list can be tossed in the trash! (eyeroll)

The engineer with the beautiful wife made me smile. I'm glad he chose her instead of being an experiment.

I randomly think about this and wonder about it. Thanks for the update 😆

This went right over my head

12:14 'HEAVEN protocol' I thought it was called that because it would take you there if you volunteered💀 Edit: holy cow 156 likes? Tysm!☆

I fall asleep to Joe Scott. Please believe me when I say this is the highest compliment I could give a KZfaqr. A voice that cradles me to sleep is like a warm blanket.

The doc at the end is probably right on how to do that as we can affix limbs back on around already somewhat.

The use of Eddie Izzard's "Cake or Death" joke is pure comedic genius.

As someone who struggles and has occasionally joked about needing a new body this video is particularly horrifying and fascinating. I'm going to be more careful about that kind of joke as I now realize there's always the chance one of my doctors might take me to seriously.

Intelligence is knowing that Frankenstein wasn't the monster, wisdom is knowing that he was.

The study of connection of spinal cord repair is intense work. Most rich ppl just want results without research. I'm scared for this humanity

As an IT professional, I can tell you this is insane. Not just the microsurgery and all that, each body defines its own neuro pathways to do everything. So, even if you make the biological parts work, the dude will likely go insane, as happened with face transplants. In other words, it's more like moving your Windows hard drive to new hardware than moving your Linux hard drive to new hardware. With Windows, the HW drivers and such specific to that system are in the OS. Linux is more general.

When Joe said that this is almost been a decade and I remember it like it was like three years ago my heart sank. I am old.

As a quadriplegic with a catastrophic spinal cord injury, I'm no stranger to constipation. Obviously being paralyzed makes it difficult to go number two. I remember following this case and upon hearing they were going to inject miralax into the guys spine, I kinda let my mind wander until I forgot the whole thing. Since I never heard any follow up story about a body transplant going successfully, I assumed something along the lines of what actually ended up happening. That Doctor Guy is absolutely terrifying though.

Did you see that Brainbridge had unveiled its concept for the head transplant system yesterday?

It’s definitely “body transplant.”

Since his cousin Tom retired at the end of 2023, these Joe Scott videos are the only way that I get my "low-key, off-beat, but informative video" fix. Love your work! :)

14:02 The spinal column is stabilized with expansion screws borrowed from the surgeon's aunt

The cake or death insert killed me. Bravo.

If you could do the microsurgery (or have the magic glue) necessary to attach a head and body, you could do the microsurgery (or have the magic glue) to repair a spinal cord. That would obviate a lot of cases where a "head transplant" would make "sense" (whatever "sense" could be made about this whole thing). But what about the other cases? Seems the rejection issues would be challenging or overwhelming.

I literally spat out my drink at the Eddie Izzard jump