• Question: do you think you or other scientists will ever be able to create the perfect brainy in the futurehy.

    Asked by pea to Kylie, Matt, Bex, RobB, Sam on 13 Jun 2016.
    • Photo: Matt Dunn

      Matt Dunn answered on 13 Jun 2016:

      Brain scientist here!

      I’m guessing by the ‘perfect brain’ you either mean creating a brain in the lab that is identical to the ones we have in our heads, or creating a literally ‘perfect’ brain, which never suffers from disease and never loses memory?

      The future is a tricky thing to predict, and I think if you look at where we were 50 years ago, that nearly anything is possible in the future. The brain might be the most complex object in all of science, but given enough time anything can be done!

    • Photo: Kylie Belchamber

      Kylie Belchamber answered on 21 Jun 2016:

      Good question,
      I think that it is really hard, as we don’t understand much about the brain yet, but theoretically it is possible! We can create simple organs, like ears and blood vessels in the lab at the moment, and while that is quite hard we have managed! So give it another 50 years, like Matt said, and we might be able to!

      The question is, what makes this brain conscious? Would it have its own personality and be able to think like us? What would it think? And could we put it in a body and make a new lab grown human? I’m not sure if we could, or even if that is something we should be doing ethically! Definitely something to think about 🙂

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