Researchers were able to isolate blood flow to the brain, separate that brain from the rest of the body, and use a new device to keep the brain alive and functioning.
The article does say that, but the source paper the article links to says this in the Abstract:
Thus, we set out to mechanically render cerebral hemodynamics fully regulable to replicate or modify native pig brain perfusion. To this end, blood flow to the head was surgically separated from the systemic circulation and full extracorporeal pulsatile circulatory control (EPCC) was delivered via a modified aorta or brachiocephalic artery. This control relied on a computerized algorithm that maintained, for several hours, blood pressure, flow and pulsatility at near-native values individually measured before EPCC. Continuous electrocorticography and brain depth electrode recordings were used to evaluate brain activity relative to the standard offered by awake human electrocorticography. Under EPCC, this activity remained unaltered or minimally perturbed compared to the native circulation state, as did cerebral oxygenation, pressure, temperature and microscopic structure. Thus, our approach enables the study of neural activity and its circulatory manipulation in independence of most of the rest of the organism.
And nothing whatsoever about physically removing the brain from the body. It’s teeechnically separated from the body’s circulatory system - with the experimental, artificial connection replacing the natural one between tthe body’s circulatory system and the brain’s blood flow - but that really seems to be it.
The article is extremely misleading and only barely connected to the actual study, in short.
I’m personally gonna add Popular Mechanics to my internal list of pop sci rags that can’t be trusted.
I wonder if that has implications for drug application… from my memory I believe a common challenge for brain diseases is that most drugs cannot cross the BBB, but if they’ve made a bypass…
It’s a blood vessel bypass to the whole brain, the BBB is between blood vessels inside the brain and brain tissue.
The implication for drugs, is in drug research: normally a drug will get spread all over the body, particularly passing through the liver, which metabolizes all it can, followed by the kidneys, which piss out all they can… so it isn’t easy to estimate how much of a given drug actually gets to the brain.
With a bypass, they can inject drugs directly into the brain, and see how they work without “interference” from the rest of the body.
They didn’t separate the brain from the body, only made a brain blood bypass.
Guess that wouldn’t’ve made for a sensational enough title.
You missed part of the quote
The article does say that, but the source paper the article links to says this in the Abstract:
And nothing whatsoever about physically removing the brain from the body. It’s teeechnically separated from the body’s circulatory system - with the experimental, artificial connection replacing the natural one between tthe body’s circulatory system and the brain’s blood flow - but that really seems to be it.
The article is extremely misleading and only barely connected to the actual study, in short.
I’m personally gonna add Popular Mechanics to my internal list of pop sci rags that can’t be trusted.
Ah, thank you. I did not read the original source.
Are you sure? Based on the article, how exactly did they “separate” it?
Could’ve been the journo. Could’ve been one of the editors.
I wonder if that has implications for drug application… from my memory I believe a common challenge for brain diseases is that most drugs cannot cross the BBB, but if they’ve made a bypass…
It’s a blood vessel bypass to the whole brain, the BBB is between blood vessels inside the brain and brain tissue.
The implication for drugs, is in drug research: normally a drug will get spread all over the body, particularly passing through the liver, which metabolizes all it can, followed by the kidneys, which piss out all they can… so it isn’t easy to estimate how much of a given drug actually gets to the brain.
With a bypass, they can inject drugs directly into the brain, and see how they work without “interference” from the rest of the body.