Description

This course uses popular sci fi tropes made real as a vehicle for teaching science and strengthens the ability to discriminate wild claims from sound ideas. Can disembodied brains survive and function? Yale’s BrainEx system kept post-mortem pig brains alive and Yale spinoff Bexorg seeks organ donations of whole human brains for research; can they awaken, become conscious or suffer? Do they have rights? CorticalLabs has 800,000 human neurons on a chip with cloud subscriptions. What about chimeras, animal-human hybrids, with implanted human brain organoids/neurons? Virtual brains? Mind uploading? Join us for a fascinating tour of the science, technologies and bioethics.