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.
