The Brain Research Lab - The First Decade
Dr. Robert White has published several hundred papers over the course of his scientific career, a mountain of publication that would take weeks to read in full. As a public service, we’ve compiled his greatest hits, a short guide to how to do your own total body monkey transplants at home (provided you have a couple million dollars and a full medical staff handy).
Synopsis: Michelangelo is supposed to have responded to a question about how he was able to create his masterful sculpture with the answer: “It’s simple, I simply remove all the marble which is not David.” The procedure described in this paper is very similar, except that it involves removing all the monkey which is not brain. The isolated brains of smaller animals were supported by the circulatory system of beefy “donor” monkeys via a shunt on the donor monkey’s femoral artery and vein. Venous and arterial oxygen and carbon dioxide ratios were measured in order to establish that the detached brain was metabolically active. EEG recordings on the parietal and occipital lobes of the isolated brain confirmed that electrical activity persisted – despite the obvious absence of sensory input. When perfusion was stopped after an hour or two, so did the electrical activity.
Synopsis: Very similar to the 1963 article, except that the large “donor monkey” was replaced with a small “disk oxygenator” to re-oxygenate the blood, and a pump was used to circulate it. Because there was no liver in the loop (unlike in the 1963 procedure), increasing lactate levels made the blood gradually more acidic, which after a few hours resulted in the cessation of electrical activity. Despite the short term nature of these experiments, the authors remained optimistic, concluding that “In spite of the self-limiting design of these experiments and the eventual development of reduced biological function, this investigation demonstrates for the first time the feasibility of the protracted survival of the sub-human primate brain as a totally isolated organ, solely supported by a mechanical circulation system.”
Synopsis: Similar to the first procedure again, but with dogs instead of monkeys. After the brain from one animal was isolated, it was transplanted into the body of another animal. You’d think the natural place to put a transplanted brain would be in the head of the recipient, but since connecting the new brain to the old spinal cord is impossible anyway, the authors in this case found it more convenient to place the donor brain in the recipient’s neck. Of course, neither brain realized they were sharing the same circulatory system with the other. How embarrassing. Wait, what’s that lump in your neck?
Synopsis: You’ve heard the stories about people drowning in ice-cold water and then being revived an hour later with no problems? This paper is kind of like that, except that maybe an artic shark is involved so that when you are revived you are somehow missing your body. Isolated dog heads were cooled slowly to approximately 2 degrees centigrade, kept on ice for a period of hours, and then slowly warmed in a microwave.
No, just kidding! They were actually warmed by connecting the decapitated head to the circulatory system of a donor animal. I can’t believe you actually thought they were warmed in a microwave, that’s crazy. Once again oxygen and carbon-dioxide levels were used to establish that the resuscitated brain was metabolically active, and EEG patterns and pupillary responses were found to be relatively normal – even after the brain had been stored without circulation for up to four hours. If you think this sounds like fun, you want to try it for a longer period of time (say until the year 2350), and you’re not deterred by the fact that these researchers were unable to revive their brains after more than four hours, feel free to click here. Or better yet, you can PayPal me, and I’ll make sure everything is taken care of when the time comes.
Synopsis: Just what it sounds like. Despite the EEG evidence that the isolated brains in the earlier procedures were still active, the authors decided that transplanting the whole head was the only definitive way to prove that a brain could survive the process of being connected to a donor circulatory system. So they removed the heads of both monkeys and sewed the head of one onto the neck of the other. Of course, all the king’s horses and all the king’s men can’t put a severed spinal cord back together, so even though they were able to connect all the necessary piping, there was nothing they could do about the wiring, and the animal remained a paraplegic. The million dollar question, of course, is whether they gave that monkey a new head or a new body.
[Here is a link to the National Geographic video. Warning - it's pretty gory!]
Related Feature - “Interview: Robert White, MD PhD” by Jake Reimer