Once this is granted, then brain science will have a more modest role in explaining why we do things, and an even smaller one in framing social policy.
Earlier this year, the Department of Defense awarded a $2 million grant to Brain Plasticity Inc. to study the effectiveness of Posit Science software in restoring memory and attention in victims of traumatic brain injury, or T.B.I.
We take it for granted that brain duplication will preserve the psychological properties normally relevant to reidentifying persons and we also take it for granted that the original brain continues to embody these properties even after it is duplicated.
While other research groups are being formed and funded through government granting agencies, Brain Backups hopes to crowdsource a great deal of its research costs by offering the future storage of all your neurons and synapses.
But it does more than that: it gives a shape to a process that we then might easily take for granted: can brains be "washed"?
(Corollary enigma: Is a status symbol a status symbol if no one else sees it?) Granted, as brain-imaging scans would surely reveal, the cerebellum's gift-receiving quadrant does not light up with quite the same intensity upon unwrapping a packet of black cashmere socks as it does upon finding, say, a gold Cartier Tank, no matter how they cushion one's sole.
MV has received honoraria and travel grants from Allergan, Greece, Brain Therapeutics, Greece and is an investigator in an Amgen-sponsored clinical trial on migraine prophylaxis.
This work was funded by BBSRC grant BB/G005044/1 and by an ERC grant StG 2012_311751 BrainReadFBPredCode (Brain reading of contextual feedback and predictions).
And how does a $400-a-month 400-a-montha brain drain? A. We try to find the gifted ones, where it would be a real pity if they dropped out.
M. Hillegers has received a grant from the Brain and Behaviour Research Foundation (NARSAD), the Netherlands Organisation for Health Research and Development, the European Union and speaker fees from Benecke and AstraZeneca.
