Here’s why some people choose cryonics to store their bodies and brains after death

The vision of immortality has fascinated humanity for centuries, but for some scientists and technology enthusiasts, it has ceased to be merely the domain of science-fiction literature. At the center of this controversial field stands cryonics — the process of deep-freezing human bodies or brains alone in the hope that future technology will allow for their restoration to life. While for many this sounds like a desperate attempt to cheat destiny, for people like L. Stephen Coles, it was a deliberate decision based on years of research into human longevity.

The Gerontologist's Final Experiment

L. Stephen Coles was no random figure in the world of science. As an esteemed gerontologist, he spent a significant part of his professional career studying the mechanisms of aging and searching for ways to extend human life. When he was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer in 2014, Coles decided to undergo the very procedure he had analyzed for years. Shortly after his death, his brain underwent cryopreservation, becoming the subject of unique research into neural structures preserved at extremely low temperatures.

Coles' decision sheds new light on the motivations of those choosing cryonics. It is not just about the fear of the end, but about scientific curiosity and faith in linear technological progress. Securing brain tissue aims to protect the connectome — the complete map of neural connections, which many researchers believe constitutes the physical record of our personality, memories, and identity. In Coles' case, his brain became his final contribution to the field to which he dedicated his life.

Freezing Technology vs. Biology

The process of cryopreservation is a complex medical-technical procedure that must begin almost immediately after a patient's death is pronounced. The key challenge is not the freezing itself, but avoiding cellular damage caused by ice crystals. To prevent this, blood and bodily fluids are replaced with special cryoprotectants, leading to a state called vitrification — the transformation of tissues into a glass-like structure without the formation of destructive ice.

• Vitrification: A process that prevents the crystallization of water in cells during freezing.
• Liquid Nitrogen: The medium in which bodies and brains are stored at a temperature of approximately -196 degrees Celsius.
• Dewars: Specialized vacuum containers used for the long-term storage of "patients."

Despite technical advancements, cryonics remains fraught with enormous risk. Currently, we do not possess the technology that would allow for the safe thawing of an organ as complex as the human brain without causing irreversible damage. Critics point out that the vitrification process, while protecting against ice, may itself be toxic to delicate protein structures over the long term.

Why the Brain and Not the Whole Body?

The choice to preserve only the brain, as L. Stephen Coles did, is an increasingly common practice within the cryonics community. The reasoning for such a solution is twofold: technical and philosophical. From a technical perspective, it is much easier to precisely saturate a smaller organ with protective agents than an entire, diseased body. The brain is also better protected by the skull from potential mechanical trauma during transport to the storage facility.

From the perspective of the future, proponents of this method assume that if humanity masters the technology to restore consciousness, recreating a biological body (or integrating the brain with a synthetic carrier) will be a mere formality. The key is to preserve the "software," i.e., the data stored in the structure of the synapses. This is why the research on Coles' brain is so significant — it allows for an assessment of how effectively today's freezing methods are able to secure this biological database against degradation.

"For a scientist dealing with longevity, death is merely a technical problem waiting to be solved. Cryopreservation is a ticket to a future where this problem may no longer exist."

Modern science views cryonics with distance, but also with growing interest in the context of brain mapping. Although we cannot revive frozen tissues today, progress in electron microscopy and artificial intelligence allows for increasingly accurate scanning of preserved structures. This, in turn, brings us closer to the moment when we can at least verify whether the hopes placed in brain freezing have any basis in physical reality.

Analyzing the case of L. Stephen Coles and the development of cryogenic technologies, one can hypothesize that cryonics is evolving from a form of "secular burial" toward a specific type of biological data bank. Even if it is never possible to revive frozen individuals, their preserved brains could serve as an invaluable source of information about the architecture of the human mind for future generations of researchers and AI systems. The true success of this field may not be physical resurrection, but the transfer of information contained in neurons to new, more durable carriers.