The revival of pigs’ brains inspires hopes – and fears | Kenan Malik

Scientists at Yale may not have found an answer to eternal life but they have advanced the frontiers of neuroscience

A team of neuroscientists at Yale School of Medicine, led by Nenad Sestan, last week reported that they had managed to revive brains from pigs that had been decapitated in an abattoir four hours earlier.

Well, "revive" in the sense of getting certain neurons to fire. This was no "brain in a vat" experiment. The brains were neither alive nor possessed consciousness.