For more than two decades, Evan Balaban has honed his skills at manipulating embryonic tissue samples using tiny instruments of his own making. He can cut a small access window into a quail's egg, and using a scalpel no wider than a human hair, excise a few hundred thousand cells from the birds developing central nervous system. This is only the first step of the intricate process required to place this minuscule brain into another animal's head. Some of these surgeries end in untimely death for brain-transplanted embryos, but Balaban says he has elevated the typical survival rate from less than 20% to more than 60%. That was unimaginable in the 1950s, he says, when success was more along the lines of one or two in 1,000, and some researchers "were doing this with piano wire."But don't cue the maniacal laughter just yet. As much T.H. Morgan as it is Dr. Moreau, brain-swapping research is coming into its own, with the potential to answer questions other technologies can't, says Balaban.

This associate professor of behavioral neuroscience at McGill University in Montreal is unfazed by the contrast between the glitz of kindred work, such as stem cell implantation, and the whiff of gothic horror that accompanies his work.Far from being a throwback, he insists, brain swapping is "really working at the right level for answering a lot of interesting questions about brain development and behavior," and techniques are improving all the time. Not until two or three decades ago did biologists understand brain circuitry well enough to make good scientific use of brain transplants, though they have been technically feasible since H.G. Wells' time. Since then, researchers have swapped the brains of various species of frogs and salamanders, as well as ducks, in addition to the quails and chicks that Balaban uses. He plans on trying it on songbirds too.

View: Full Article | Source: The Scientist

Combine this with the study that memory exists through out all parts of the brain, even to resurface after trauma.
As long as a single brain cells exists that they can graft undifferentiated cells unto, perhaps that brian could exist indefinitely.
Perhaps an identical clone brain with memory could be made from a single brain cell, and the memory would go on and on.
Thousands of clones with similiar memories of the original brain and the early common ancestor clones

This has been technically feasable since the days of HG Wells? That's insane!

I'd like to see how this could help patients with extreme brain damage, not to mention the applications it could have with mental disorders. I'd tend to hope there are a lot more uses for this than raising an undead clone army.