Science & Technology

Scientists move one step closer to reviving a cryopreserved brain

By T.K. Randall
March 19, 2026 ·  1 comment

Image: AI-generated (Midjourney) Every year, thousands of people around the world (with enough money) sign up for cryopreservation - a method of freezing the human body or brain after death in the hope that, one day in the far future, science will have advanced enough to thaw them out, cure their ailments and restore them to life.

Entire facilities have sprung up containing countless rows of containment units housing such individuals whose remains wait at sub-zero temperatures for the day that they can live again.

Trouble is, nobody has actually figured out exactly how to revive someone from this state - typical cryopreservation tends to cause ice crystals to form inside and damage the body's delicate cells.

One way that scientists are attempting to avoid this problem is through a process known as vitrification which replaces water with a concoction of chemicals designed to preserve the body's tissues in a sort of solid, glass-like substance that doesn't cause the same damage as water ice does.Now, researchers in Germany have reported that, for the first time, they've been able to at least partially restore the brain tissue of a mouse that had undergone this process.

While the experiment wasn't a complete success, the team found that some of the brain tissue samples exhibited the restoration of the neural processes critical to memory and learning.

Perhaps the most important benefit of the team's findings, however, is not the cryopreservation of entire bodies but in advancing the field of preserving organs for donation.

If it really does become possible to perfectly preserve living human tissue, it would be a monumental achievement.

As for the people frozen in cryopreservation facilities - they're going to have to wait a little bit longer.

Source: IFL Science | Comments (1)

Tags: Cryopreservation