ARE BRAIN TRANSPL ANTS POSSIBLE?
This controversial surgery has complicated technicalities to consider before our body’s most sophisticated organ can be switched out
WORDS AILSA HARVEY
Before the first successful heart transplant in 1967, the idea of removing this life-sustaining organ from a body and replacing it with someone else’s was thought impossible. Now, around 3,500 heart transplants are carried out each year. Can the same happen for those with healthy brains but a body that’s failing them? Unlike the heart – the function of which scientists have a great understanding of – the brain is considered the most complex thing in the universe. It contains trillions of cellular connections, efficiently controlling the way you think, feel, remember, move and the way you perceive the world. The brain, which is connected to the spinal cord to make up the central nervous system, would need to be cut away from the spinal cord for a transplant. The greatest challenge following this irreversible act is to precisely reconnect the blood vessels, nerves and other tissues quickly enough that vital brain tissue doesn’t die, and do it with such precision that the individual wakes up from the procedure with their mental and physical abilities uncompromised.