Cool info and summary, thanks.
You say no frozen human brain has been examined. Have any frozen brains been examined?
What about the claims in the original link that organ transplants could be greatly facilitated if organ freezing techniques were developed. Could you comment on that claim in the context of your knowledge?
You say no frozen human brain has been examined. Have any frozen brains been examined?
I'm not an expert. To my knowledge mainstream cryobiological techniques allow the preservation of very thin slices of brain tissue maintaining structural and functional integrity, but larger samples don't seem to be preservable with current technology (read the opinion of PZ Myers, an evolutionary biologist who studies the vertebrate nervous system and applies these techniques in his research).
Alcor, a cryonics organization, appear to have performed cryopreservation ex...
http://www.strike-the-root.com/51/walker/walker12.html
Came across it pretty randomly, I found it quite intriguing. Cryonics is "routine" for human embryos, not far-fetched for humans at all. Makes the whole thing seem potentially very reasonable (and me someone who hasn't signed up and doesn't plan to).