At 13, Randal read a science fiction novel and set out to upload a human brain. The surprising part is how far he's gotten.

Dr. Randal Koene is a computational neuroscientist and the founder of the Carbon Copies Foundation, a nonprofit working to preserve and one day emulate the human brain. Not long ago, the idea of keeping someone's memory and identity alive past death sat squarely in the realm of science fiction. Randal is one of the people trying to drag it into the lab.

Chris asks him how any of this would work, and Randal explains it in plain terms. Does who you are come down to the brain alone? What can split-brain studies tell us about consciousness being something we narrate to ourselves? And would an uploaded mind still need to sleep? Find out in this episode.

"What we experience as consciousness is to a large degree a narrative, a story that we tell ourselves." ~ Dr. Randal Koene

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Resources Mentioned
The City and the Stars by Arthur C. Clarke: https://www.amazon.com/City-Stars-Millennium-SF-Masterworks/dp/1857987632
The Brain Emulation Challenge: https://carboncopies.org/Research/BrainGenix/Challenge/Overview/ 

About Randal Koene
Dr. Randal Koene earned his PhD in Computational Neuroscience from McGill University and later became a research professor at Boston University's Center for Memory and Brain. He proposed the term "whole brain emulation" back in 2000 and helped shape the first scientific roadmap toward it. He went on to found the Carbon Copies Foundation, where he leads the research effort to build tools and methods that could one day allow a mind to continue beyond the body it began in.

Connect with Randal Koene:
Website: https://carboncopies.org/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/randalkoene

Connect with Chris Burres:
Website: https://www.myvitalc.com/
Website: http://www.livebeyondthenorms.com/
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/chrisburres/
TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@myvitalc
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/chrisburres

Disclaimer
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