There's not yet evidence in favour of brain function being preserved though, even if the structure seems somewhat intact.
Anyway, many electron microscopy studies show that even in ideal laboratory conditions, cryoprotected tissue always has some amount of freeze damage to its structure, despite some areas being beautifully preserved. Humans have it even worse than the average lab rat, as there is always going to be a greater amount of post-mortem delay - during which the brain is undergoing ischaemic damage.
Cryonics is an interesting area of research, but the claims of being able to preserve memory and personality are really quite unfounded at this point.
This is fascinating, I had no idea such techniques exist.
The last reversing project I worked on was to crack a BIOS setup password that had no obvious method of reset (I could dump the BIOS flash memory but not write to it). Having to write a brute force cracker at the end of such a joyous slog of disassembly, due to having no clue on how to pick apart what appeared to be a reasonably simple hashing function, was really quite disappointing.
I'll have to try it again soon using Z3 to solve. Thanks for such a inspiring blog post!
Viral capsids are an even simpler example of self-assembly. In many types of virus, the individual subunits spontaneously piece together to form the capsid in an entirely passive process driven only by Brownian motion, and defined by the chemical composition of the subunits and the solution they are contained in.
Anyway, many electron microscopy studies show that even in ideal laboratory conditions, cryoprotected tissue always has some amount of freeze damage to its structure, despite some areas being beautifully preserved. Humans have it even worse than the average lab rat, as there is always going to be a greater amount of post-mortem delay - during which the brain is undergoing ischaemic damage.
Cryonics is an interesting area of research, but the claims of being able to preserve memory and personality are really quite unfounded at this point.