[music playing]
WILLIAM SHATNER (VOICEOVER): Princeton, New Jersey,
April 18, 1955.
Albert Einstein, the celebrated physicist
considered to be the father of modern physics,
dies at the age of 76.
While Einstein's wish is to be cremated,
Princeton Hospital Chief Pathologist Thomas Harvey
must first determine the cause of death.
But with the body of Albert Einstein on the autopsy table,
Harvey's interest is drawn to something else.
He wanted to find out what made Albert Einstein tick.
And he sees, wow, there's the source of it all-- the brain.
FREDERICK LEPORE: There was something about the brain
that fascinated him.
And with no small amount of effort,
he cut the skull, removed the brain,
perfused it with formaldehyde.
And the next morning, "The New York Times"
says that Thomas Harvey has preserved
the brain for scientific study.
WILLIAM SHATNER (VOICEOVER): Thomas Harvey
believed that somewhere within Einstein's brain
was the secret to his genius.
So he persuaded Einstein's son, Hans Albert,
to let him do a study of his father's brain.
FREDERICK LEPORE: Hans Albert and Einstein's executor
came down to speak to Harvey about it,
and Harvey impressed upon them just the uniqueness
and criticality of looking at Einstein's brain
as a way of approaching how people of intellect and genius
think.
WILLIAM SHATNER (VOICEOVER): Harvey
took more than a dozen photos of Einstein's brain,
dissected it, and shaved off thin slices
for microscopic study.
But years passed, and Harvey never published any papers
or scientific observations.
He also never returned the brain,
but rather, stole it and kept it for himself,
with no intention of ever giving it back.
Once Thomas Harvey had the brain,
he didn't let it out of his sight.
He left his position as chief of pathology
at Princeton Hospital.
And he headed out to the Midwest,
and he went into general practice.
But the brain was always with him, stored in two large glass
jars and in cardboard boxes.
MARK EBNER: There's been a historical trend of examining
the brains or the gray matter of geniuses
to try and find out what makes them tick.
For instance, the Brain Institute in Moscow
has kept the brains of dictator Vladimir Lenin and around 200
Russian scientists on a dusty shelf for years,
hoping that they may, too, one day
unlock the secrets of genius.
But there's a fine line between science and grave robbing.
Harvey got a little bit greedy here because not only did he
swipe Einstein's brain, it was basically a memento
for him to have on his shelf.
You'd think that the next of kin might
have something to say about it.
FREDERICK LEPORE: Harvey segued from his job, which
is determine the cause of death of a patient
at Princeton Hospital, and he did that when
he completed the autopsy.
And at that point, all we know is that he
didn't want to hand it over.
And that's why he said, I keep Einstein's brain.
I'm the pathologist, and I'm studying it.
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WILLIAM SHATNER: Boston, Massachusetts, March 2018.
Nectome, a biotechnology startup company,
announces an audacious and controversial plan.
Their vision-- a groundbreaking technique that
can take the data stored inside a human brain
and transfer it into a computer.
There are companies like Nectome
that are attempting to preserve the brain and the mind.
Our methods of analyzing the connections
between neurons in the brain are getting really good.
And so eventually, we'll be able to model the connections
between all the neurons.
And at that point, we'll have a better idea
as to whether or not it's possible to upload
a brain into the Cloud.
But we'll have to wait and see what happens.
SUSAN SCHNEIDER: Uploading is the process
of basically copying and encoding someone's
mental life onto a computer.
Advocates of uploading believe that that
would really be a way for you to survive
the death of your brain.
MICHIO KAKU: And now people say, well, if I'm immortal
and I'm living my life inside a computer,
isn't that rather boring?
No, because this mainframe computer
will connect to a mechanical avatar that
is superhuman in every way.
And you will see through his eyes.
You'll feel through his sense organs.
So in other words, we will have a form of digital immortality.
WILLIAM SHATNER: Digital immortality--
the incredible notion that we might someday
be able to live forever.
But if the information inside our brains
can be copied and transferred like information
onto a computer hard drive, does that
mean it can keep and store everything,
like our personalities perhaps?
Or would something be lost in translation?
There are two issues to consider here.
First of all, why believe that a digital copy of you
is capable of being conscious?
The second issue is that it doesn't at all follow
that that being would really be you, that you are the survivor,
rather than a digital copy.
Consciousness is one of the most hard to define
phenomena about the human brain.
And it's also what separates us from all other species.
It's this idea that we have internal reflection.
Can we actually live on forever in a computer
and still be able to preserve all our memories,
all our friendships, all the different things that we love?
And I think that that's a very romantic notion for a lot
of people, that they want to feel like there's
a way to go on forever.
But you can't separate the brain from the rest of your body.
There are those who believe the human brain has more
potential than even the brain itself can imagine
and that its true capabilities might be limitless.
In some ways, we know more about the far reaches of the galaxy
than we do about the human mind.
[music playing]
WILLIAM SHATNER (VOICEOVER): Atlanta, Georgia,
December 1992.
17-year-old Amy Tippins is having difficulty breathing.
Suspecting that she has some form of pneumonia,
she makes an appointment with her family doctor.
But the actual diagnosis she receives is, in a word,
shocking.
AMY TIPPINS: My senior year of high school,
I started developing what I thought was pneumonia.
And then when they went in to do some further testing,
they realized I didn't have pneumonia.
It was actually a tumor pressing on my diaphragm
and making it much harder for me to breathe.
And I was in full liver failure.
They said she needs to have a transplant
or she'll hemorrhage to death.
WILLIAM SHATNER (VOICEOVER): With time running out,
Amy received her new liver and survived.
But in the months following her transplant,
she found herself exhibiting interests
and abilities that were not only new to her,
but also surprising.
AMY TIPPINS: Not long after surgery
some things about myself and some of my traits had changed.
But then a couple of years from my transplant,
I really started to love projects
like replacing flooring on my own,
and I never saw flooring being put in.
I never saw anything like that being done.
What I discovered was it was actually
fun to work with my hands.
Just kind of go, huh, that's interesting.
WILLIAM SHATNER (VOICEOVER): Of course, it isn't surprising
that people who've had life-saving transplant
operations often report experiencing
a new outlook on life.
But new interests, new personality traits?
Is it possible that Amy Tippins was getting
these from somewhere else?
WILLIAM SHATNER (VOICEOVER): I knew my donor was a male.
I knew he was 47 and that he had been killed in a car
wreck in Columbus, Georgia.
So I went to the library and I started looking
at obituaries from that time.
And I kind of backed into his obituary
and backed into figuring out who he was.
What I discovered is he was a police officer, he was 47,
and his name was Mike.
His sister told me that he did a lot of his own home renovation.
He also liked to work with his hands.
He liked to do projects.
When I found out who my donor was,
it made a lot more sense on why some things about myself
and some of my traits had changed after transplant.
WILLIAM SHATNER: Can transplanted organs
really contained some part of the donor's identity?
Conventional medicine believes the notion's far-fetched.
So how do you explain what we just saw?
Is our life experience encoded not just in our brain,
but throughout our entire body?