Several countries have established self-help cryonics groups whose mission is to cryopreserve human bodies or brains after legal death and ship them to cryonics organizations. The objective of this study was to report the first case of human brain cryopreservation in Argentina and complementary experiments in rats. After legal death, the body of a 78-year-old Caucasian woman was transported to a funeral home where her head was submitted to intracarotid perfusion with 5 L cold physiologic saline followed by the same volume of cold saline containing 13% dimethyl sulfoxide and 13% glycerol. The brain was removed, temporarily frozen at −80°C, and shipped to a U.S. cryostasis facility. Three groups of rats were intracardially perfused with fixative but not frozen (Reference group), vitrification solution VM1 (Control group), or the cryoprotection solution used in the patient (Experimental group). Control and Experimental brains were stored at −80°C and subsequently assessed by immunohistochemistry for the adult neuron marker (NeuN), the immature neuron marker doublecortin (DCX), the dopaminergic neuron marker tyrosine hydroxylase, and the presynaptic marker synaptophysin (SYN). The number of NeuN-positive neurons remained unchanged in the experimental brain cortex, whereas the number of immature DCX neurons in the hippocampus fell markedly in the cryoprotected brains. The results were highly variable for hypothalamic dopaminergic neurons. Confocal microscopy for SYN revealed that cryopreservation did not affect the synaptic network in the hippocampus. To our knowledge, this is the first report correlating a human cryoprotection procedure with results in complementary experiments in laboratory animals.

中文翻译：

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人脑的冷冻保存及其在大鼠中的实验相关性。

一些国家已经建立了自助人体冷冻组织，其任务是在合法死亡后冷冻保存人体或大脑，并将其运送到人体冷冻组织。本研究的目的是报告阿根廷首例人脑冷冻保存和大鼠补充实验。合法死亡后，一名 78 岁白人妇女的尸体被运送到殡仪馆，在那里她的头部接受了 5 L 冷生理盐水的颈动脉灌注，然后是相同体积的含有 13% 二甲基亚砜和 13 % 甘油。大脑被取出，在-80°C 下暂时冷冻，然后运送到美国的冷冻机构。三组大鼠心内灌注固定液但未冷冻（参考组）、玻璃化液VM1（对照组）、或患者使用的冷冻保护液（实验组）。对照和实验大脑储存在 -80°C，随后通过免疫组织化学评估成人神经元标记物 (NeuN)、未成熟神经元标记物双皮质素 (DCX)、多巴胺能神经元标记物酪氨酸羟化酶和突触前标记物突触素 (SYN)。实验大脑皮层中 NeuN 阳性神经元的数量保持不变，而海马中未成熟 DCX 神经元的数量在冷冻保护大脑中显着下降。下丘脑多巴胺能神经元的结果变化很大。SYN 的共聚焦显微镜显示冷冻保存不影响海马中的突触网络。据我们所知，