Brain Uploading: Difference between revisions

{{quote|"The point is, if we can store music on a compact disc, why can't we store a man's intelligence and personality on one? So, I have the engineers figuring that one out now. "|'''[[Portal 2|Cave Johnson]]'''}}

* ''[[Neon Genesis Evangelion]]'s'' EVA units and the MAGI supercomputer are borderline examples. More like "[[Soul Jar|Soul Uploading]]" tho'.

* In ''[[Gundam SEED Astray]]'', Lowe gains possession of a strange module from a [[God Guise|worshipper of George Glenn]], the so-called "First Coordinator". This black box just happens to contain ''Glenn's [[Brain In a Jar|actual brain]]'', and eventually Lowe's [[Bunny Ears Lawyer]] teammate Professor hooks it up to a holographic projector, allowing George to captain the Junk Guild's battleship.

* In the manga ''GUNNM'' (''[[Battle Angel Alita]]'') {{spoiler|this is used as important final plot twist in the last episodes, when the mad doctor Desty Nova reveals that his organic brain was abducted and replaced with a biochip with his personal memories implanted. He found it years ago and became literally mad}}. In ''Last Order'' this practice appears to be diffused in some contexts (i.e. Zekka had practised it on himself {{spoiler|but also the main character "herself" becomes an unknowning example of this case; new revelations are follwed by "''[[What Measure Is A Man]]''" stuff}}). However, the sequel is stuffed with many other examples of futuristical or bizarre [[Weird Science]]. We have also the {{spoiler|[[Cloning Blues]] of Desty Nova}}.

* In ''[[Professor Layton and The Eternal Diva]]'', {{spoiler|Melina's memories were uploaded into a device her father constructed and disguised as a musical instrument, so he could find a body that matches hers and create a [[Replacement Goldfish]] [[What the Hell, Hero?|by erasing the conciousness of an innocent girl]]. Once he actually did it, Melina [[What Have I Become?|did not agree.]]}}

* In the British comic ''Rogue Trooper'' (a 2000AD stablemate to [[Judge Dredd]]), three of the protagonist's squadmates were uploaded to chips on their death and integrated into his equipment. (These personality-saving "biochips" are actually an integral feature of ''all'' Genetic Infantrymen; they're meant to be recovered in case of death and installed in newly-cloned bodies.)

** For a while, the Vision, a member of the Avengers, has the downloaded personality of Wonder Man to make him more "human". However, this is later undone and a new personality is substituted in.

** Ultron, psycho [[Killer Robot]] and Avengers enemy, attempts to upload the entire mind of his 'mother', the Wasp, into a female bot that he's created (aptly named Jocasta) for companionship, having brainwashed his "father"/her - the Wasp's husband, Hank Pym - into helping him do it. While the Avengers rescue her before the process could finish (and kill her), Jocasta ends up with enough of Janet's personality to later turn on him and join the Avengers.

** Ultron himself is [[Ret Connedretcon]]ned as having originated with a botched download byof mentally-unstable Henry Pym's all-too-flawed engrams.

* In the original ''[[Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles Mirage]]'' series, this accidentally occurs to Professor Honeycutt; while testing out his Menta-wave helmet (which granted its user psychic and telekinetic abilities) a bolt of lightning caused his consciousness to be transferred to the body of his robot SAL. In the [[Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles 2003|cartoon based on the book]], this later on allows him to copy his consciousness between computers, allowing him to [[Disney Death|survive his own heroic sacrifice]].

* The [[Ultimate Universe]] [[Continuity Reboot]] of [[Paperinik New Adventures]] had this trope when {{spoiler|Lyonard [[Punny Name|D'Aq]] uploaded his brain as a side result of him exploring a virtual world}}. Then this trope became a [[Chekhov's Gun]] when {{spoiler|after Lyonard got [[Killed Off for Real]] (or, more precisely, got [[One-Winged Angel|devolved into the monstrous Lyozard]] ''and then'' got killed off) [[Back Fromfrom the Dead|and Uno downloaded the data version of his brain into a (superpowered, of course) bionic body]].}}

* This happened to Cliff Steele (Robotman) in [[Grant Morrison]]'s ''[[Doom Patrol]]'' after the Candlemaker crushed his brain. Fortunately, he was hooked up to the Chief's computer at the time, and his intelligence was downloaded on a disk. Once he figured out what happened, he was able to return to his body, though he was pretty freaked out by the entire process.

* The ''Battlestar Galactica'' comic ''The Final Five'' has this as the origin of the Thirteenth Tribe. Originally, they were members of the other 12twelve tribes but after uploading their consciousnesses into new cybernetic bodies were treated as a new group. This includes the idea that the Thirteenth Tribe have committed some kind of '"sin'", apparently borne out by the intervention of supernatural/sufficiently advanced beings.

* ''[[Savage Dragon]]'' featured a number of characters with [[Power Armor]] who had previously downloaded their brainwaves into the suit, allowing them to continue fighting long after death.

* ''[[Star Trek: The Motion Picture|Star Trek the Motion Picture]]''. After V'Ger scans and destroys Ilia, it sends a robot replica of her to the Enterprise with her memories and personality stored in it. Eventually the crew manages to re-awaken her mind in the machine.

* In ''Destination: Void"'' by Frank Herbert, the entire purpose of the apparently impossible, deliberately crippled interstellar colonization mission is determined by the crew to be to force them to create (because they are doomed to die if they don't), beyond the reach of the disaster that would likely ensue, an artificial intelligence beyond the capacity of a human brain. This is done by first building a physical analog of a human brain, but with several times the complexity, then once it has displayed the necessary capabilities, uploading the mind of one of the creators into it, and parts of the personalities of the others. {{spoiler|This results in the creation of a god, like in all Frank Herbert books.}}

* ''Mindscan'' by Robert Sawyer has this technology being commercialized. Rich people get what's essentially a super MI that creates a perfect duplicate of the brain at the time and it gets uploaded in to an android body. The real people then retire to a lunar colony that's extra-legal and the droids will claim to be the humans and designed to look like them at their peak of life. The book then revolves over [[What Measure Is a Non-Human?]] as the android version has to fight over its personhood.

* This is common in ''[[Down and Out Inin Thethe Magic Kingdom]]'' by [[Cory Doctorow]]; anyone with enough Whuffie can backup themselves at will, a restore is made using a clone body. Since the process is so easy and basically free, it's common for people to swap their body for a clone-and-restore for things like the common cold.

** There is an alien species that likes uploading the minds of prisoners and putting them through some kind of programming to make them [[A Is]] for small fightercraft and various systems in their ships. We're never shown or told what this does to the minds, but Luke thinks they're all suicidal.

* This becomes the plot point in the ''[[StarcraftStarCraft]]'' [[Expanded Universe]] ''Dark Templar Trilogy'', where a Protoss female named Zamara copies her consciousness into the brain of Jake Ramsey, a human archaeologist. While she is able to communicate with him and grant him some of her [[Psychic Powers]], the process will ultimately kill Jake. They travel to a Dark Templar world where priests record memories of still-living Protoss onto [[Green Rocks|Khaydarin crystals]]. This is different from what is done by the Khala-worshiping Protoss, who have specialized individuals known as Preservers, who store entire consciousnesses (not just memories) in their heads, "uploaded" through the [[Hive Mind]] at the moment of death. Zamara is the last Preserver. The goal is to put Zamara's consciousness onto one such crystal. Unfortunately, Zamara realizes that the Dark Templar only copy ''memories'', not entire individuals. However, the unusually large crystal they use not only manages to contain the entire consciousness of a Preserver but also that of a [[Eldritch Abomination|Dark Archon]] who threatens to destroy everything.

* In the ''[[Star Trek: The Original Series|Star Trek the Original Series]]'' episode "The Ultimate Computer", Dr. Richard Daystrom turned the M-5 computer into an AI by impressing his own engrams (mental patterns) on its circuits.

* In ''[[Star Trek: The Next Generation|Star Trek the Next Generation]]'':

* In the ''[[Star Trek: Voyager|Star Trek Voyager]]'' episode "Lifesigns", the Doctor discovers that his dying patient has some sort of electrical implant in her brain that enables him to transfer her mind into the ship's computer and let her live as a hologram while he works on the disease in her actual body. Unfortunately, the circuitry containing her mind has only a limited time before it will degrade, thus causing her death unless she's transferred back to her body in time.

* This is what makes the Cylons of ''[[Battlestar Galactica Reimagined]](2004 TV series)|Battlestar Galactica'' functionally immortal. Their memories and consciousness are stored upon their death and then downloaded to identical bodies, {{spoiler|until the Resurrection Hub is destroyed.}} It's also their origin, by way of [[Replacement Goldfish]]. {{spoiler|Maybe. It seems a bit more complicated than that.}}

* ''[[Overdrawn at the Memory Bank]]'' called it a "dopple" (as in doppelganger). Once your brain was uploaded to a [[When Things Spin, Science Happens|spinning cube]] you could take a vacation and experience life as an animal. Aaron Fingle's dopple was botched when the technicians lost his body and were forced to upload his consciousness to a mainframe as an interim solution. The film indicated he had a limited amount of time before his consciousness degraded to the point of non-functionality. It wasn't really made clear if this was a function of the transfer, the inability of his body to continue function without the mind or some other factor, but then again it was a made for TV movie aired on PBS. It was also lampooned on [[Mystery Science Theater 3000]].

* The supposed AI created by a former [[Warehouse 13]] agent, which takes over the warehouse in one episode, is actually an artifact-assisted upload of his right-brain, leaving the living agent with all his creativity, but none of the logic that enabled him to harness it.

* ''[[Cyberpunk 2020(role-playing game)|Cyberpunk]]'' has the "Soulkiller" program, which would copy the victim's personality. Early versions ontoneeded a sufficiently powerful mainframe and would then kill the victim's physical body. Alt Cunningham, the program's creator, became its first victim when she had finished writing Soulkiller for evil [[Mega Corp]] Arasaka and they decided they didn't need to have her running around anymore. Overlaps with [[And I Must Scream]]. It's not perfect, though, as if the target has been dead long enough, the engram will be limited like a chatbot rather than a fully-aware person; see {{spoiler|Jackie}}. Also, certain kinds of full 'Borgs, especially combat models, can be used with brain canisters that store a person's memories/soul which can be swapped between the combat cyborg body and a "normal" one.

** GLaDOS claims to have a backup of Chell on file, which she later claims to delete. Of course, {{spoiler|she is a [[Unreliable Narrator|lying liar who tends to lie]].}}

** In ''[[Portal 2]]'', it turns out {{spoiler|Johnson was never uploaded, but on his request his secretary Caroline was uploaded into the A.I. network that became [[G La DOSGLaDOS]], against her will.}}

* In the ''[[Black Market (video game)|Black Market]]'' universe, people can be downloaded into Soul Jars, while machine minds are relegated to Turing Jars. Pirates use this method to endlessly reincarnate; one of the main characters is a "Ghost" in this fashion.

* ''[[Ace Combat 3: Electrosphere]]'' had this with "sublimation", the act of uploading your mind inside a computer. Among other things, Ouroboros is a secret faction hell-bent on sublimating all the people in the world, and Fiona is unable to forgive her sister Cinthia after she tells Fiona she wants to sublimate her mind. (Don't panic if you don't know that: all that stuff is exclusive from the Japanese original; the American release had [[Macekre|this engaging storyline replaced]] with a generic [[AIA.I. Is a Crapshoot]] plot).

* In ''[[Starsiege]]'', this is how the Immortal Brotherhood came to be; individuals who were part of the Lazarus Project team, or who were exceptionally loyal to Emperor-to-be Solomon Petresun, were transferred into biomechanoid brains which could then be transplanted from body to body. Since the brains have their own power supply and were extremely durable, the immortal could be killed without actually dying... however, the nature of the brain/body interface could cause severe personality shifts from one 'lifetime' to the next. [[Big Bad|Prometheus]], the [[AIA.I. Is a Crapshoot|Cybrid]] who invented the technique, later used it to create infiltration units as weapons against its creators.

* In ''[[Girl Genius]]'':

** This [http://www.girlgeniusonline.com/comic.php?date=20100407 was] one of the things in which lady Lucrezia's used to ''specialityspecialize''. According to Drusus Beausoleil, he served Simon Voltaire in hope to learn this from the former apprentice of Van Rijn, as the latter mastered such techniques as well (if so, it raises an obvious suspicion about the Muses).

* In ''[[Bob and George]]'', the Marverick virus is a digital copy of Dr. Wily's soul, corrupting and reprograming Reploids just as Wily did to robots.

** It also gets into the idea of a [[Our Souls Are Different|soul]]. From a strictly biological definition, there does not appear to be a soul in human consciousness, and our minds could possibly never be truly emulated, relying heavily on the interactions of various chemicals and having involuntary subconscious changes, like mood fluctuations. Drawing a distinct delineation in the parts of the brain where aspects of the mind are solely housed too may prove impossible, as for instance personality, intelligence, and memory for instance are likewise impossible to completely separate.

* It is now theoretically possible to upload someone's memories to a computer at this point in time. You would need, however, advanced programming and algorithms to tell the computer how to read said memories; it is likely that it would work like an emulation program, e.g. [[DOS BoxDOSBox]]. However, the only current way to ''get'' said memory data is to scan the brain with a special machine that builds a 3D computer image of whatever is scanned. Unfortunately, it can only scan objects that are as thin as paper. This and other complications means that the brain must be flash-frozen while still alive, cut out of your head, and sliced into paper-thin pieces.