Is it possible to digitize human consciousness?

The Human Genome Project set out to identify all our human genes and sequence human DNA. The Human Microbiome Project was established to identify and sequence all the microbes colonizing the human gut. And another similar scientific research project is identifying, mapping and deciphering something else that defines our humanness: the brain's neural pathways. This is the Human Connectome Project.

The connectome, it's believed, is responsible for the things that make you who you are. The human brain contains an estimated 100 billion individual neurons, each one connected and firing messages to as many as 10,000 other neurons [source: Collins]. This signaling, which may be neurons firing simultaneously or in a sequence, is how the brain encodes and processes information, how it forms associations and how it performs tasks. It's possibly also the very essence of being human, including your personal memories, your talents and all the quirky things that make up your individual personality. That's all contained in your connectome.

The concept of human consciousness is often compared to the keys of a car; your car is an amazing machine, but without the ignition key there's no spark, no sign of life. Consciousness is how we know and experience both ourselves and the world around us, and it's created from the information exchange that happens in the brain's neural network.

There are a few leading theories, or at least starting points, as to what makes up human consciousness. Integrated information theorists, for instance, calculate the amount of integrated information in a neural network, a quantity called phi. The more links within the network, the more information sharing, and vice versa. Another theory suggests human consciousness works like computer memory. The global workspace theory suggests the brain collects information and the art of dispersing it across the neural network is, perhaps, consciousness.

Perhaps surprisingly, some of this futurist vision of digitizing human consciousness is actually already possible, at least in very early stages. Take, for instance, the Lego worm robot.

In the developing field of whole brain emulation research, scientists have successfully mapped the neural networks of the roundworm Caenorhabditis elegans (C. elegans), including its nervous system's 302 neurons and the 7,000 neural connections of each; think of this as a wiring diagram of the C. elegans' brain [source: Collins]. Modeled on the neural network and connections in the worm's brain, code is written and inserted into, in this instance, a Lego 'bot customized with a sonar sensor nose and motor neurons to replicate the biological neural wiring of the worm.

Theoretically, the same could be done with the human brain on a much larger scale; the human brain has 100 billion neurons and 100 trillion connections among them. Mapping the precise, city-streetlike grid and deciphering the rules of the human brain's neural network could lead to breakthroughs in our understanding of the roots of human neurological, neurobehavioral and neuropsychiatric disorders. It could also significantly contribute to innovations in preventing, treating and curing conditions associated with problems related to wiring of the brain [source: Collins]. It could also lead to a deeper understanding of how we think and reason, our sense of self, and ways we might emulate the human mind.

Mind-uploading, or creating substrate-independent minds, involves transferring the contents of your human brain to a new synthetic brain — a digital copy of not just your memories, but the particulars of your personality and your very consciousness. Although still in the early stages of C. elegans research, in the long run, scientists plan to develop a synthetic C. elegans, a hologram created to host the digital connectome of the worm.

And then there's the Avatar Project, under Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA). The Pentagon's project combines advancements in both remote operation and telepresence; in simpler terms, that means the Department of Defense is working on developing surrogate soldiers, controlled by real soldiers from a safe distance.

Also funded by DARPA, a study at Johns Hopkins in Baltimore succeeded in getting amputees to move their artificial limbs with mind control and the help of brain implants. Similarly, amputees in a study in Iceland were able to control their prosthetic legs via 5-millimeter-long by 3-millimeter-wide implanted myoelectric sensors (IMES), sensors developed to stimulate and control the muscles in the remaining part of the leg [source: Pollock].

Will we make Itskov's goal of being able to upload human consciousness by 2045? Only time will tell, but at least we know that worms have a strong chance at digital immortality.