A 501(c)(3) nonprofit · founded 2010

Preserving the brain's information for the science of the future.

Our goal is to ensure that people can choose to have their brain preserved, after legal death, to enable the possibility of their future revival — safeguarding the memories, personality, and identity that make someone who they are. We advance the science, and the standards, to make that choice real.

Pig brain white matter preserved by aldehyde-stabilized cryopreservation, imaged with electron microscopy during a Brain Preservation Prize evaluation.
To promote validated scientific research and technical-services development in whole-brain preservation — and to advocate for the standards, policies, and access that let high-quality preservation move responsibly from laboratory to clinic.

Modern neuroscience holds that our memories, personality, and identity are encoded in the physical pattern of connections between neurons. Legal death — the point at which today's medicine can do no more — need not mean that this information is gone. If the brain's structure is preserved in time, the person it encodes need not be lost, keeping open the real possibility of future revival.

Read our full mission & vision →

2010Founded as a nonprofit research organization
$100kBrain Preservation Prize, fully claimed in 2018
IndependentWe endorse no provider and hold no commercial stake
501(c)(3)Tax-exempt; donations are fully deductible

Independent, evidence-based stewardship of a young field.

We do not offer preservation services and do not endorse any provider. Our role is to advance the science, set quality standards, and inform the public conversation.

Standards & Accreditation

Developing rigorous, provider-neutral quality standards and an independent accreditation process — so preservation can be assessed on evidence, not marketing.

Read the draft standards →

Research prizes

Challenge prizes that turned an open question into a verified result — and a new prize aimed at the next milestone: recovering memory from a preserved connectome.

Explore the prizes →

Advocacy & education

Bringing accurate, non-sensational information about brain preservation to scientists, clinicians, policymakers, and the public.

See our media →
What we've achieved

The Brain Preservation Prize — a question, answered.

In 2010 we asked whether an entire brain could be preserved well enough that every neural connection remained intact and traceable under electron microscopy. In 2018, after independent evaluation by our judging committee, the answer was yes.

Read the Large Mammal Prize announcement →

  • 2010
    The challenge is set
    A $100,000 prize for verifiably preserving a whole brain's connectome.
  • 2016
    Small Mammal Prize won
    Aldehyde-Stabilized Cryopreservation preserves a whole rabbit brain.
  • 2018
    Large Mammal Prize won
    ASC scaled to an entire pig brain — verified by 3D electron microscopy.
  • Now
    From lab to clinic
    Building the standards to translate the result responsibly.

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Our Substack newsletter follows the science, services, and policy of brain preservation as a medically supervised end-of-life option.

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Free · published on Substack at preservinghope.substack.com