in the shell

I just watched the 2nd GIG episode Face-MAKE UP, where Pazu's Ex impersonates him by transferring her mind into an exact prosthetic copy of his body, ostensibly through implanting her brain case into it. The first episode of the first season also has people switching their brain cases and going around in other people's bodies, somehow doing this against the will of the person who's body they steal.

I was wonder how this technology works. Do they literally take the entire brain, cyberbrain and all, and somehow transplant it into another body. If so, this would probably require a very competent team of physicians, expensive equipment, and so forth, things that we see are not available to the criminals who do it in the show.

Or is it just a part of the brain, or even just a transfer of consciousness without touching the brain (even though this is impossible, since the brain basically IS the person who uses it, memories, personality, will and all.) I've heard that Shirow doesn't believe in the "soul", or human consciousness and minds without physical brains or bodies.

I always thought it was as simple as transfering bodies, only the body you transfer into looks exactly like someone else.

Black Mamba wrote:I always thought it was as simple as transfering bodies, only the body you transfer into looks exactly like someone else.

I'm not sure what you mean by, "as simple as transfering bodys" but, I allways thought it was more along the lines of transfering the braincase and all? I don't think it's quit that simple, thoue

From what we've seen, it goes like this: cyborgs and apparently also some mostly organic people have their brains packed in metal braincases, that contain interface with the rest of the nervous system, as well as some sort of life-support device. Pretty much anyone with technical knowledge about cyborgs can open up the skull of a person with a braincase - though I'd imagine it needs some time and tools - and then take off the brain to put it to some other body, or storage facility, like the briefcase we saw in the first episode of the first season. I would imagine that the person whose brain is swapped becomes unconsious, when the braincase is removed.

I would imagine that a milder version would be to just input signals to an empty body through a wireless link, like Major does later in the first season, but the sensations most likely don't feel quite real, that way.

Overwriting ones own personality over someone else's brain doesn't happen any time in the GitS - at least I can't remember such incident in any of the continuums. I would imagine, that the chance of failure would be greater than the chance of success, considering, how great the differences between individual brains can be.

Lightice wrote:Overwriting ones own personality over someone else's brain doesn't happen any time in the GitS - at least I can't remember such incident in any of the continuums. I would imagine, that the chance of failure would be greater than the chance of success, considering, how great the differences between individual brains can be.

Well, it wasn't a complete overwrite, but something like that seemed to happen in the episode with the sniper's son in SAC.