Would you like to live forever? Well, some experts say you might. Last week, a former Google engineer said he believes that humans will achieve immortality within the next eight years. Ray Kurzweil - who has an 86 per cent success rate with his predictions - thinks that advances in technology will quickly lead to age-reversing'nanobots'. While it sounds far-fetched, scientists have been looking for years into ways we can regenerate our cells, or upload our minds to a computer.

Brain-machine interfaces (BMI) and brain-computer interfaces (BCI) are devices that enable direct ... [ ] communication between a brain and an external device. Philosopher John Locke said, "I have always thought the actions of men the best interpreters of their thoughts." Locke lived during the Age of Enlightenment. But what does it mean when machine actions are the result of human thoughts? No longer part of science fiction, many would argue that brain-machine and brain-computer interfaces are the next way we will communicate with machines and even with one another. Brain-machine interfaces (BMI) and brain-computer interfaces (BCI) are devices that enable direct communication between a brain and an external device.

A controversial start-up that wants to upload people's minds on to the cloud to preserve them forever has lost a crucial backer. San Francisco-based Nectome has proposed a '100 per cent fatal' technique to embalm the brains of dying humans so that they can be revived at a later date. But this week, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) announced that it plans to dropped a contract with the firm which some claim is'promoting euthanasia.' MIT said it was cutting off a subcontract that involved the university in Nectome's grant-funded research through MIT neuroscientist Ed Boyden's lab. The prestigious institution claims the technology is in its infancy and there is no guarantee that they can recreate consciousness. In a damning U-turn on the controversial technology, MIT released a statement removing itself from any affiliation with Nectome.

A US startup is promising to upload customers' brains to the cloud using a pioneering technique it has trialled on rabbits. The process is "100% fatal". Nectome, founded in 2016 by a pair of MIT AI researchers, hopes to offer a commercial application of a novel process for preserving brains, called "aldehyde-stabilised cryopreservation". The process, which results in the brain being "vitrifixed" – the startup's self-named term for essentially turning it into glass – is promising enough that it has won two prizes from the Brain Preservation Foundation, for preserving a rabbit's brain in 2016 and a pig's brain in 2018. Influential startup accelerator Y Combinator has taken Nectome in, with the organisation's chief executive, Sam Altman, becoming one of the 25 people to pay a $10,000 deposit to join its waiting list.

The idea of uploading your mind to a computer has been theorized for many years now, but it's mostly remained the stuff of science fiction. A San Francisco-based startup is trying to change that by devising a way to preserve the human brain so that its memories can be uploaded to the cloud. However, in order for Nectome's technology to work, participants have to be willing to be euthanized. And there's no guarantee that the process will actually work after you've surrendered your brain and your life. San Francisco-based startup Nectome says it has devised a way to preserve a human brain and upload its memories to the cloud.

The startup accelerator Y Combinator is known for supporting audacious companies in its popular three-month boot camp. There's never been anything quite like Nectome, though. Next week, at YC's "demo days," Nectome's cofounder, Robert McIntyre, is going to describe his technology for exquisitely preserving brains in microscopic detail using a high-tech embalming process. Then the MIT graduate will make his business pitch. As it says on his website: "What if we told you we could back up your mind?"