>Also, I wonder what the order of magnitude is that we're talking about here.
> I assume that much of the cranial nerve structure would be carried across
>from the "original", e.g. the entire occular system, including the eyes
>themselves, would be transplanted, rather than attempting a hook-up to the
>"trade-in's" eyes.
'Course, in my case it looks like the eyes would be one of the things I'd
like to replace.
>This would be more difficult with the nerves that serve
>the mouth and tounge, etc, but might not be insurmountable.
Unfortunately motor nerves are wired "live" like retinal nerves. They have
some regenerative capacity, but it mostly consists of growing down the
channels laid before.
>If this were
>possible, then the connections across the spinal column would then be the
>biggest challenge. How many nerves are we talking about at that juncture?
Lots. Hundreds of nerves, millions of individual cells. Remember we can't
even treat sciatica reliably yet.