Is it possible?

Do you want to commit some identity theft, but you can't because your face isn't the same as the one of your victim? No? Okay, maybe i need to go get some therapy.

Anyway, for my fellow war criminals, i am going to find out how to mind swap.

Mind swapping, also known as body swapping, is a storytelling device used in a lot of science ficton. It's when two characters switch minds and end up in each other's body. But is this possible in real life? Maybe.

Brain transplant

The first thing i came up with when thinking about ways to mind swap was switching brains. So, is it possible to take out your brain and put another one inside your head? Let's see.

We already did a head transplant on monkeys, but it wasn't very successful. When i say "not very successful", i don't mean it in a sarcastic way, saying that it wasn't successful at all. I mean that it worked, but barely. The monkey was paralysed and he could only breathe with the help of a machine, and he died 8 days later. But despite that, he was alive.

The problem with brain transplants is that you would need to cut the spinal cord of your victim- i mean, test subject. Living would be maybe kind of possible sometimes, but it would leave you paralysed. Also, brains aren't solid. Your brain floats inside cerebrospinal fluid, and it will fall apart when taken out of your head. If you want to take your brain out, you will need to harden it with specific chemicals. It's almost impossible to take out a brain unharmed, so here's another solution:

The hard way

There is no easy way to mind swap, so let's do it the hard way.

The brain is made of nerve cells called neurons, and different parts of the brain are used for different actions. These actions are caused by electrochemical signals. But if we could make these signals artificially, we could have mind control. Scientists are already experimenting with this using cockroaches and flies, but it's possible that we could do this with humans in, let's say... 20 to 100 years.

Build a machine scanning the layout of the brain, and upload the data on some nanobots. These nanobots should be able to convert cerebrospinal fluid into energy, and use that energy to make brain signals. This way, you can scan your brain, inject the nanobots into someone, and change his brain to your own, allowing you to possess that person. But there is one more problem.

Mind swap with other animals

How are you going to mind swap with other animals? You don't know if your brain and the animal's brain are alike enough to mind swap, so how are we going to fix this problem?

Here's what you do: make it so that the machine doesn't only scan a brain's layout, but also what kind of animal the brain belongs to. The machine should have a template of what the average human brain looks like. If the scanned brain doesn't belong to a human, just add the missing fundamental parts for a human to live to the animal's brain.