Would my mind really survive if my brain is preserved?

Current medical understanding says yes. A human brain can today survive being “shut down” for up to an hour in conditions of cold-water drowning, or for up to 40 minutes in the medical procedure of deep hypothermic circulatory arrest (stopping of the heart and circulation, after deep cooling of the body, in order to do cardiac surgeries). When the brain gets sufficiently cold in these conditions, there is no detectable electrical activity. If the cold is removed quickly, before too much biochemical decay occurs, the brain “reboots” and the person becomes conscious again, none the worse for wear.

The fact that people can recover completely from having their brains shut down by extreme cold tells us that our minds are not dependent on a continuous pattern of electrical activity, but instead depend on the special physical arrangement of cells and molecules in the brain.

Brain preservation takes the concept of temporary brain shutdown and extends the timeframe further. Instead of an hour of inactivity, the brain is kept inactive in a much more stable state for many years. Long-term brain preservation is technically much harder to accomplish than a brief shutdown, but the basic idea follows from what already occurs under the above special conditions. And since we already know that a mind can survive a short shutdown, it is reasonable to assume that a mind can also survive a very long shutdown. As long as the brain stays in the same physical state, it should not matter how many years of shutdown occur.