Don't invest too heavily in Singularity, Inc. virtual immortality just yet. Those fMRIs are not everything the media fanfare suggests. Maybe smart-watch-like bio-sensitive wearables will help gather crowd data in the future, but it's way too early to be declaring the winner in this race:
BOLD Assumptions: Why Brain Scans Are Not Always What They Seem
BOLD Assumptions: Why Brain Scans Are Not Always What They Seem
In 2009, researchers at the University of California, Santa Barbara performed a curious experiment. In many ways, it was routine — they placed a subject in the brain scanner, displayed some images, and monitored how the subject's brain responded. The measured brain activity showed up on the scans as red hot spots, like many other neuroimaging studies.
Except that this time, the subject was an Atlantic salmon, and it was dead.
Dead fish do not normally exhibit any kind of brain activity, of course. The study was a tongue-in-cheek reminder of the problems with brain scanning studies.