Going to sleep does not cause the brain to actually power off. It's still running, your consciousness is just different. You still wake up from loud noises and light, and external stimuli can still influence your dreams.
>Going to sleep does not cause the brain to actually power off. It's still running, your consciousness is just different. You still wake up from loud noises and light, and external stimuli can still influence your dreams.
Anesthesia, then, or fainting. You cannot wake up from loud noises, and you have no consciousness.
One can also image a transfer process that is just like what naturally happens with regular body cells changing every 7 years or so.
E.g your brain is slowly, over a period of years, replaced cell by cell with new compatible neurons. One by one, your old neurons are replaced with the new, designed ones.
Those can read the state of the neuron they exchange AND exchange signals with your regular neurons, so before and after one is replaced, your brain is still functioning normally. No "power off" phase.
That is what the person above describes when they say they want to be injected with nano-bots to be converted. And that would, I believe, give a seamless transition with no break in the stream of consciousness.
However this is completely different from the concept of mind uploading where your brain is scanned and simulated separately.
Or how is it different that going into sleep and waking up?