Mind uploading is the process of transferring the contents of an individual’s biological mind, including: memories, consciousness and personality traits…to another substrate, such as a computer.

There are countless ways human brain mapping will help humanity, notably for understanding and combating neurological disorders. But Hayworth’s ultimate goal of mind uploading pushes the research into the realm of a post-human possibility, a place few scientists have opened their own minds to.

Several large scale scientific endeavors to better understand the brain are underway; their success or failure could set the tone for the future mainstream acceptance or rejection of Hayworth's roadmap to mind uploading.

The idea of moving a person's mind into some sort of receptacle has been kicking around in the minds of science fiction writers for some time. Recently, sf fans enjoyed Richard Morgan's view of this idea; see this article on cortical stacks which regularly update the person in a remote storage facility.

I also recall several instances of this idea in the original Star Trek series; this first one appears to use the brain transplant idea.

ALICE 263: These are our Barbara series. The body is covered with a self-renewing plastic over a skeleton of beryllium-titanium alloy.
KIRK: Very impressive.
UHURA: I should say so.
KIRK: I must say, I like the styling.
MUDD: They were, of course, made to my personal specifications, as indeed were the Maisie series, the Trudie series, and particularly the Annabel series.
KIRK: Don't you believe in male androids, Harry?
MUDD: Male? Well, I suppose they have their uses.
UHURA: How long does a body like that last?
ALICE 19: None of our android bodies has ever worn out. However, the estimated duration of this model is five hundred thousand years.
UHURA: Five hundred thousand years?
ALICE 263: Our medi-robots are able to place a human brain within a structurally compatible android body.
MUDD: Immortality and eternal beauty.

In another episode, What are Little Girls Made of?, a scientist moves his mind into an android body, only to find that his soul is missing.

Update 21-Dec-2014: See also the virtual immortality offered by Arthur C. Clarke in his 1956 novel The City and the Stars. End Update.