WHAT HAPPENS AFTER YOU DIE? THE BRAIN KEEPS WORKING LONG ENOUGH FOR THOUGHTS TO FORM

BY ON 10/19/17

Few things seem more absolute than death. But when it comes to actually pinpointing the moment when a person goes from alive to dead, drawing the line is a little more fraught.

The current medical definition of death is when the heart stops beating. In an interview with LiveScienceNYU Langone’s Sam Parnia, a pulmonologist who studies resuscitation, notes that from that point, it takes up to 20 seconds before brain waves are no longer detectable. According to Parnia, this sets off a longer chain of processes that leads to brain death. "If you manage to restart the heart, which is what CPR attempts to do, you'll gradually start to get the brain functioning again. The longer you're doing CPR, those brain cell death pathways are still happening—they're just happening at a slightly slower rate," Parnia told LiveScience.

In cases of cardiac arrest, doctors usually are not able to restore blood flow to the brain. That’s why the experiences of people who are successfully resuscitated are so fascinating.

These cases blur the line and challenge a definition that might seem clearcut to most people, but continue to be the subject of ongoing debate. The neurosurgeon Haider Warraich lays out the debate in bioethics over whether decapitation, separating a head from its body, automatically equals death. Warraich also mentions the case of doctors in the 1800s trying to distinguish life from death by plunging needlesattached to small flags into cadavers’ chests (if the flag fluttered the heart was beating and the person was considered alive).

To try and prove their point that a creature could be “alive” without its head, a group of researchers in the 1990s beheaded a pregnant sheep and connected her body to a breathing machine. They delivered the sheep’s baby by C-section. “There is no ambiguity here: the sheep remained alive during the experiment.” the researchers wrote, concluding “decapitated animals are not necessarily dead.” 

And these definitions aren’t chosen in a vacuum. Warraich writes that the decision to draw the line at “brain death” was motivated by the advent of organ transplants. Once organ transplants became possible, doctors needed a clear-cut marker of when a person was “dead enough” to remove their organs. The doctor who performed the first heart transplant in South Africa gave the donor a lethal injection to remove any room for debate.

http://www.newsweek.com/what-happens-when-you-die-brain-keeps-worki...

Views: 255

Have questions?

Need help? Visit our Support Group for help from our friendly Admins and members!

Have you?

Become a Member
Invited Your Friends
Made new Friends
Read/ Written a Blog
Joined/ Created a Group
Read/ Posted a Discussion
Checked out the Chat
Looked at/Posted Videos
Made a donation this month
Followed us on Twitter
Followed us on Facebook

Donations & Sponsorship

~~~~~~~~~~~
Please consider a donation to help with our continued growth and site costs

Connect

Visit The Temple
on Facebook:

....

Blog Posts

Survivor

Posted by The Draç (李) on July 1, 2025 at 1:37am 0 Comments

Darth Maul

Posted by The Draç (李) on June 30, 2025 at 7:30am 0 Comments

It's Jehovah

Posted by The Draç (李) on June 18, 2025 at 4:39pm 0 Comments

The (NEKH-T) (3l)ohim

Posted by The Draç (李) on June 16, 2025 at 8:00am 0 Comments

The Hidden Temple

Posted by The Draç (李) on June 12, 2025 at 4:00am 0 Comments

The Shenlong

Posted by The Draç (李) on June 10, 2025 at 12:00pm 0 Comments

The Devil's Prophet

Posted by The Draç (李) on June 7, 2025 at 11:00am 0 Comments

The Archdevil(s)

Posted by The Draç (李) on June 5, 2025 at 10:30am 0 Comments

STONE OF YELLOW!

Posted by Rosey Cross on June 2, 2025 at 6:30pm 1 Comment

The Archdevil

Posted by The Draç (李) on June 1, 2025 at 7:30am 0 Comments

The Roc Nation Bloodline

Posted by The Draç (李) on May 28, 2025 at 2:35pm 0 Comments

The Illuminati Li's

Posted by The Draç (李) on May 28, 2025 at 2:34pm 0 Comments

Dead Presidents

Posted by The Draç (李) on May 27, 2025 at 4:35pm 0 Comments

The Black Rite

Posted by The Draç (李) on May 27, 2025 at 7:30am 0 Comments

DO YOU REMEMBER?

Posted by Rosey Cross on March 13, 2025 at 5:28pm 0 Comments

NOVEMBER AWARENESS

Videos

  • Add Videos
  • View All

© 2025   Created by Bryan   Powered by

Badges  |  Report an Issue  |  Terms of Service