Scientists have discovered what happens immediately after death

Scientists have discovered what happens immediately after death

In our world there is nothing more permanent than death. But it turned out that when it comes to actually determining the moment of transition from living state to dead, to draw a clear line is not so easy.

At present, the death, from a medical point of view, is defined as the moment when the stops beating heart. In an interview with LiveScience Sam Parnia, a pulmonologist from the medical center NYU Langone studying the intensive care unit, said that after the actual death, the brain continues to work for another 20 seconds, and only after that the stop devices to record brain waves. If it is time to revive the man and restart his heart, the brain can work again. In addition, CPR allows you to slow down the process of necrosis of brain cells.

There and back again

This idea explains why people who have experienced clinical death, tell amazing stories about their «travels» on the other side.

In a study conducted in 2014, doctors interviewed more than 100 people who survived after cardiac arrest: 39 percent of the respondents described the feeling of being in the mind, although some of them were not told anything specific. One woman in a similar study, told how she hovered over his body and watched the doctors.

Died or not?

All of these cases blur the usual boundaries of death perception and challenge the concept that may seem understandable to most people. Not surprisingly, all of this continues to be the subject of lively debate. For example, the neurosurgeon Haider Warraich claims that the beheading is automatically equated with death.

However, in the 1990-ies a group of scientists experimented with a pregnant sheep. They decapitated the animal and connected her body to a respirator. After, the researchers conducted a caesarean section, removing a living baby. Based on this fact, the researchers stated that in the experiment, the sheep remained alive, and thus, decapitation does not always mean physical death.

All these arguments appeared out of nowhere. Warraich writes that the idea of separating «brain death» from «death» is motivated by the distribution of transplant organs. After organ transplantation was possible, physicians need a clear marker that the patient is «dead enough» that they could start to remove his organs.

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