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Consciousness could last hours after ‘death’ (www.thetimes.com)

submitted 5 days ago by kalkulat@lemmy.world to c/science@lemmy.world

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The news was presented at the AAAS meeting in Phoenix, Arizona. Anna Fowler presented a synthesis of dozens of studies on near-death experiences and neuroelectrical activity around cardiac arrest. - https://particle.news/story/aaas-presentation-argues-consciousness-may-persist-minutes-to-hours-after-clinical-death

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[-] bdonvr 82 points 5 days ago

Consciousness barely lasts a couple seconds without bloodflow though. Clearly a clickbait title that is intentionally misleading.

[-] Iconoclast@feddit.uk 28 points 5 days ago* (last edited 5 days ago)

I think the consciousness they're talking about here is the subjective sense of something happening - that it feels like something to be. The fact of experience itself. Unconsciousness in the medical sense doesn't necessarily mean the end of experience.

[-] partofthevoice@lemmy.zip 17 points 5 days ago

This is a really difficult concept for some people in our modern society. Enlightenment style thinking would have you believe that human consciousness is a blanket term for salience, attention, awareness, sentience, social cognition, self-recognition, meta-cognition, etc. It’s as though you looked at a car and didn’t see its component parts or individual qualities, you just saw this weird new thing called Car.

[-] purplemonkeymad@programming.dev 5 points 4 days ago

I can tell you from experience, you are not aware of being unconscious. It goes from the moment before you lose it, to when you regain without any period between.

[-] Iconoclast@feddit.uk 9 points 4 days ago

There are multiple ways to be "unconscious." Head trauma, sleep, general anesthesia, fainting, coma - for example.

The experience varies wildly: from absolute nothing under general anesthesia to extremely vivid stuff during sleep.

[-] angrystego@lemmy.world 2 points 4 days ago

Ok, that depends on definition I guess.

[-] SaveTheTuaHawk@lemmy.ca 4 points 5 days ago

Proven by data from those killed by guillotine.

[-] Pappabosley@lemmy.world 6 points 5 days ago

I could nominate some people for further testing with that instrument

[-] mlg@lemmy.world 1 points 4 days ago

Yeah I remember the record for a beheading test was like 30-45 seconds where the guy who was executed basically tried to blink every second to confirm he was conscious, and iirc the average was agreed to be something like 15 seconds tops