Life and Death and Consciousness

Whoa, I just had a particularly gruesome thought.

Beheadings were introduced by Dr. Joseph-Ignace Guillotin as "a gentler method of execution."  It was thought that severing the head caused almost instant death. However

Quote :

From the very beginning of its use, speculation abounded over whether the heads of the guillotined remained conscious after being cut off. The debate reached new heights in 1793, when an assistant executioner slapped the face of one of his victims’ heads and spectators claimed to see its cheeks flush in anger. Doctors later asked the condemned to try to blink or leave one eye open after their execution to prove they could still move, and others yelled the deceased’s name or exposed their heads to candle flames and ammonia to see if they would react. In 1880, a doctor named Dassy de Lignieres even had blood pumped into the head of a guillotined child murderer to find out if it would come back to life and speak. The ghastly experiments were put to a stop in the 20th century, but studies on rats have since found that brain activity may continue for around four seconds after decapitation.

Hanging works much the same way, with the skilled gallows operator allowing just enough rope for the condemned to break his neck without detaching the head (which is messy, to say the least).  Once the spinal column is severed the heart and lungs no longer get signals from the brain stem, and cease operation -- although somewhat slower than decapitation.

But what if, and this was my morbid thought, what if all the motor neurons were severed but the autonomous ones were not?  What if the blood supply to the brain continued, what if the brain's nerves were simply cut off from the rest of the body?  The person would become a quadriplegic, perfectly human but paralyzed.  I wonder how often hangings resulted in quadriplegia rather than death?  I don't recall ever hearing about criminals being kept in perpetuity wheelchair-bound.  I suppose it MUST have happened.

If you want to give your nightmares some details: Locked-in syndrome

Aye-yi-yi. That would SUCK.

Locked-in syndrome?
The description sounds a lot like marriage.

Aye-yi-yi. Are you LOOKING for trouble???

Don't have to look for it.

richard09 wrote:

If you want to give your nightmares some details: Locked-in syndrome

Now, see that looks like something that those people working on that stupid car ought to put some time and money into. There has to be tech that can help those people.

Let them control a 1000 mph car with brain waves, yeah!

NoCoPilot wrote:

Let them control a 1000 mph car with brain waves, yeah!

Ha ha ha

I was actually thinking more about those suits like in Alien, something where just the brain waves can move the suit and thus move the body.