Decapitation in Rats: Latency to Unconsciousness and the ‘Wave of Death’ (2011)(researchgate.net)
researchgate.net
Decapitation in Rats: Latency to Unconsciousness and the ‘Wave of Death’ (2011)
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/49820630_Decapitation_in_Rats_Latency_to_Unconsciousness_and_the_%27Wave_of_Death%27
14 comments
You just awakened me that our nerves, and body in general, work more like a network than I cared to analyze. What other kinds of similarities can we gleam from this analog? Have those who work on digital networks made any useful discoveries from how the body and brain network? I vaguely recall a few things in which digital communication has learned a bit from animal communications and language itself but can't recall exact sources; brain like a sponge, it leaves as easily as it soaks up.
I don't think the body runs BGP. But I am pretty sure it has bandwidth/delay product problems.
Definitely, my old network does. My human benchmark reaction average is more than the time it'd take for an automated program to send a digital signal across the world to click a mouse, ie, upper 200ms. I'm in dire need of optimization.
Is no one else disturbed that this is only going on because humans treat lab rats like invaluable unemotional beings?
I winced at the title
Wait until you read that they ‘only’ did this experiment on ‘obsolete’ rats.
yeah, disgusting
didnt read the article, but it reminded me that a person mentioned in the book surveillance and punishment by foucault (iirc), was going to be decapitated and promised to keep blinking his eyes - on his severed head - as long as he could.
the author didnt disclose the results though!
the author didnt disclose the results though!
From https://www.theguardian.com/notesandqueries/query/0,5753,-80...
QUOTE:
The answer, horribly, is 'Not only is it possible, but it's medically proven.' Debate on the subject raged ever since Charlotte Corday -- the assassin of Jean-Paul Marat -- was guillotined in 1793. The executioner's assistant, Francois le Gros, lifted her head by the hair, and slapped it on both cheeks. Eyewitnesses reported that the face took on an angry expression, and the cheeks visibly flushed. The debate was started -- if guillotining didn't produce instant death, then it wasn't a 'quick and merciful end', as promised by the post-Enlightenment revolutionaries. In 1794, German surgeon Dr S. T. Sommering argued in the Parisian newspapers that 'consciousness of feeling may persist [in a severed head] even if blood circulation is terminated, partial or weak [...] the head's strongest sensation would be the after-pain felt in the neck.' French doctors argued that he was confusing nervous spasms with sensory perceptions and voluntary motion. Little research was conducted on the subject, however, until the turn of the twentieth century, when another French doctor, Beaurieux, was permitted to make an investigation of a severed head, of a criminal called Languille, immediately after guillotining: "Here is what I was able to note immediately after the decapitation: the eyelids and lips of the decapitated man worked in irregularly rhythmic contractions for about 4 or 6 seconds. I waited several seconds longer. The spasmodic movements ceased. The face relaxed, the lids half-closed in the eyeballs, leaving only the white of the conjunctiva visible, exactly as in the dying whom we have occasion to see every day [...] It was then that I called in a strong, sharp, voice: 'Languille!' I then saw the eyelids slowly lift up, without any spasmodic contraction -- I insist advisedly on this pecularity -- but with an even movement, quite distinct and normal, such as happens in everyday life, with people awakened or torn from their thoughts. Next, Languille's eyes very definitely fixed themselves on mine and the pupils focused themselves. I was not, then, dealing with a vague dull look, without any expression that can be observed any day in dying people to whom one speaks: I was dealing with undeniably living eyes which were looking at me." By 1956, further research had proved, in the words of governemntal advisers Drs Piedelievre and Fournier, that "death [by decapitation] is not instantaneous [...] every vital element survives [...it is] a savage vivisection, followed by a premature burial." The French government abolished execution by decapitation in 1977.
Beaurieux said he called out for a second time, and again Languille's eyes fixed on his.
He added: “The eyelids lifted and undeniably living eyes fixed themselves on mine with perhaps even more penetration than the first time.”
He added: “The eyelids lifted and undeniably living eyes fixed themselves on mine with perhaps even more penetration than the first time.”
It seems like this must have been Antoine Lavoisier, but I can't find the reference I remember.
"It took them only an instant to cut off this head, and one hundred years might not suffice to reproduce its like."
"It took them only an instant to cut off this head, and one hundred years might not suffice to reproduce its like."
Weirdly reminiscent of the sci fi plot element in Sawyer, “The Terminal Experiment.”
If you disrupt neural and oxygenated blood flow, there would be an initial pressure and energy drop. But, clearly most cells get a simultaneous uh-oh kick. If it took about 60 seconds for them to hold back the change from intra cellular holdings and then flip state, I would not be surprised.
Muscle meat takes longer to shed its lactic acid burden. That's what meat hanging is about. I'm told you can see muscle twitches in hung carcases for some time.
Van Jacobson's work on TCP included the network effect of buffer and delay causing window synchronisation. You would think a brain might also be forced into a co-aligned state by a single massive all encompassing trauma like loss of oxygenated blood in one stroke (sorry)