Despite technological advances, biology and medicine still lack a coherent and principled understanding of what precisely defines birth and death—the two bookends that delimit life.
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This year a large team of physicians and scientists at the Yale School of Medicine under Nenad Sestan took advantage of hundreds of pigs killed at a Department of Agriculture–approved slaughterhouse for a remarkable experiment, published in the journal Nature. The researchers removed the brains from their skulls and connected the carotid arteries and veins to a perfusion device that mimics a beating heart. It circulates a kind of artificial blood, a synthetic mixture of compounds that carry oxygen and drugs that protect cells from damage.
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At first glance, the restored brains with the circulating solution appeared relatively normal. As the compound circulated, the fine net of arteries, capillaries and veins that suffuse brain tissue responded appropriately.
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What was not present in these results were brain waves of the kind familiar from electroencephalographic (EEG) recordings.
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And yet! It cannot be ruled out that with some kind of external help, a sort of cortical defibrillator, these “dead” brains could be booted up, reviving the brain rhythms characteristic of the living brain.
Read full, original post: Is Death Reversible?
