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Byunggyu Parkalıntı yaptı2 yıl önce
Some scientists do not believe in questions that cannot be answered, but they do believe in wrongly formulated questions. In 2005 the journal Science published a special anniversary issue featuring 125 questions that scientists have so far failed to answer.3 The most important unanswered question, What is the universe made of? was followed by, What is the biological basis of consciousness? I would like to reformulate this second question as follows: Does consciousness have a biological basis at all? We can also distinguish between temporary and timeless aspects of our consciousness. This prompts the following question: Is it possible to speak of a beginning of our consciousness, and will our consciousness ever end?
In order to answer these questions, we need a better understanding of the relationship between brain function and consciousness. We will have to find out if there is any indication that consciousness can be experienced during sleep, general anesthesia, coma, brain death, clinical death, the process of dying and, finally, after confirmed death. If the answer to any of these questions is yes, we must try to find scientific explanations and analyze the relationship between brain function and consciousness in these situations. This raises a series of other questions that will be addressed in this book:
Where am I when I sleep? Can I be aware of anything during sleep?
Sometimes there are indications of consciousness under general anesthesia. How is it possible that some patients under general anesthesia can later describe exactly what was being said or even done, usually at the moment when they suffered complications during surgery.
Can we speak of consciousness when a person is in a coma? A recent article in Science looked at the scientific evidence of awareness in a patient in a vegetative state.4 This is a form of coma with spontaneous breathing and brain-stem reflexes. Brain tests showed that when this patient was instructed to imagine certain activities like playing tennis or moving around her home, the monitors recorded changes identical to those in healthy volunteers who carried out the same instructions. This means that the identified changes can be explained only by assuming that this patient, despite her vegetative state, not only understood the verbal instructions but also carried them out. The research demonstrated that this coma patient was aware of both herself and her surroundings but that her brain damage prevented her from communicating her thoughts and emotions directly to the outside world. In her book Uit coma (Out of Coma), Alison Korthals Altes also describes seeing staff and family in and around the intensive care unit during her three-week coma following a serious traffic accident.5
Byunggyu Parkalıntı yaptı2 yıl önce
Can we still speak of consciousness when a person has been pronounced brain-dead? In his book Droomvlucht in coma (Dream Flight in Coma), Jan Kerkhoffs tells us about his conscious experiences after neurologists declared him brain-dead following complications during brain surgery. Only because his family refused organ donation was he able to write about his experiences because, much to everybody’s surprise, he regained consciousness after three weeks in a coma.6
Does brain death really equal death, or does it mark the start of a process of dying that can last anywhere between hours and days? What happens to our consciousness during this process of dying?
Does clinical death equal loss of consciousness? Many of the reports of near-death experience covered in this book suggest that during a cardiac arrest, that is, during a period of clinical death, people may experience an exceptionally lucid consciousness.
Can we still speak of consciousness when a person is confirmed dead and the body is cold? I will look more closely at this question below
Byunggyu Parkalıntı yaptı2 yıl önce
What is death, what is life, and what happens when I am dead? Why are most people so afraid of death? Surely death can be a release after a difficult illness? Why do doctors often perceive the death of a patient as a failure on their part? Because the patient lost his or her life? Why are people no longer allowed to “just” die of a serious, terminal illness but instead are put on a ventilator and given artificial feeding through tubes and drips? Why do some people in the final stages of a malignant disease opt for chemotherapy, which may prolong life for a short while but certainly does not always improve the quality of their remaining life? Why is our first impulse to prolong life and delay death at all costs? Is fear of death the reason why? And does this fear stem from ignorance of what death might be? Are our ideas about death accurate at all? Is death really the end of everything
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