madame guillotine

[fraserjim]

when you get your head chopped off would you still be conscious until the oxygen in the blood in your head ran out

[andy hughes]

Who knows? People who have operated guillotines tell of heads that have blinked for a time after the head was severed from the body, but with no vocal chords connected, the head cannot tell if it is making a conscious movement, or if simple nerve reactions are at work. Thos who really know have never said!

[darth vader]

In theory yes. Obviously proving this sort of scenario is rather impossible but biologists have debated this area extensively. Although the blood supply has stopped there will still be oxygenated blood within the brain, and as we already know the brain can continue for about 3-4 minutes without fresh supplies - hence using CPR can revive a person even after the heart has stopped pumping for a minute or two. The question is - what will you be conscious of? The brain will shut down and only perform reflex action tasks (attempting to breathe, but no lungs, attempting to send signals to the heart, signal has been cut) so you won't see, hear, smell, touch, taste, in my opinion, only be aware of thoughts going on in your mind. In summary i don't think you will get a definitive answer here, just opinion

As Andy points out there are some functions of the body that continue after death, which misleads people into thinking the body is still alive; dead bodies have been known to breathe out, or even fart, long after they went to the morgue!

[sft42]

Sorry Darth but the gasses escaping from a body after death are not the usual bodily functions but merely the build up of decomposing gasses in the stomach which have to go somewhere.

[Quizmonster]

Click http://www.hsus.org/ace/Article_Printer_Friendly?C
ontent_ID=12644 and a link will take you to the website of an American humane society dealing with decapitation as a means of putting animals down. It's rather 'scientific' , but the suggestion is that consciousness, in rodents at least, lasts a matter of seconds only. I can't see why it would last any longer in humans...but then I'm not a scientist!

[Ewood27]

There was a small piece in my newspaper last week which said that beheading takes 1/50 second, and death occurs within 7 seconds. I have no idea where their data came from. I have also read of an assistant at the guillotine who saw that a freshly severed head had the tongue sticking out. He stabbed it with a needle - and the tongue was swiftly withdrawn, while an expresion of intense pain came on the face. But then whoever said that the death penalty had to be painless?

[KARL]

On the point of resuscitation: Survivability does not equate to consciousness. Although the brain can survive up to around 4 minutes after circulation has stopped, the owner is usually unconscious within a matter of seconds of, say, total circulatory failure. As mentioned, the brain shuts down and this preserves oxygen compared to continuing on full consumption under fully conscious conditions. There will be individual differences under different circumstances, etc. including the extent of shut-down, leading to semi-consciousness of all shades. The presence of adrenalin in the blood is important, the more of it the slower the brain is likely to "give up" and shut down.

[jjf2003]

Soldiers who lost an arm or leg used to sometimes feel a 'phantom limb' where their missing limb should be. Perhaps a severed head would feel a 'phantom body'? :-)

[joeyjojo]

The executioner would sometimes ask the poor sap about to be whacked to give some kind of a sign or indication as almost all people back then had a sick facination for these sorts of things. I guess it might have been worth it if they made an effort not to be messy with too many hacks. They saw signs of life up to 10 seconds which would be too much for me.