What is brain dead? Everyone will always say that it’s a person whose brain is no longer functioning right? That’s not always the case though, even after brain death, a person’s heart still may continue at a very slow steady beat. Many misunderstandings and different stories make it easy to understand why there is still a good deal of controversy about the relationship between determining death and organ donation. When your heart stops, it is normally involved with cardiac arrest. In cardiac arrest, the heart can no longer pump and the body dies. So what are the effects or being brain dead and your heart stopping?
Being brain dead is only considered when a person no longer has neurological activity in the brain stem or in the brain, which means there is nothing going on in the brain. Without a working brain, the body does not secrete important hormones needed to keep the process. When brain dead a person also cannot keep in contact with their body temperature, so they are kept with warm IV fluids, blankets, etc. According to IJCCM brain death is defined as the irreversible loss of a...
In terms of the souls mortality, Swinburne maintains that “when the body dies and the brain ceases to function […] the soul will cease to function also.” This essentially means that the soul is dependent on the brain for the sustainment of its own function. What happens to the soul after the brain dies questionable, with Swinburne offering three different arguments.
When a person is battling between life and death physicians have to check for signs of death. Kastebaum states that “the most common signs of death have been lack of respiration, pulse, and heartbeat, as well as failure to respond to stimuli such as light, movement, and pain. Lower body temperature and
Chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE) is a syndrome of emotional lability, Parkinsonism, ataxia, and cognitive impairment suffered by athletes who undergo repetitive concussive and subconcussive blows to the head (Cantu 2007). Owing to its initial discovery in boxers, CTE has been various known as "punch drunk," "dementia pugilistica," and "psychopathic deterioration of pugilist." This paper will take a step into the science behind this disease. Starting with the first descriptions in the medical literature and covering the progress made in understanding the clinical presentation, epidemiology, neuropathology, and genetics of the disease.
Traumatic brain injury (TBI) is a major cause of death and disability worldwide for which there is no cure. Many patients who survive from TBI may experience permanent cognitive loss, behavioral issues, and emotional disturbances, which require daily medical or social attentions.[1, 2] It is believed that over 2% US population is experiencing TBI-associated disabilities which create an annual burden evaluated at $60 billion on direct (medical service) and indirect (loss of productivity) costs.[3, 4] Traumatic brain injury is complex which consists of a mechanical trauma (primary injury) and a resulting biochemical cascade (secondary injury), and lead to a wide diversity of symptoms.[5]
The criteria or definition of brain death was re-examined in 1968 by a committee at Harvard Medical School and is part of the criteria used today. They defined it as when a patient; is unresponsive to stimulus; cannot move or breathe without the aid of a ventilator and has no brain stem reflexes. Several tests are done in order to determine if a patient meets these criteria and this can be done by physicians and neurologists. A brain dead patient is legally dead and a death cer...
...4). Unconsciousness is usually irreversible and is followed by death. Another option is terminating life sustaining treatments such as antibiotics, ventilators, cardio pulmonary resuscitation, and etcetera. The individual can also choose to be removed from all nutrition and hydration sources and allowed to die of dehydration or starvation, which occurs in about 1-3 weeks (Harris, 2014; Lachman, 2010). These options of allowing natural death in themselves seem similar to physician-assisted suicide. McManaman (2012) refers to them as “passive euthanasia” and states that, “Death is a side effect of removing such treatment, and death is accepted, not intended” (¶ 15). Currently, most individuals only have the option to end life-sustaining measures and be provided comfort care, which can hasten or cause death do not appear different than choosing assisted-suicide.
According to the Merriam Webster dictionary, death is referred to the permanent cessation of all
There have been some cases where people have been declared brain dead but then regain some brain activity (Greenberg, 2014). This has sparked debates that brain death does not necessarily mean death.... ... middle of paper ... ...
The term brain death is defined as loss of function to the brain that is irreversible in all parts, even the brain stem. Brain death can happen to someone who has suffered a massive head injury. There is a series of tests, if result positively, can mean that the person is clinically deceased. First, there is a look at medical history to find prior brain dysfunctions. The cause of the possible brain death is then looked at to determine if it is possible to be reversed. If there is no evidence of medications being the cause of the brain death, there is a complete neurological exam taken. This exam includes: checking to see if there is a response to stimuli, not including spinal reflexes, pupils are absent and have no response to light, there are no facial or eye movements, no gag ...
A concussion can be defined as a traumatic brain injury from a blow to the body that results in a shaking of the brain. Concussions have become a more popular injury throughout the years as sports have progressed. Athletes of any age can get a concussion no matter the sport. One of the most important steps in curing a concussion is recognizing that the athlete has one. Without recognizing that an athlete has a concussion potentially could lead the athlete to have more problems later and may cause their symptoms to get worse. The earlier a concussion is recognized the faster the recovery process can be put into place.
If brain cells die or are damaged because of a stroke, symptoms of that damage start to show in the parts of the body controlled by those brain cells.
Most of the body’s functions such as, thinking, emotions, memories and so forth are controlled by the brain. It serves as a central nervous system in the human body. The mind is the intellect/consciousness that originates in the human brain and manifests itself in emotions, thoughts, perceptions and so forth. This means that the brain is the key interpreter of the mind’s content. Jackson and Nagel seem to resist identifying what we call “mental events” with brain events, for different reasons, while J.J.C. Smart takes the opposing view.
Dementia is defined by the World Health Organization as a syndrome due to damage of the brain cells that most often chronic and progressive in nature. Some of the cortical functions that become impaired include memory, thinking, orientation, comprehension, calculation, learning capacity, language and judgment. Other manifestations that may accompany this disease are deterioration in emotional control, social behavior or motivation (Ouldred & Bryant, 2009) Dementia is not a normal part of aging, however it occurs most frequently in the older population. Fifteen percent of Americans over the age of sixty-five have dementia, and as the average life span continues to increase, so will the number of those affected by dementia (Fredman, James, Johnson, Scholz, & Weuve, 2012). The purpose of this paper is to discuss the pathophysiology, risk factors, symptoms, and treatment options for different types of dementia.
In a time where science and materialism reign, the topic of the soul is rarely mentioned, ostensibly left in the past with the philosophers of old. Nichols, however, candidly broaches this difficult topic and gives new life to the argument that humans do indeed have an immaterial, immortal soul. Nichols summarizes several popular arguments for the existence of the soul as he builds his own argument, which discusses a soul as limited in relation to its environment as well as a soul that is one with the mind and a controller of the body. He discusses both the strengths and challenges to his argument, offering rebuttals to the challenges. Because this soul is the organizing principle of the body it is involved in the Resurrection as well, bridging the gap between the material and spiritual worlds. However, I disagree with Nichols’ assessment, instead choosing the side of materialism where an immaterial soul does not exist.
One form of skepticism is the skepticism about the external world — the theory that we can never have any knowledge about the external world, even the existence of it; the theory also suggests that we can only know the internal world which is our own mind(Carr, lecture 8). For example, a skeptic may say “we don’t know if we have hands because what we see may be illusions” or “we don’t know if we are not brains in vats experiencing a huge hallucination”. Among many philosophers who attempt to defeat skepticism about the external world, Putnam argues that “we are brains in vats”(BIVs) is always self-falsifying because brains in vats do not satisfy the necessary condition for being able to refer to the