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Does the brain continue to live and perceive the surrounding world for a few more minutes after the head instantly flies off the shoulders, as, for example, on the guillotine?

Wednesday marked the 125th anniversary of the last execution by decapitation in Denmark, prompting a gruesome question from a reader: Does a person die instantly when their head is cut off?

“I just once heard that the brain dies from blood loss only a few minutes after chopping off the head, that is, people executed, for example, on the guillotine, in principle, could “see” and “hear” the environment, although they were already dead. Is it true?" Annette asks.

The thought of being able to see one's own headless body in anyone would cause a shudder, and in fact this question arose several hundred years ago, when the guillotine began to be used as a humane method of execution after the French Revolution.

Frame from the TV series The Walking Dead

Severed head turned red

The revolution was a real bloodbath, during which from March 1793 to August 1794 about 14 thousand heads were cut off.

And it was then that the question that interested our reader was first raised - this happened in connection with the execution on the guillotine of the sentenced to death Charlotte Corday, the woman who killed the leader of the revolutionaries Jean-Paul Marat.

After the execution, there were rumors that when one of the revolutionaries took her severed head out of the basket and slapped her in the face, her face contorted with anger. There were those who claimed to have seen her blush at the insult. But could this really happen?

The brain can live a little

“She couldn’t blush anyway, because that requires blood pressure,” says professor of zoophysiology Tobias Wang from Aarhus University, where he studies blood circulation and metabolism, among other things.

However, he cannot strongly rule out that after the decapitation, she was still conscious for some time.

“With our brain, the thing is that its mass is only 2% of the entire body, while it consumes about 20% of energy. The brain itself does not have a store of glycogen (an energy depot - approx. Videnskab), so as soon as the blood supply stops, it immediately ends up in the hands of the Lord, so to speak.

In other words, the question is how long the brain has enough energy, and the professor wouldn't be surprised if it lasted at least a couple of seconds.

If we turn to his patrimony - zoology, then there is at least one species of animals that is known that their head can continue to live without a body: these are reptiles.

Severed turtle heads can live for a few more days

On YouTube, for example, you can find frightening videos where the heads of snakes without a body quickly snap their mouths, ready to dig into the victim with their long poisonous teeth.

This is possible because reptiles have a very slow metabolism, so if the head is not damaged, then their brain can continue to live.

“The turtles stand out in particular,” says Tobias Wang, and talks about a colleague who was supposed to use the brains of the turtles for experiments and put the severed heads in the refrigerator, assuming that they would, of course, die there.

“But they lived for another two or three days,” says Tobias Wang, adding that this, like the question about the guillotine, creates an ethical dilemma.

"From an animal ethics point of view, the fact that the turtles' heads don't die immediately after they're separated from the body can be a problem."

“When we need a turtle’s brain, and at the same time it should not contain any anesthetics, we put our head in liquid nitrogen, and then it dies instantly,” the scientist explains.

Lavoisier winked from the basket

Returning to us humans, Tobias Wang told the famous story of the great chemist Antoine Lavoisier, who was executed by guillotine on May 8, 1794.

"Being one of the greatest scientists in history, he asked his good friend, the mathematician Lagrange, to count how many times he would wink after his head was cut off."

Thus Lavoisier was about to make his last contribution to science by trying to help answer the question of whether a person remains conscious after decapitation.

He was going to blink once a second, and, according to some stories, he blinked 10 times, and according to others - 30 times, but all this, as Tobias Wand says, unfortunately, is still a myth.

According to science historian William B. Jensen of the University of Cincinnati in the United States, the wink is not mentioned in any of the recognized biographies of Lavoisier, in which, however, it is written that Lagrange was present at the execution, but was in the corner of the square - too far to complete your part of the experiment.

Severed head looked at the doctor

The guillotine was introduced as a symbol of a new, humanistic order in society. Therefore, rumors about Charlotte Corday and others were completely out of place and gave rise to a lively scientific debate among doctors in France, England and Germany.

The question was never satisfactorily answered, and it was raised again and again until 1905, when one of the most convincing experiments was carried out with human heads. This experiment was described by the French doctor Beaurieux, who conducted it with the head of Henri Languille, who was sentenced to death.

As Boryo describes, immediately after being guillotined, he noted that Languile's lips and eyes spasmodically moved for 5-6 seconds, after which the movement stopped. And when Dr. Boryo, after a couple of seconds, loudly shouted “Languille!”, The eyes opened, the pupils focused and looked intently at the doctor, as if he woke the person from sleep.

“I saw undeniably living eyes looking at me,” Boryo writes.

After that, the eyelids dropped, but the doctor again managed to wake the convict's head, shouting out his name, and only on the third attempt nothing happened.

Not minutes but seconds

This account is not a scientific report in the modern sense, and Tobias Wang doubts that a person can really be conscious for so long.

“I believe that a couple of seconds is really possible,” he says, and says that there may be reflexes and muscle contractions, but the brain itself suffers from enormous blood loss and falls into a coma, so that the person quickly loses consciousness.

This estimate is supported by a proven rule known to cardiologists, which states that during cardiac arrest, the brain remains conscious for up to four seconds if a person is standing, up to eight seconds if they are sitting, and up to 12 seconds when lying down.

As a result, we have not really clarified whether the head can retain consciousness after being cut off from the body: minutes, of course, are excluded, but the version about seconds does not look incredible. And if you count: one, two, three, you can easily see that this is enough to realize the environment, which means that this method of execution has nothing to do with humanity.

The guillotine has become a symbol of a new, humane society

The French guillotine was of great symbolic importance in the new republic after the revolution, where it was introduced as a new, humane way of carrying out the death penalty.

According to Danish historian Inga Floto, who wrote A Cultural History of the Death Penalty (2001), the guillotine was a tool that showed "how the new regime's humane treatment of the death penalty contrasted with the barbarity of the former regime."

It is no coincidence that the guillotine appears as a formidable mechanism with a clear and simple geometry, from which it exudes rationality and efficiency.

The guillotine was named after the physician Joseph Guillotin (J.I. Guillotin), who after the French Revolution became famous and praised for proposing to reform the system of punishment, making the law equal for all, and punishing criminals equally regardless of their status.

The severed head of Louis XVI, executed on the guillotine. flickr.com Karl Ludwig Poggemann

In addition, Guillotin argued that the execution should be carried out in a humane way so that the victim experienced minimal pain, in contrast to the cruel practice of those times when the executioner with an ax or sword often had to deliver several blows before he managed to separate the head from the body.

When in 1791 the National Assembly of France, after a long debate about whether to abolish the death penalty altogether, decided instead that "the death penalty should be limited to simple deprivation of life without any torture of the condemned", Guillotin's ideas were adopted.

This led to the improvement of the earlier forms of "falling blade" tools into the guillotine, which thus became a significant symbol of the new social order.

The guillotine remained the only execution tool in France until the abolition of the death penalty in 1981 (!). Public executions were abolished in France in 1939.

Recent executions in Denmark

In 1882 Anders Nielsen Sjællænder, a farm worker on the island of Lolland, was sentenced to death for murder. On November 22, 1882, the only executioner in the country, Jens Sejstrup, brandished an axe. The execution caused a great stir in the press, especially because Seistrup had to be hit with an ax several times before the head was separated from the body.

Anders Schellander was the last to be publicly executed in Denmark. The next execution took place behind closed doors at Horsens Prison. The death penalty in Denmark was abolished in 1933.

Soviet scientists transplanted dog heads

If you can handle some more terrifying and shuddering science experiments, check out , which shows Soviet experiments simulating the reverse situation: severed dog heads are kept alive by artificial blood supply.

The video was presented by the British biologist J. B. S. Haldane (JBS Haldane), who said that he himself had carried out several similar experiments.

There were doubts whether the video was propaganda exaggerating the achievements of Soviet scientists. Nevertheless, the fact that Russian scientists were pioneers in the field of organ transplantation, including transplanting the heads of dogs, is a generally recognized fact.

These experiences inspired the South African physician Christian Barnard (Christiaan Barnard), who earned worldwide fame by performing the world's first heart transplant.

Does the brain continue to live and perceive the surrounding world for a few more minutes after the head instantly flies off the shoulders, as, for example, on the guillotine?

RIA Novosti, Alexandra Morozova | Go to photo bank

Wednesday marked the 125th anniversary of the last execution by decapitation in Denmark, prompting a gruesome question from a reader: Does a person die instantly when their head is cut off?

“I just once heard that the brain dies from blood loss only a few minutes after chopping off the head, that is, people executed, for example, on the guillotine, in principle, could “see” and “hear” the environment, although they were already dead. Is it true?" Annette asks.

The thought of being able to see one's own headless body in anyone would cause a shudder, and in fact this question arose several hundred years ago, when the guillotine began to be used as a humane method of execution after the French Revolution.

Severed head turned red

The revolution was a real bloodbath, during which from March 1793 to August 1794 14,000 heads were cut off.

And it was then that the question that interested our reader was first raised - this happened in connection with the execution on the guillotine of the sentenced to death Charlotte Corday, the woman who killed the leader of the revolutionaries Jean-Paul Marat.

After the execution, there were rumors that when one of the revolutionaries took her severed head out of the basket and slapped her in the face, her face contorted with anger. There were those who claimed to have seen her blush at the insult.

But could this really happen?

The brain can live a little

“She couldn’t blush anyway, because that requires blood pressure,” says professor of zoophysiology Tobias Wang from Aarhus University, where he studies blood circulation and metabolism, among other things.

However, he cannot strongly rule out that after the decapitation, she was still conscious for some time.

“With our brain, the thing is that its mass is only 2% of the entire body, while it consumes about 20% of energy. The brain itself does not have a store of glycogen (an energy depot - approx. Videnskab), so as soon as the blood supply stops, it immediately ends up in the hands of the Lord, so to speak.

In other words, the question is how long the brain has enough energy, and the professor wouldn't be surprised if it lasted at least a couple of seconds.

If we turn to his patrimony - zoology, then there is at least one species of animals that is known that their head can continue to live without a body: these are reptiles.

Severed turtle heads can live for a few more days

On YouTube, for example, you can find frightening videos where the heads of snakes without a body quickly snap their mouths, ready to dig into the victim with their long poisonous teeth.

This is possible because reptiles have a very slow metabolism, so if the head is not damaged, then their brain can continue to live.

“The turtles stand out in particular,” says Tobias Wang, and talks about a colleague who was supposed to use the brains of the turtles for experiments and put the severed heads in the refrigerator, assuming that they would, of course, die there.

“But they lived for another two or three days,” says Tobias Wang, adding that this, like the question about the guillotine, creates an ethical dilemma.

"From an animal ethics point of view, the fact that the turtles' heads don't die immediately after they're separated from the body can be a problem."

“When we need a turtle’s brain, and at the same time it should not contain any anesthetics, we put our head in liquid nitrogen, and then it dies instantly,” the scientist explains.

Lavoisier winked from the basket

Returning to us humans, Tobias Wang told the famous story of the great chemist Antoine Lavoisier, who was executed by guillotine on May 8, 1794.

"Being one of the greatest scientists in history, he asked his good friend, the mathematician Lagrange, to count how many times he would wink after his head was cut off."

Thus Lavoisier was about to make his last contribution to science by trying to help answer the question of whether a person remains conscious after decapitation.

He was going to blink once a second, and, according to some stories, he blinked 10 times, and according to others - 30 times, but all this, as Tobias Wand says, unfortunately, is still a myth.

According to science historian William B. Jensen of the University of Cincinnati in the United States, the wink is not mentioned in any of the recognized biographies of Lavoisier, in which, however, it is written that Lagrange was present at the execution, but was in the corner of the square - too far to complete your part of the experiment.

Severed head looked at the doctor

The guillotine was introduced as a symbol of a new, humanistic order in society. Therefore, rumors about Charlotte Corday and others were completely out of place and gave rise to a lively scientific debate among doctors in France, England and Germany.

The question was never satisfactorily answered, and it was raised again and again until 1905, when one of the most convincing experiments was carried out with human heads.

This experiment was described by the French doctor Beaurieux, who conducted it with the head of Henri Languille, who was sentenced to death.

As Boryo describes, immediately after being guillotined, he noted that Languile's lips and eyes spasmodically moved for 5-6 seconds, after which the movement stopped. And when Dr. Boryo, after a couple of seconds, loudly shouted “Languille!”, The eyes opened, the pupils focused and looked intently at the doctor, as if he woke the person from sleep.

“I saw undeniably living eyes looking at me,” Boryo writes.

After that, the eyelids dropped, but the doctor again managed to wake the convict's head, shouting out his name, and only on the third attempt nothing happened.

Not minutes but seconds

This account is not a scientific report in the modern sense, and Tobias Wang doubts that a person can really be conscious for so long.

“I believe that a couple of seconds is really possible,” he says, and says that there may be reflexes and muscle contractions, but the brain itself suffers from enormous blood loss and falls into a coma, so that the person quickly loses consciousness.

This estimate is supported by a proven rule known to cardiologists, which states that during cardiac arrest, the brain remains conscious for up to four seconds if a person is standing, up to eight seconds if they are sitting, and up to 12 seconds when lying down.

As a result, we have not really clarified whether the head can retain consciousness after being cut off from the body: minutes, of course, are excluded, but the version about seconds does not look incredible.

And if you count: one, two, three, you can easily see that this is enough to realize the environment, which means that this method of execution has nothing to do with humanity.

The guillotine has become a symbol of a new, humane society

The French guillotine was of great symbolic importance in the new republic after the revolution, where it was introduced as a new, humane way of carrying out the death penalty.

According to Danish historian Inga Floto, who wrote A Cultural History of the Death Penalty (2001), the guillotine was a tool that showed "how the new regime's humane treatment of the death penalty contrasted with the barbarity of the former regime."

It is no coincidence that the guillotine appears as a formidable mechanism with a clear and simple geometry, from which it exudes rationality and efficiency.

The guillotine was named after the physician Joseph Guillotin (J.I. Guillotin), who after the French Revolution became famous and praised for proposing to reform the system of punishment, making the law equal for all, and punishing criminals equally regardless of their status.

Flickr.com Karl Ludwig Poggemann

In addition, Guillotin argued that the execution should be carried out in a humane way so that the victim experienced minimal pain, in contrast to the cruel practice of those times when the executioner with an ax or sword often had to deliver several blows before he managed to separate the head from the body.

When in 1791 the National Assembly of France, after a long debate about whether to abolish the death penalty altogether, decided instead that "the death penalty should be limited to simple deprivation of life without any torture of the condemned", Guillotin's ideas were adopted.

This led to the improvement of the earlier forms of "falling blade" tools into the guillotine, which thus became a significant symbol of the new social order.

The guillotine was abolished in 1981

The guillotine remained the only execution tool in France until the abolition of the death penalty in 1981 (!). Public executions were abolished in France in 1939.

Recent executions in Denmark

In 1882 Anders Nielsen Sjællænder, a farm worker on the island of Lolland, was sentenced to death for murder.

On November 22, 1882, the only executioner in the country, Jens Sejstrup, brandished an axe.

The execution caused a great stir in the press, especially because Seistrup had to be hit with an ax several times before the head was separated from the body.

Anders Schellander was the last to be publicly executed in Denmark.

The next execution took place behind closed doors at Horsens Prison. The death penalty in Denmark was abolished in 1933.

Soviet scientists transplanted dog heads

If you can handle some more horrifying and shuddering science experiments, watch a video that shows Soviet experiments simulating the reverse: severed dog heads are kept alive with artificial blood supply.

The video was presented by the British biologist J. B. S. Haldane (JBS Haldane), who said that he himself had carried out several similar experiments.

There were doubts whether the video was propaganda exaggerating the achievements of Soviet scientists. Nevertheless, the fact that Russian scientists were pioneers in the field of organ transplantation, including transplanting the heads of dogs, is a generally recognized fact.

These experiences inspired the South African physician Christian Barnard (Christiaan Barnard), who earned worldwide fame by performing the world's first heart transplant.