{"id":65400,"date":"2018-09-19T20:53:27","date_gmt":"2018-09-20T02:53:27","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/admin.patheos.com\/blogs\/danpeterson\/?p=65400"},"modified":"2018-09-19T22:29:38","modified_gmt":"2018-09-20T04:29:38","slug":"consciousness-when-a-person-has-been-pronounced-brain-dead","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/danpeterson\/2018\/09\/consciousness-when-a-person-has-been-pronounced-brain-dead.html","title":{"rendered":"“Consciousness when a person has been pronounced brain-dead”"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"Home,<\/a>
I was born in this hospital in southern California, though I think that it has been considerably rebuilt and modified since those by-gone days. \u00a0However, the fact that I was born in a hospital inescapably suggests that there were hominids before even me, since some sort of incredibly ancient tool-using organism must have built it prior to my birth. \u00a0(Public domain photo from Wikimedia Commons)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

You would certainly be forgiven if you assumed from the title of this blog entry that it\u2019s a defense of my being sentient even despite the claims of certain detractors of mine. \u00a0Surprisingly, though, it\u2019s not. \u00a0It\u2019s about something related, but quite distinct.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

I know that it really irritates a small group of my worst critics, but irritating them isn\u2019t actually the reason that I continue to \u00a0post notes and excerpts from\u00a0Pim van Lommel,\u00a0Consciousness Beyond Life: The Science of the Near-Death Experience<\/em>\u00a0(New York: HarperCollins, 2010). \u00a0To the contrary, there are two principal reasons why I do so: \u00a0For one thing, a number of people have told me that they\u2019re really enjoying these. \u00a0And, second, posting the notes here encourages me to extract passages that I marked long ago but have never typed into my computer files.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

So here\u2019s another one:<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

Can we speak of consciousness when a person is in a coma?<\/em> \u00a0A recent article in Science<\/em> looked at the scientific evidence of awareness in a patient in a vegetative state<\/em>. \u00a0This is a form of coma with spontaneous breathing and brain-stem reflexes. \u00a0Brain 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. \u00a0This 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. \u00a0The 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. \u00a0In her book Uit coma<\/em> (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.<\/span><\/p>\n

Can we still speak of consciousness when a person has been pronounced brain-dead?<\/em>\u00a0 In his book Droomvlucht in coma<\/em> (Dream Flight in Coma), Jan Kerkhoffs tells us about his conscious experiences after neurologists declared him brain-dead following complications during brain surgery. \u00a0Only because his family refused organ donations was he able to write about his experiences because, much to everybody\u2019s surprise, he regained consciousness after three weeks in a coma. \u00a0(ix-x)<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

***<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

In other interesting science news:<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cWeird Infrared Signal Emanates Across Space, But What Created It?\u201d<\/a><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cThe Unknowable Enigma of Babies\u2019 Dreams: Infants spend twice as much time in REM sleep as adults\u2014but experts still know little about what happens in their brains during those hours.\u201d<\/a><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cStunning sphinx discovered at ancient Egyptian temple\u201d<\/a><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u00a0 \u00a0 You would certainly be forgiven if you assumed from the title of this blog entry that it\u2019s a defense of my being sentient even despite the claims of certain detractors of mine. \u00a0Surprisingly, though, it\u2019s not. \u00a0It\u2019s about something related, but quite distinct. \u00a0 I know that it really irritates a small group […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1019,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[1727,216,1008,1011,900,903,978,2340,2337,2113],"class_list":["post-65400","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-afterlife","tag-consciousness","tag-immortality","tag-life-after-death","tag-nde","tag-near-death-experience","tag-pim-van-lommel","tag-soul","tag-spirit","tag-van-lommel"],"yoast_head":"\n"Consciousness when a person has been pronounced brain-dead"<\/title>\n<meta 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