This question has perplexed me since I was a kid. . .

When your heart stops, you are pretty much 'dead'. . .but are you DEAD?? Are you still conscious and able to use your five senses? I asked my Anatomy teacher way back in HS this question, and she never did give me a firm answer.

Just wondering!

 

I am by no means an expert, but my guess would be yes you can for a short time... until your organs are starved for oxygen and begin to shut down... I know there are professionals on here that can give a definate answer, but that is my guess... FWIW

 

When your heart stops, your brain will eventually black out and then die due to oxygen starvation. I forget the figure but depending on the person, you may remain conscious for 15-30 seconds or so.

A really morbid study was during the French Revolution, where many people got to experience the Guillotine. A doctor studied the disembodied heads and was able to ask questions and get eyeblink answers from the heads for about the time I mentioned.

Now a days, your heart can stop and you may be revived hours later, depending on the circumstances. This happens a lot with kids drowning in cold water. Of course they are not conscious for long, but evidently they aren't really dead either.

Most of us who have heart attacks won't actually have a heart that is stopped, instead it is beating erratically. So you may remain conscious and able to move for quite awhile, again depending on conditions.

Let's hope none of us get the chance to learn more about this from personal experience. I want to die peacefully in my sleep, like my wife's uncle, not screaming horribly like his passengers.

Jim Henderson

 

Actually, the kids who fall into cold water have "Mammalian Diving Reflex", which slows the heart rate to something negligible, and shuts down the peripheral circulation, meaning that the heart only supplies oxygen to the major organs, and the cooling of the blood helps the oxygen supply stay higher. If you have open heart surgery and are put onto a heart/lung bypass machine, your body will be chilled to simulate some of this process during the procedure to prevent damage to your organs.

On to the first question.. Since I remove the heart from things on a nearly daily basis, I can say that although the creatures are under general anesthesia, you can sort of tell when the brain goes, and that is about 30 seconds. When the pupil of the eye becomes fixed and dilated, there is no brain function. It occurs much, much faster when you use a euthanasia solution in the vein, usually by the time I am done injecting the total volume of solution, the brain has ceased function, as well as the heart. I would guess that if your spine is severed, you would have trouble feeling anything, but you should be able to smell or taste, see, but I doubt the last few seconds of conscious thought would be wasted on such "trifles".
I hope that helps satisfy your inquiring mind.

 

Yea, death is a brain thing. Obviously, your brain isn't going to last long without the heart pumping blood to it. That's how they get all those fresh pink organs for transplants, when people walk into the ER with their brains in their hands....

 

Heres the answer to your question...
When your heart stops you will remain conscious for a few seconds. Then you black out. You will lose your senses one at a time with hearing being the last to go (that's why they teach us EMS and Fire Dept people not to say things like "He's dead." - because they may still hear us.)

After your hearing goes,you will enter brain death. You are still not dead for a few seconds but if you were revived you would be a vegetable. Finally, after about 20-30 seconds you are dead.

Now bear in mind there are exceptions to this...depending on your particular body and the circumstances surrounding the death (like cold water drowning).

 

The brain doesn't fully die for as much as 6 minutes after the heart stops. Thats what the textbook says, my mom (an ER nurse) has seen patients that had heart stoppage for 30 minutes, and they were revived and fully recovered. It might just depend on your convictions though.

As a hunter, I know an animal can have a completley destroyed heart and still live to run as much as 200 yards and still be alive when I get there. Being as I also removed their internal organs, I know the heart was destroyed.