Scientific exploration of "gray zone" between life and death, does the future come when people can avoid death?

byValeria Almaraz

Looking at the appearance that characters are dead with drama etc. It seems that life and death are separated from packing on the boundary line, but at hospitals and hospices etc., while receiving long-term treatment, You can see a person slowly dying while living in death between life and death. In addition, as technology improves, frozen preservation of the human body is also made possible, and "gray zone" which neither life nor death can be utilized. Scientific research on this "gray zone" is progressing gradually.

Science Is Starting to Explore the Gray Zone Between Life and Death | Big Think
https://bigthink.com/philip-perry/science-is-starting-to-explore-the-gray-zone-between-life-and-death

State University of New York at Stony BrookHe is an Associate Professor and an Expert in Resuscitation MedicineSam PearneyProfessorErasing Death"I talked about how to revive the body and brain in a book called" someday ", and someday I have the idea that death" will become reversible ". According to Professor Pearne, we know that we can lower the rate at which cells die by chilling corpses in previous experiments, so even in patients who have stopped cardiopulmonary by cardiopulmonary resuscitation method, damage to the brain in a few hours He sometimes comes back without receiving it. In addition, Professor Pearney who is also a researcher of "experience after death" seems that the experience of near-death is related to brain resuscitation.

Mark Ross, a biologist at Fred Hutchinson's Cancer Research Center, also conducts research on human resuscitation, temporarily putting the patient at risk of life at a state like asphyxia or hibernation, the condition is stable We are experimenting on how to do resuscitation from. Humans are dead if the oxygen level is low, but some animals enter a state of inactivity when the oxygen level of the situation placed is low. Prof. Ross at the time of writing the articleLinear animalWe are doing research to halt activity, and ultimately the goal is to do the same thing with humans.

And, many people think of it as "a state living between life and death"Plant stateIt should be. A medical plant condition is that the patient has no consciousness because of brain damage and can not respond to surrounding irritation. At this time, there is no problem with involuntary exercise, that is, blinking, heartbeat, reflection, etc. And many patients can not recover from this condition.

byAndalucía Andaluía

However, it has been reported that men who were in plant condition for 15 years regained consciousness,A paper published in September 2017So the French researchers have accomplished the feat of announcing ways to restore consciousness to plant condition patients. This means that a special device is embedded in the chest of the patient and electric stimulation is passed through the vagus nerve, and patients who have continued stimulation therapy for one month are in a plant state, while someone is reading a book He said that he recovered until he reacted to simple instructions such as opening his eyes and awaking and moving his neck left or right. It is not a recovery from walking around the bed one day like a movie, but when he conducted a brain scan, he saw more exchange of information between brain regions.

The vagus nerve extends through the neck to the abdomen and is related to arousal and attention. Although the method of stimulating the vagus nerve has been used for diseases such as depression and epilepsy so far, why the state of patients recovered by stimulation of the vagus nerve is still almost obvious not.

byPatrick Brinksma

Angela Silig of Mark Jeanneur cognitive science laboratory who conducted the research said that we will proceed with research by implementing this method to more subjects.