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David Collett

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Can you make a memory if your dead ?

Working in hospitals sadly some of our patients suffer cardiac arrests and pass away, others we manage to resuscitate.

Often people that we save tell us that they have glimpses of the other side or in fact they saw nothing at all. either way who knows if they are right ?

I would like to know / debate when in a situation like a cardiac arrest is it possible for your brain to create and store memories or is the inadequate blood flow and the primary brain function to restart the heart too much ?

so in a nut shell if people died and did see the other side (if there is one) could they possibly remember it ??

Topics: Cognitive philosophy education health knowledge medicine religion and science science
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    Vida Bee

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    Jun 26 2012: No. If they're having any type of conscious experience then they are not dead. That's why all these experiences are called "near" death. No one comes back from the dead. Even in the case of heart failure, that doesn't equal dead. Dead people don't have brains capable of forming new neuronal connections.
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      Debra Smith 200+

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      Jul 12 2012: Vida Bee, wonderful response. I think then, that we really need to define dead. Most of us were assuming it is a process, i think.
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        Stewart Gault 30+

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        Jul 12 2012: Imagine in the future if we can revive the brain dead and what future generation's definition of dead will be.
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          Debra Smith 200+

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          Jul 12 2012: I always imagined that we would suspend the process before death occurred. The interesting thing to me is to realize how many things that i have made assumptions about that I do not fully realize until I answer a TED question about it. I did not really think it through but I guess I thought they would freeze people and sort of reconstitute them when we had it all figured out. Wishful thinking to ward off death maybe.

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