The brain is not dead when the cortex is dead.

That's not written in stone either. Grigg (1987) reviewed patients at a hospital and identified a considerable number whose brainstem was totally destroyed, absolutely brain dead by all medical criteria, (hopeless cases) but scalp EEG recordings were still measuring electrical brain activity, some patients displayed sleep like brain wave patterns, yet their brainstem was just a mess of necrotic tissue. So trying to claim that if the brainstem is down, there can be no other electrical activity in the brain, as if it were some golden rule, just isn't correct.

https://thinkingdeeper.files.wordpress.com/2017/03/brain_death_1987.pdf

Thanks for sticking that up, Max. Unwittingly however you've just demonstrated that you don't understand the crux of the matter here. Those patients with severe damage to their brainstems (that the article refers to) (and therefore able to be predicted brain dead) still have a beating heart. So of course when the heart is still beating there can (sometimes) be some kind of wave patterns on the EEG. All the 56 patients in this paper died without any return of normal cerebral function which also demonstrates (apparently) how good a measure a severely damaged brain stem is of the viability of life.

In cardiac arrest, the brainstem, cortex, the whole brain is taken out of the equation. No blood flow = nothing going on after 10-20 seconds, the patient is dead and will stay dead unless resuscitated

A simple way (for Malf particularly) to envisage this is to think about a house and it's vital services, electric, gas, water supply etc. To make sure that all systems in the house are non functional, all that needs to be done is flip the switch on the RCD, turn the gas lever and close down the stop cock. Everything stops.
 
Thanks for sticking that up, Max. Unwittingly however you've just demonstrated that you don't understand the crux of the matter here. Those patients with severe damage to their brainstems (that the article refers to) (and therefore able to be predicted brain dead) still have a beating heart. So of course when the heart is still beating there can (sometimes) be some kind of wave patterns on the EEG. All the 56 patients in this paper died without any return of normal cerebral function which also demonstrates (apparently) how good a measure a severely damaged brain stem is of the viability of life.

Exactly, it was irrelevant for you to claim that negative brainstem tests mean there cannot be electrical activity in the brain beyond the 20 seconds during cardiac arrest. We can say the brainstem has no special role to allow or prevent electrical activity in other areas of the brain. So we can dispense with your brainstem claim, and get back to discussing this paper which shows electrical activity *can* continue in deeper neuronal structures of the the brain for upto 5 minutes. And the other quotes which show electrical activity is possible upto 4 minutes.
 
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Exactly, it was irrelevant for you to claim that negative brainstem tests mean there cannot be electrical activity in the brain beyond the 20 seconds during cardiac arrest.

No, Max.....sigh... for some reason you don't seem to be able to get this, it's so simple, (I do believe even Malf will be able to grasp it) . With a damaged brain stem there is still blood flowing up into the brain. That flow can produce brainwaves of some type. In cardiac arrest, there is zero blood flow and everything comes to a stop after 10-20 seconds. Why is this so difficult for you ?
 
No, Max.....sigh... for some reason you don't seem to be able to get this, it's so simple, (I do believe even Malf will be able to grasp it) . With a damaged brain stem there is still blood flowing up into the brain. That flow can produce brainwaves of some type. In cardiac arrest, there is zero blood flow and everything comes to a stop after 10-20 seconds. Why is this so difficult for you ?
Do you have evidence for this claim?
 
No, Max.....sigh... for some reason you don't seem to be able to get this, it's so simple, (I do believe even Malf will be able to grasp it) . With a damaged brain stem there is still blood flowing up into the brain. That flow can produce brainwaves of some type. In cardiac arrest, there is zero blood flow and everything comes to a stop after 10-20 seconds. Why is this so difficult for you ?

All electrical activity within the brain doesn't globally cease after 20s of cardiac arrest I'm afraid Tim. All you and anyone else can 'accurately' claim is that scalp EEG measurements generally cease after 20s of cardiac arrest, these are only measurements of electrical activity from the cortex. (if you're measuring them of course).

That's the point of all the studies I'm quoting, to show when we use invasive EEG at, on in, the cortex (rather than EEG at the scalp surface), or use other invasive methods on tissue deeper into the brain, or, use other types of measurements MEG, fMRI we find electrical activity beyond 20s during cardiac arrest - upto around 5 minutes.

The initial study I quoted shows electrical activity occurs within neurons deeper within the brain... for upto 5 minutes when completely deprived of oxygen and glucose. Other studies (above) show 4 minutes of evoked electrical activity can continue to occur in brain neurons (even at the cortex), - that's evoked as opposed to spontaneous electrical activity, which is pretty interesting.
 
All electrical activity within the brain doesn't globally cease after 20s I'm afraid Tim, all you and anyone else can claim is that scalp EEG measurements generally cease after 20s of cardiac arrest, (if you're measuring them of course).

Yes it does and I've provided the quotes that you requested, Max. You are simply being evasive, refusing to accept facts that don't serve your agenda..

That's the point of all the studies I'm quoting,

I've already explained to you that one tiny effect on one rodent's brain is not going to cause the text books to be re-written. Facts should be upheld on a public forum whether it suits us or not.
 
http://www.ttbook.org/listen/70341 Go to 34.00 minutes and tuck into this, LetsEat.

Yeah, Parnia says it right there... they can record no measurable electrical activity within the cortex, which is all he says they can measure (by scalp EEG), although he doesn't mention any timing. Parnia also sidesteps the interviewers question regarding better methods of testing, and whether there might be activity that we/he just can't measure.

But we already have finer and more detailed research studies using invasive EEG, they tell us there *is* electrical activity... both spontaneous activity in the cortex after 20 secs, and evoked activity up to 4 minutes. We also have patch clamp tests on more resilient neurons which show they can continue to generate electrical activity up to 5 minutes after being deprived of all oxygen and glucose. And we also have studies which show that we can still measure electrical activity in the brain, even when the bedside reflex tests have proven negative (absent pupillary light, corneal, cold caloric, cough, gag, and respiratory reflexes etc), which sort of puts these bedside reflex tests into perspective, as a method of deciding whether or not a patient is likely to recover, rather than a method of research that can rule out electrical activity. I mean, if you don't test for electrical activity deeper in the brain, how can you rule it out. And when we research it properly... yes, we find electrical activity that goes on beyond 20s of cardiac arrest.
 
Err... no, as the study above shows, all electrical activity within the brain doesn't globally cease after 20 seconds, but then everybody already knew that.
Considering that there are electric/magnetic forces active in any ionic material - dead or alive - your statement is true, but meaningless in an understanding of the relationship of the mind and brain. Static discharge is not a mysterious communication. The question is - can we measure highly organized electronic activity that exist as directed signals indicating biological information processing. More than that,are these organized signals connected to a sense of self and personal experience.

Measuring discharge is done in electrical units of measure (Faraday and Maxwell). However, the function in question is not discharge - but communication signals measurable by Shannon's formulation for Mutual Information. Biological messages being decoded from electronic signals is the process - not just electrical charge flowing from chemistry. This is the Frankenstein myth - whereby the fact of a shock can restart the complex systems of communication of mammals, means that electricity carries life. Franky boy is imagined to develop personality from voltage. This is fiction.

While extra seconds/minutes, to your account of things, should be granted by Tim, they are not germane to the central issue. A quantity of charge is not a measure of highly complex bio-information, specific to a personality.

I listened to the Parnia talk and thought it astute and balanced.
 
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The question is - can we measure highly organized electronic activity that exist as directed signals indicating biological information processing.

And the answer to that is early and cautious... but yes, Borjigin's study finds such patterns using iEEG within a rodents cortex during cardiac arrest, crucially... it's beyond the 20 second mark.

Do we have the technology necessary to go further than Borjigins crude tests.. no we don't... not at present. Neither temporally, nor spatially.
 
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Err... no, as the study above shows, all electrical activity within the brain doesn't globally cease after 20 seconds, but then everybody already knew that.

Has that tiny effect on one rodent entered the textbooks on human brain physiology ? YES or NO ?
 
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Yeah, Parnia says it right there... they can record no measurable electrical activity within the cortex, which is all he says they can measure (by scalp EEG), although he doesn't mention any timing. Parnia also sidesteps the interviewers question regarding better methods of testing, and whether there might be activity that we/he just can't measure.

Rubbish ! He doesn't side step anything, he specifically deals with the interviewer's question on whether there could be some brain activity somewhere to account for this. Stop posting crap, Max !

Sam Parnia

@34.49 We also know that the deeper brain structures are not functioning because we know that all the brain stem reflexes are absent, that's why we can put a breathing tube down someone's throat and they don't gag. So what we do know is that the global function of the brain as we know it today is not there, the electrical signals of the brain are not there.
 
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Rubbish ! He doesn't side step anything, he specifically deals with the interviewer's question on whether there could be some brain activity somewhere to account for this. Stop posting crap, Max !

Sam Parnia

@34.49 We also know that the deeper brain structures are not functioning because we know that all the brain stem reflexes are absent, that's why we can put a breathing tube down someone's throat and they don't gag. So what we do know is that the global function of the brain as we know it today is not there, the electrical signals of the brain are not here.

Lets put some context before your quote...

Interviewer: But I'm wondering if you really know that there is no brain activity going on? I mean may be the... the... particular devices you have in the resuscitation room wouldn't register, but you know, if that person was in an MRI, uh an fMRI, I mean would it register nothing going on there?

Parnia: Well, what we know, um, is of course at any time you can certainly consider that, you know, that your scientific tools could be better. At any time. In a hundred years time we could say the same thing. The.. the problem we have is that when someone's gone through cardiac arrest, there is no blood getting into the brain, in order for cells to function you have to have blood. Without oxygen and neutrients you cannot have any cellular activity, and if you then look at people who are getting CPR, we know that they get about 5-10% of the blood that they need. And that's insufficient to generate at least electrical activity in the cortex, on the surface of the brain, which is what we can measure.​

Did Parnia answer the interviewers question ? Nope. Instead Parnia mentioned what he could measure... the cortex, the surface of the scalp. That's it, he didn't answer the interviewers question, he just batted it away. It's the very issue we're talking about on here. Is there electrical activity going on that he can't measure with his scalp EEG? ....yes.
 
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Lets put some context before your quote...

Interviewer: But I'm wondering if you really know that there is no brain activity going on? I mean may be the... the... particular devices you have in the resuscitation room wouldn't register, but you know, if that person was in an MRI, uh an fMRI, I mean would it register nothing going on there?

Parnia: Well, what we know, um, is of course at any time you can certainly consider that, you know, that your scientific tools could be better. At any time. In a hundred years time we could say the same thing. The.. the problem we have is that when someone's gone through cardiac arrest, there is no blood getting into the brain, in order for cells to function you have to have blood. Without oxygen and neutrients you cannot have any cellular activity, and if you then look at people who are getting CPR, we know that they get about 5-10% of the blood that they need. And that's insufficient to generate at least electrical activity in the cortex, on the surface of the brain, which is what we can measure.​

Did Parnia answer the interviewers question ? Nope. Instead Parnia mentioned what he could measure... the cortex, the surface of the scalp. That's it, he didn't answer the interviewers question, he just batted it away. It's the very issue we're talking about on here. Is there electrical activity going on that he can't measure with his scalp EEG? ....yes.


Are you having me on, Max ? That section you've posted above is BEFORE the section I posted. After the section you've just posted he then states this :

@34.49 We also know that the deeper brain structures are not functioning because we know that all the brain stem reflexes are absent, that's why we can put a breathing tube down someone's throat and they don't gag. So what we do know is that the global function of the brain as we know it today is not there, the electrical signals of the brain are not here.

I've never come across such blatant shenanigans since the 'master Linda' was on here.



 
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Have are you having me on, Max ? That section you've posted above is BEFORE the section I posted. After this section you've just posted he then states this ! I've never come across such blatant shenanigans since the master Linda was on here.

@34.49 We also know that the deeper brain structures are not functioning because we know that all the brain stem reflexes are absent, that's why we can put a breathing tube down someone's throat and they don't gag. So what we do know is that the global function of the brain as we know it today is not there, the electrical signals of the brain are not here.




Yes I clearly state... lets put some context before your quote.

You didn't transcribe the interviewers question, or the first part of Parnia's answer, which naturally limits the spin one can put on the later part of his answer, which you did quote.
 
Yes I clearly state... lets put some context before your quote.

That's bullsh#t !

You didn't transcribe the interviewers question, or the first part of Parnia's answer, which naturally limits the spin one can put on the later part of his answer, which you did quote.

Again, disgraceful boll@cks, Max. I will not comment again on this thread.
 
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