A photo from open sources
Many legends say that severed heads can for some time not only live, but also blink, change facial expression and even trying to talk. For example, during of the French Revolution, the executioner who decapitated Charlotte Corde hit the woman’s severed head on the cheek – witnesses of this execution claimed that Corde’s eyes looked at the executioner, and her expression faces expressed complete disgust. In another story that happened relatively recently, in 1989, in front of an army veteran in a car accident killed his friend. On his face separated from the body the emotions of shock and pain were clearly read, and the eyes looked at their headless body. However, many doctors and specialists consider these stories are fantastic because at the time of decapitation the brain experiencing a sharp drop in blood pressure, which leads to rapid loss of blood, as well as to stop the supply of oxygen. Automatically, for a few seconds or minutes, the brain flows into a kind of dying coma. However, given the results recent studies in experimental animals, previously considered fantastic stories take on some believability. In 2011, Dutch scientists connected the device EEG (electroencephalography) to the brain of decapitated mice. The results showed that conscious brain activity mammals persisted after decapitation four seconds, while other experimental animals have even more long period of time. If all this is true, these few dying seconds are more than enough for the brain to man not only realized his death, but also survived all the horror what is happening. Try to count these four seconds yourself and see first hand how many things around can happen over this time. Chilling live stories the severed heads that tried to talk are explained body reflexes. Muscle tissue reflexes severed limbs still contract for a while in the dying cramps. And our subconscious, responsible for brain reflexes, makes a person change their expression from unconscious expression fear of disgust or contempt.
Translation by Sergey Vasilenkov
Time