Researchers reactivate the brains of 300 dead pigs

When is someone as brain-dead and where is the line between life and death? A new U.S. study raises a number of questions. Researchers at Yale University have succeeded, the brains of 300 dead pigs to revive.

For your Try the Team of researchers Nenad took Sestan the brains of pigs that had been slaughtered four hours earlier, as the science magazine “Nature” reported. With a specially developed machine, which they call “BrainEx”, inflated in the second step, a blood similar solution through the main arteries of the brain.

Six hours later, they found that some cell functions were still not received. So, individual nerve cells were still at synapses active, the blood vessels react to drugs, and metabolic activities were, for example, the consumption of glucose and oxygen. The researchers stressed, however, that there had been no signs of perception or consciousness.

Researchers could now prolong the time to brain death

But, what you didn’t know: “The intact brain of a healthy mammal contains several hours after the circulatory arrest is a previously under-appreciated ability to restore the blood circulation and certain molecular and cellular activities,” says Nenad.

Brain research

"Children are not vessels to fill with Knowledge kann"

Previously, scientists believed that nerve cells die without a blood supply, and oxygen within a few minutes. The new research findings urgent now arises the question of when a person is actually brain dead.

The time of brain death could possibly be extended, say the researchers. More you don’t want to promise by the findings. The Bioethicist Stuart Youngner, and Insoo Hyun of Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland warn in the journal Nature: “researchers are still far from being in people today, declared dead, brain structures and functions.”

Sources: “Nature”