What if a dead person actually comes alive? What if some day a scientist is
able to reboot the human body after it is dead. Will the resurrected person be
like the normal person he was? What shall be the consequences on his physical
and mental condition? Let's delve into the mind of a resurrected person.
Resurrection is an existing concept in movies and TV serials. In the practical world, however, it is simply impossible just because it has not been done ever. There might be a scientific theory behind that. For now, I decide not to believe in this statement. Let's consider a scenario where the technology is advanced enough to be able to resurrect a dead man. The concept is no longer far-fetched given that complex brain surgery is already done on animals. Stem cells and genetic research are taking us into a domain which was earlier attributed to the meta-physical. I have a belief it is not long when doctors shall be able to resurrect a dead man after creating the damaged or missing organs.
The human body is called alive when the brain (nervous
system) and the heart (circulatory system) is in sync relying on each other for
their functioning. A healthy person shall be one in which this relationship of
heart and brain is able to drive the respiratory, digestive and excretory
systems. The nervous system makes sure that the involuntary actions of lungs,
heart and kidneys go on while it is these systems that keep the nervous system
alive. When a person dies, this dependence breaks due to damage on one these
parts, rest of the systems break down and the human is declared dead. In our
situation, doctors shall have to repair the damages body parts that resulted in
death (Almost every organ but brain can now be transplanted). They shall be
able to then restart the symbiotic process of circulatory and nervous systems.
The person now comes alive!
The brain that solves mysteries of the universe fails to understand itself.
Note that the person was dead a moment ago. Will he
retain the memories? No, a brain is a set of neurons which are saving memories in
electrical impulses. It needs continuous energy to sustain the memories even
for the most basic system tasks. Much like a computer RAM, all it's data are
gone the moment power goes off. The electrical impulses die away and the brain
is mostly static. The brain memories are not like the magnetic dipoles on a
magnetic disk. It won't retain any memory of the previous 'life session'. Here
we make an assumption, we hereafter belief that upon resurrection, the brain
shall still be able to sustain the involuntary life actions of respiration,
blood circulation and digestion. Or we can assume that these actions are still
being controlled by an artificial life support system. Now that the blood
circulation restarted, the brain started functioning. But, there are no
memories. I do not mean the memory loss as in the fictions and movies but a
simple brain format (like the formatting of a computer disk). We just assume
that the BIOS (involuntary life tasks) of this computer (brain) is separately
installed.
At t=0, reboot finished, blood circulation in brain is normal and reached a steady state.
The brain is static, no neuron activities, and extremely low
level of feelings. Consciousness does not exist now. By consciousness, I mean a
state of 'brain' when one part of it is able to assess its existence, or it is
able to generate impulses in response to another set of impulses. This way it
think what kind of thought is going on. This state of consciousness, or a general
term called feeling, is completely absent in the subject. All over the bodies,
neuron sensors have just come alive and have started responding to the external
environment. These shall send electrical signals to the brain and enliven the
static neurons of the brain. The brain shall now start 'working'. What will it
be thinking?
The model of the brain we shall be using in this
discussion: Let us consider the brain as a
neural network, the one from computer science, a vast array of independent
neurons sending each other signals based on the signals they receive. The only
difference is that this one is sending analog signals instead of binary and the
back-propagation mechanism is much more multi-directional giving a much faster
computing power (It is worth noting that a neural network in comp. science
does not compute, it receives values as signals and tries to adapt itself to
the signal thus recognizing patterns and then it starts predicting the next
value).
Whenever this neural network receives a signal, it
processes it and stores it. The next signal might be of a similar nature. Then
the pattern has been recognized and is running in the cache (the currently
active thought). Now, when the third signal arrives, the brain predicts the
signal. If the received pattern is similar to what the predicted pattern, it
releases some chemical to feel good and another part of the brain might start a
small impulse to record this feeling, As an example, on touching four parts on
the wall, a brain can recognize the fact that it is a plain two-dimensional
rigid obstruction, it predicts the sense of touch when the fingers touch new
part of the wall and this further strengthens the belief or the recording
impulse that it is indeed a wall. This is how the predicting and object creating
operates in our model of the human brain. The feeling of curiosity is propelled
by the fact that brain loves repeated signals. The feel-good chemical released
during the formation of a new memory has already taught the brain to learn new
things. Over time, this feeling is often suppressed by thoughts more relevant
to the new memory in question or just that this feeling becomes far less than
many other feelings.
Back to the subject: So our neural network has just started receiving the starting signals. They
shall start storing it in the neuron impulses. A few of these signals shall
remain on the brain as a memory of these patterns. The person will start to
decipher the signals. Based on the signals, he shall start to construct a model
of the world around him. He may take time to open his eyes. He shall perhaps
keep his eyes closed with no reason to open his eyes.
The person's back can sense the feel of the soft thing he
is lying on, he can feel the heat of the atmosphere, the eyes has not yet
opened but the light beyond has already struck chords on the cones of neurons
on the retina. The fingers of his hand seem to come I contact with something.
The sensitive fingertips are never late to send the sense of touch. After
creating a mind model of the material in hand, the curious brain wants to get
hold of this texture which is soft. If only he could just grab a little
more of the material, he could discover this new pattern, this new thing, a new
entity in his brain. And then something weird happens, a sense goes through his
arm and the hand moves, the fingers curl on the object. Fingers move by his
will, yes he can move, he has a hand which moves at his will. The feeling part
of the brain gets excited, it releases the feel-good chemical into the nearby blood-vessels
which makes the whole brain get excited, it makes the whole brain take an extra
effort in their work. The fingers have sent a new signal, he is now holding a
piece of his own bed-sheet in his hand. It feels good!! I have an arm with
wrist and fingers at my command, it feels good. The excitement chemical is high
in the blood around the brain, This is specially high in the area around the part which controls
the hand and the finger tips. It no longer wants to restrain itself. The
response from the brain is high this time. The consciousness has still not
fully understood the idea of a limb. It has no control over it. The brain at
his free will commands the hand to move in a random direction. The person
flings his arm. This is useful as it helps him understand himself.
You might be thinking the subject is much like a baby who
has just came out of womb, swinging arms
and legs around, looking around curiously amazed, innocence and curiosity are
visible on the face. The situation must be actually quite similar. The
difference however, is more interesting. Our subject is a grown up man. His
needs might be limited to food and warmth like an infant but his limbs and body
are better formed. His unpredictable curious activities can be destructive
like a child with a larger scale. The subject might need to be kept in
constraint, may be hand-cuffed. I am quite sure when a grown up behaves like a
child literally, the scene is hardly as cute as in the case of babies.
There is one more difference, our subject is a grown up
man/woman. This person shall have fully developed sexual organs and thus have
the capability to sense sexual feelings. His/her organs will be capable of the
sense of arousal. The subject will not take time in discovering a body part
with such an intense sense. The curious brain will like to discover the
organs. The person will touch his/her organs and try to understand the mystery
of intense sense of touch. It is safe to assume the person had not seen or
observed the existence of two types of human body. He might just be too busy
with his existence and understanding the new and varied stimuli he is suddenly
exposed to. He shall understand more when he gains mental age and observe human
society.
The person shall slowly learn to stay calm, feel hungry
and understand his surroundings. The mental age of this person is equal to a
new born. Unable to speak and communicate, the person shall just lie down and
get active on feelings of thirst, hunger, pain etc. To further develop his mental age, he can be forced to situation
where he need to be learn to communicate, he shall start to learn to speak like
a little child in perhaps the same time period. In a way, it can be really
embarrassing for a person to be a grown up with a mental age of a child. Being
exposed to conditions where a lot shall be expected of him being a grown up
might give him embarrassment or compel him to increase his mental age depending
on the view of the world he would had upto that moment.
For the person, the life would be like being born in a
grown body without a childhood. The language and analytical skills shall
develop with time. It's hard to say the time required for a person to bring his
mental age to his chronological age.
What if this is actually possible?
I think that in such an event the person must not be
exposed to the plethora of senses around him. To control his senses, he should
be kept under a sedative and he should be exposed to a slow and mild
surroundings. The person might be kept with his eye covered. Sedatives can be
used to keep a large part of his body unconscious. The exposure to senses must
be slow like a baby developing in the womb. Like a fetus, he shall slowly
embrace the senses and develop a stable life sustaining nervous system before
actually feeling his limbs and looking with his eyes.
The exposure to the visible world must be even slower,
this grown up man is more powerful than a child and his senses might be a
little more developed. The person can be allowed to see the world while a
greater part of his body should lay unconscious
Ethics, Morals, religion and stuff!! : If possible, the
process shall be the subject of a fierce controversy. The person who is
resurrected is no longer the person who died. He is just a new life, a new
person. This stuff is way more than sufficient to blow any medical-ethical
person out his minds. Personally, I don't think it should be done even for one
single time. For first reason, the person is not the same. He is a new born
with the body of the dead. Second, the person shall be resurrected for no
reason but for scientific experiments. Consciousness, I think is nothing but a
collection of neuron impulses, is still the most sacred thing in the universe.
It's the thing that drives a lot of species on earth. It gives us the feelings
that we live for. It is the sole purpose of a species life. It should not be
for experiments. Thirdly, the person shall come alive being the object of an
experiment. I cannot even think of the thoughts in the dead person's relatives but the idea of a new person in the body of the dead is itself
creepy. The new person without any relationships cannot have a happy
life. Perhaps I believe in the epicurean philosophy, the thought itself is very
repelling to me.
