Separation of Mind and Brain

man deep in thought

By Ashley Neglia

Is the mind an extension of the brain or its own entity?

The relationship of the mind to the body has been a debate that’s raged on for centuries. Dr. Sam Parnia, critical care doctor, director of the Human Consciousness Project and author of “What Happens When We Die,” seeks to settle this debate through AWARE (AWAreness during Resuscitation), a division of the Human Consciousness Project. Find out what Parnia had to say when AOL Health sat down with him for an interview.

20 Ways to Live to 100

by Vicki Salemi

Ah, the fountain of youth. When it comes to aging gracefully, let's face it -- we want it all. We want to feel good, look good and, most of all, live a long, healthy life. Here are twenty ways to get your game on and hopefully live to 100 and beyond!

Get Married

Exchanging vows comes with its own medical perks. A study in the Journal of Epidemiology and Community Health showed the death rate for people who were unmarried was significantly higher compared to people who were married and living with their spouses. While the results were significant among the various unmarried subcategories such as divorced, separated, or widowed populations, it was significantly stronger for people who had never been married.

Laugh out Loud

Experts say that laughter is the best medicine. After all, it increases your immune system response, lowers blood sugar levels in diabetics, increases oxygen flow throughout your entire body and helps induce a state of relaxation promoting better sleep. The positive health effects are no laughing matter: according to the University of Maryland Medical Center, average blood flow typically increases 22 percent during and after bursts of laughter compared to a decrease in blood flow by 35 percent during mental stress.

Buy a Pet

Having a dog or cat in the house works wonders by reducing stress, lowering cholesterol and decreasing blood pressure, while increasing physical activity. For example, pet ownership has increased the percentage of people who survived one year after being hospitalized for heart problems. Only six percent of non-pet owners survived whereas 28 percent of pet owners survived. Plus, sharing affection and companionship toward a pet may simply make people smile.

Quit Smoking

Let's face it: smoking is bad for you. Really bad. Need proof? Based on data from the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, adult male smokers lost approximately 13.2 years of their lives and female smokers lost 14.5 years of their lives because of smoking. Plus, chronic diseases caused by smoking tended to curtail the quality of life of smokers while they were still alive.

Exercise More

Exercise is all around good -- giving you the positive effects of increased endorphins and a reduced waistline. It makes your heart stronger by pumping more blood with less effort, lowers cholesterol and blood pressure, prevents and controls diabetes, strengthens bones and muscles and controls weight. Convinced yet? A study published in the Archives of Internal Medicine showed that participants who had moderate to high exercise routines lived 1.3 to 3.7 years longer than their couch potato counterparts.

Give Your Brain a Workout

Having a good workout isn't only limited to your body. Playing chess, reading newspapers, attending plays or finishing a crossword puzzle all have positive health results, experts say. Brain fitness is paramount to maintaining your cognitive abilities. According to one study by Neurology Online, people who mentally exercised their brains had a reduced risk of mild cognitive impairment and a risk of Alzheimer's that was 2.6 times less than people who did not stimulate their mind.

Limit Sun Exposure

Wearing sunscreen, limiting your exposure to the sun during peak hours and wearing sunglasses are some ways to prevent skin damage and cancer. Considering skin cancer is the most common of cancer types -- more than one million cases are diagnosed each year in the U.S. -- prevention and early detection are key to prolonging your life.

Visit the Doctor Regularly

This one's a no brainer: seeing a general physician on an annual basis can significantly lengthen your life by catching ailments before they start or treating emerging ones. An annual exam should include a blood pressure check, cholesterol and sugar level screening, bone density test, and examination of the ears, nose, throat and reflexes. For instance, if high blood pressure is not found and treated, significant health problems such as heart disease, stroke, kidney failure or eye problems may result.

Eat Fish

Eating up to two portions of fish on a weekly basis is beneficial, reported the Harvard School of Public Health. In fact, eating fish could possibly cut the risk of death by heart disease by one-third. Here's why: omega-3's fatty acids are healthy. They keep blood from clotting, lower the amount of fats in the bloodstream and reduce the risk of obesity. Plus, they provide a lot of nutrients like selenium, antioxidants and protein. However, pregnant women and children need to limit their intake of high-mercury fish like swordfish, king mackerel and others.

How can you explain near-death experiences?

The evidence so far suggests that when the heart stops beating, there’s no blood flowing in the body, everything goes still. The brain shuts down in about 10 seconds. The interesting thing is – when we as doctors intervene and do vigorous chest compressions, and give drugs and shock the heart – despite all our best efforts, studies have shown we cannot get enough blood flow into the brain to get it started. This may go on for tens of minutes or an hour.

Well, what happens to the mind at that time? In my case, what happened to that patient? Is his mind there or not there? We expect the mind to stop working in a few seconds, and interestingly, though – in 5 independent studies, one of which was mine, 10 to 20 percent of people who have gone through clinical death will report some activity of their mind. It appears that some people have some form of consciousness present when there’s no brain activity.

What they describe is a near-death experience. It’s subjective and a dream-like state. They say, “I saw a tunnel, I saw a light,” the usual stuff. We can’t validate that. I can’t say whether your dream is not real or is real. A proportion of them come back and describe watching doctors and nurses doing specific things. The question is – does that really happen? Is it real? Doctors and nurses have confirmed what patients have said. People recall seeing things. Did they really see it? How did they see them? Or were they really at the ceiling?

The key point is that no one really in their right mind can deny this experience occurs. The easiest answer is that it must just be a trick of the mind, an illusion. The problem with that is when people come back and tell us exactly what happened [in the hospital room]. It’s not so easy to say it’s an illusion. It could be that it’s happening just as the brain shuts down or as the brain is recovering. For example, you might have a dream that you’ve been somewhere for a year, but it could be a microsecond in real time. It could be that as the brain was shutting down you had a quick experience. You felt like you were there the whole time. Putting aside the tunnels or lights, they come back and tell us specific details, “At 9:15 a.m., this may have happened.” And that was 10 or 20 minutes into the event.

The alternative explanation is that they do see things. People have their eye closed, maybe they happen to open their eyes, and they’re just gathering information and their brain collects that information. The point is that they did see things.

The mind is a mystery. We don’t understand, and it may be possible that the mind is non-local to the brain. If you ask quantum physicists, this is possible because we know at that level things can be non-local. They behave in a weird way.

What do you hope to achieve through this research? Medical advancement? A better understanding of death?

What we do in medicine benefits in society. If you suddenly discovered a cure for cancer, it’s a medical advancement but ultimately a social advancement. This is a medically-driven study that will benefit all of society. It’s important because we know very little about the mind and brain. In most circumstances, we can’t separate them. Only in clinical death and cardiac arrest, the mind and brain may be separated from each other. If they can be separated, then there are further implications in neuroscience.

A lot of what we do is to study what happens to the brain and the way we can improve resuscitation during cardiac arrest and improve the way we manage patients whose heart has stopped. If we do manage to get patients back to life, there could be less incidents of neurological deficits, cognitive impairments, abnormalities.

It’s really a spectrum. One is pure cardiac and the other is neuroscience. Over all it should benefit everyone.

Next: Verifying Near-Death Experiences