www.FrancheskaCamilo.com

Francheska Camilo González

English Version: March 6, 2014

Brain Death

Consciousness is a knowledge in which human beings are alert to the sensations, feelings and

thoughts experimented in a particular time, in order to show the reactions that arising by the

events experienced by a person. The loss of the consciousness can be caused for a trauma to the

central nervous system (CNS), poisoning, metabolic disorders and neurological disorders. The

loss of awareness results in a decrease or the elimination of certain acts of reflex, causing the

individual reacts only to a limited number of stimuli in their environment.

Brain death is defined by the irreversible culmination of all intracranial structural and

neurological function in the hemispheres of the brain and brainstem. A brain injury causes the

loss of the regulating mechanism that the brain produces on other organs and components of an

individual's consciousness. Thus, a person with brain death will not have the functions that allow

to open the eyes, talk, feel sensations, respond to stimuli, among others.

Neurologists are professional of neuroscience. According to these neuroscience professionals,

the initial brain death occurs in the cerebral cortex and spreads affecting to the whole brain and

the individual's body. The neurologist is responsible for determining when the brain injury

reaches an irreversible level, and this is determinate by a positive apnea test and other evidence

indicating the absence of all brain stem reflexes. Many of these neurologists refuse to declare

brain death when an individual's heart continues to beat, because that there are cases where

patients have awakened from a state of brain death, leaving the interrogative in neuroscience

professionals about the irreversible level in the process or loss of consciousness due to brain

death.

The brain death occurs mostly in individuals who have a destruction of brain tissue caused by a

head injury that occurs in an accident. These people are diagnosed with brain death, because they

have lost the total of mechanisms of consciousness which allow being alert to sensations,

feelings and thoughts that show reflexes in response or reaction to these. A significant

controversy over the diagnosis of brain death worldwide is that some think that this could be

diagnosed for organ procurement in these patients and by this way to help other people with

other diseases. Also in investigations it was found that the neuronal stem cells from individuals

alive or dead (with brain death) and embryonic can be used to treat a number of diseases where

which includes restoring the memory of persons who have suffered certain types Damage in the

brain. These are some of the reasons why many neurologists do not confirm the state of brain

death in patients up to the time that the heart stops beating.

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