INTERESTING FACTS  Part 1)                      

Consciousness after being hanged

Death does not come immediately after a person is hanged. If the condemned is hanged properly, his body will stop functioning because his nerves are separated from his body to his brain but his brain will still function for at least several seconds.

Our conscious experiences are brought about by chemicals that are called neurotransmitters. These chemicals generate electrical signals that form the means by which neurons communicate with one another and ultimately form neural networks. When we stimulate these networks, we experience the physical sensations and emotions that make up our lives. We store these as memories to be recalled when the neural networks that store them are activated once more.

Researchers connected an EEG machine to the brains of rats, then decapitated them and recorded the electrical activity in the brains after the event. The Dutch researchers found that for about four seconds after being separated from the body, the rats' brains continued to generate electrical activity between the 13 to 100-Hertz frequency band, which is associated with consciousness and cognition, defined as "a mental process that includes thinking"

 

This finding suggests that the brain can continue to produce thoughts and experience sensations for at least several seconds following decapitation — in rats, at least. Although findings in rats are commonly extrapolated onto humans, we may never fully know if a human remains similarly conscious after the head is lost. As author Alan Bellows points out, "Further scientific observation of human decapitation is unlikely. However, it has been said by persons who were near the decapitations of a condemned man that they saw his eyes blink.

 Charlotte Corday was a woman who was executed by guillotine in France in 1793 after she assassinated the revolutionary leader Jean-Paul Marat. After her head was severed, the executioner smacked its cheeks while he held it aloft. To the astonishment of the crowd, Corday's cheeks flushed and her facial expression changed into the "unequivocal marks of indignation" [Corday was the first, though not the last, severed head reported to show the signs of some form of consciousness following decapitation.

There has long been an argument against the concept of consciousness following decapitation. Some believe that the movements seen in the face are the result of the voluntary muscles that control the lips and eyes are merely in spasm after a sort of short circuit or from relic electrical activity. This is likely true for the rest of the body, but the head has the distinction of housing the brain, which is the seat of consciousness. The brain receives no trauma from a clean decapitation and may therefore continue to function until blood loss causes unconsciousness and death.

Exactly how long a person can remain conscious after decapitation remains debatable. We know that chickens often walk around for several seconds after decapitation; the Dutch rat study mentioned earlier suggests a length of perhaps four seconds. Other studies of small mammals have found consciousness in decapitated animals up to 29 seconds. [This in itself seems a horrid length of time for such a state. Take a moment to count off four seconds while you look around the room; you'll likely find you can take in quite a bit visually and aurally during that time. Imagine being conscious for 29 seconds after being hanged.

I am going to quote from volume two of my memoirs, Whistling in the Face of Robbers .

John C. Woods was an American master sergeant who was the official hangman for the American armed forces in Europe during the Second World War.  He was the hangman who hanged the ten war criminals sentenced to die by the International Military Tribunal in Nuremberg in Germany. The hangings of the ten condemned Nazis was bungled or deliberately conducted in a way that they would not die immediately which on the surface is strange considering the fact that Woods was a professional hangman who had previously been a hangman at a state prison and who had hanged as many as 347 condemned prisoners in the American state prison and in Europe even before he did the same to the ten at Spandau just outside of Berlin.

Ribbentrop for example took 10 minutes to die. Jodl took 18 minutes, and Keitel 24 minutes. Streicher groaned for a long time after dropping.                                                                                                    I have serious doubts as to whether or not some of those condemned prisoners in the Spandau Gymnasium died of broken necks. If they had, it wouldn't have taken so long for their hearts to stop beating. It is conceivable that they slowly strangled at the end of their ropes that had tightened around their necks.  unquote

This is what is most disturbing about the concept of consciousness remaining after decapitation; we may feel pain and experience fear in those few moments before death. This has been reported in a number of cases where consciousness appeared to remain following decapitation. Most recently, in 1989, an Army veteran reported that following a car accident that he was in with a friend, the decapitated head of his friend changed facial expressions—"First of shock or confusion then to terror or grief,"

Both King Charles I and Queen Anne Boleyn are reported to both have showed signs of trying to speak following their beheadings by executioners' swords, rather than by guillotine. When he spoke out against the use of the guillotine in 1795, German researcher S. Sommering cited reports of decapitated heads that have ground their teeth and that the face of one decapitated person "grimaced horribly" when a physician inspecting the head poked the spinal canal with his finger.

Perhaps most famously was the study conducted by a Dr. Beaurieux in 1905 of the head of executed criminal Henri Languille. Over the course of 25 to 30 seconds of observation, the physician managed to get Languille to open his eyes and "undeniably" focus them on the doctor twice by calling the executed man's name.

Being hanged is no different than having your head chopped off. Both methods involves severing your neck bone which also severs the nerves that are connected between your head and your body.  Your heart will stop pumping so the blood in your brain will remain in your brain, thus electrical activity will function briefly.   

Strangely enough, the brain functions for at least ten seconds after a condemned man is hanged and after dropping through the trapdoor, the condemned man can  still  hear voices.