"What would happen if your brain were transplanted into another body?"

BarcelonaShortly after Ramon Gomis, an endocrinologist and professor of medicine at the University of Barcelona (UB), began his medical career, he assisted a doctor in treating a woman who had suddenly stopped breathing. Her heart wasn't beating, and Gomis began performing CPR until the patient regained a pulse. It was the first time he had ever performed this procedure. "Physically it's tiring, but the emotion drives you," he said of cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR). After the woman regained a pulse, the doctor was left with a question: "What will become of this person? What happened to her brain?" He visited her that same afternoon. The woman was fine and could speak, contrary to his initial fears, although she didn't remember the doctor's face at all. In fact, the woman lived for several more years. "For those around her, it was a miracle, but only because the prevailing concept of death was that one doesn't breathe and the heart doesn't beat. Today we know that's not the case."

Gomis intervened in the debate this Tuesday afternoon Is there life after death?, From the IEC Cycle organized by the Institut d'Estudis Catalans and the ARA, in which physicist David Jou also participated. Gomis went on to explain that when a person suffers cardiac arrest or stops breathing, "there is still brain activity" at that moment. "There is an experience that is defined as near-death; we can explain it scientifically in many ways, but it is worthwhile to discuss it," Gomis added during the event, moderated by ARA Deputy Director Carla Turró.

Now, narrowing down the answer to "what is dying?", Gomis explained that when assessing whether a deceased person can be an organ donor, medicine looks at whether there is no longer any brain, respiratory, or cardiac activity. "A flat electroencephalogram. That person could be a donor," he explained. Regarding the possibility of extending life even after death, the doctor referred to scientific advances: "If, while someone is in cardiac and cerebral arrest, we can take some cells, culture them, and after a while transplant them... Where is the barrier?"

Putting the brain on a computer

When asked if there is life after death, David Jou, a retired professor of condensed matter physics at the Autonomous University of Barcelona (UAB), said he sees the possibility of it existing and that it would be compatible "with the principles of known science." The scientist also posed hypotheses such as: "What would happen if your heart were about to die but your brain wasn't, and that brain were transplanted into another body? Would that be another life?" Jou also hypothesized that all the information from a brain could be stored in a computer, and he made reference to consciousness. For example, he said that even if the brain were stored in a computer, it would still be aware of the body it belongs to: "You know it because you've seen it, you've touched it, and you know all this through the brain. So if you had all the information from the brain, you would have all the information from the body, even if you were alive." Continuing his hypothetical argument, the physicist wondered how one could then interact with "other computer souls." He said they could love and fall in love, for example: "You have all the information in the brain, and therefore you have love, and also hate."