What Happens When We Die?

　　我们死的时候到底发生了什么呢? 时代周刊专访Dr. Sam Parnia ，一个专门研究死亡的。

　　A fellow at New York City's Weill Cornell Medical Center, Dr. Sam Parnia is one of the world's leading experts on the scientific study of death. Last week Parnia and his colleagues at the Human Consciousness Project announced their first major undertaking: a 3-year exploration of the biology behind "out-of-body" experiences. The study, known as AWARE (AWAreness during REsuscitation), involves the collaboration of 25 major medical centers through Europe, Canada and the U.S. and will examine some 1,500 survivors of cardiac arrest. TIME spoke with Parnia about the project's origins, its skeptics and the difference between the mind and the brain.

　　Dr. Sam Parnia 已经研究”out of body"experiences长达三年了，看来确实有点说话的权利。

　　下面是他的访谈记录。

　　What sort of methods will this project use to try and verify people's claims of "near-death" experience?

　　怎么判断对方是接近死亡呢。我很小就听说过：回光返照的说法。

　　When your heart stops beating, there is no blood getting to your brain. And so what happens is that within about 10 sec., brain activity ceases —as you would imagine. Yet paradoxically, 10% or 20% of people who are then brought back to life from that period, which may be a few minutes or over an hour, will report having consciousness.当心脏停止了，20%左右的人有可能被拉回到有意识的状态下面，可能是几分钟，可能是一个小时 So the key thing here is, Are these real, or is it some sort of illusion? So the only way to tell is to have pictures only visible from the ceiling and nowhere else, because they claim they can see everything from the ceiling. 判断的方式：就是他们将去世的人可以从天花板了看到所有的东西。So if we then get a series of 200 or 300 people who all were clinically dead, and yet they're able to come back and tell us what we were doing and were able see those pictures, that confirms consciousness really was continuing even though the brain wasn't functioning.

　　有点不是很懂。因为确实没有研究过死亡，只能是从字面去理解。

　　How does this project relate to society's perception of death?

　　People commonly perceive death as being a moment — you're either dead or you're alive. And that's a social definition we have. 看来死亡不是：要么死了，要么没有死。But the clinical definition we use is when the heart stops beating, the lungs stop working, and as a consequence the brain itself stops working. When doctors shine a light into someone's pupil, it's to demonstrate that there is no reflex present. The eye reflex is mediated by the brain stem, and that's the area that keeps us alive; if that doesn't work, then that means that the brain itself isn't working. At that point, I'll call a nurse into the room so I can certify that this patient is dead. Fifty years ago, people couldn't survive after that. 如果眼睛的瞳孔没反应，才叫做死了。