huh

apparently a tiny piece of brain in your prefrontal cortex has to give you constant affirmation of the fact that you are, for better or for worse, alive and if it stops doing so (sometimes due to micro stroke killing that specific part of your brain, more usually just buildup of antivirals due to kidney problems) and suddenly the rest of your brain is just 100% certain that you have passed away

stranger yet, hiccups function on the same exact principle

@coolbean what happens when your brain thinks its dead?

@lizzie it varies greatly but generally bad things cause theres literally nothing that can convince you that you're alive and as a result lots of people stop eating. some self harm just to check if there is, in fact, bloodflow like those around them claim and literally do not understand how there is if they've already died. many plan their own funeral which is frankly a level of courtesy i wish regular corpses had too and if all else fails they just go to dig their own graves

im unsure how things like pain work but its a spectrum in any case. half of all patients dont even think that they're dead but rather that they cant die though ironically that results in largely similar symptoms

and yea. tis rather odd especially because by definition its not psychosis or a delusion but rather a hard neurological defect like epilepsy

anyway the way you treat this depends on the cause, in the case of antiviral induced cotards syndrome you just... wait for the antivirals to make their way out but much more interesting is what you do in the case of micro stroke: you zap the bitch. zap the brain to make it get a move on with rewiring itself to account for the damage and just turn a spot slightly to the left into the new "not dead" signal generator

@coolbean it's insano how specialized parts of your beain are. Your sense of self is even easily disabled and i love all the weird forms of agnosia showing that you can't interpret anything you see without massive preprocessing by some primitive, automated parts of your brain

@snacks i mean yea. theres a part of your brain responsible for keeping track of wether you're alive which is just... so humorous considering this information is... not very useful since you couldnt do anything about it if you did die

@snacks @coolbean the conscious mind is just a blind captain that rubber-stamps most of the decisions you make, often after they have already been taken.

@yakmacker @snacks counter point: i totally can tell my brain stem "no" and suppress my breathing

the problem is i can only do that while i am conscious meaning the moment i pass out from hypoxia i just start breathing again, a viscious cycle

@yakmacker @coolbean do you know what happens if your brain halves can't communicate anymore? They will just make up rerroactive explanations for what the other did to overplay the fact that what just happened was completely out of "your" control

@coolbean @snacks actually I'm not sure it's possible to consciously hold your breath until you pass out. But I admit I haven't tried.

And when you *do* give up and start breathing normally again, is it because you consciously decided to, or did some unconscious process decide "alright this isn't worth doing any more"?

@coolbean this is super interesting

@snacks @yakmacker no but its even stranger than that because both halves are acting as totally functional independent brains. your brain can rewire itself to recover from, frankly, ridiculous amounts of damage. to the point where one of the treatments for epilepsy is just cutting out or otherwise disabling the problematic part of the brain

like thats insane

@coolbean @snacks there are a lot of completely normal people walking around with way less brain matter than average https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2007/07/070722203858.htm

@coolbean @yakmacker dedtroying the bridge between them is i think the treatment you're thinking about? Works because the shock or we you call it at least can only affect one half at once that way. That treatment is also how we got most research into what happens in thta case afaik

@yakmacker @snacks and somehow all of them are crawling up my ass on the autobahn

@snacks @yakmacker its a very intense variant but yes. ordinarily you try to be a bit more conservative to reduce recovery times since having to essentially regrow half your brain while another half backseats you just takes time

@coolbean @yakmacker both keep functioning perfectly tho, that's the crazy part. They just coordinate by observing results instead of internally

@snacks @yakmacker i see

thats fucking freaky. especially since only one of them gets to communicate

@coolbean @yakmacker https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Split-brain

@coolbean @snacks better argument for many religious beliefs than most other things at least

@snacks @coolbean the really bizarre part of this, to me, is that they so often don't seem all that hindered by it. Most split brain patients act as if they are still one unified person, as much as a person with a normal brain would anyway.

@mer @snacks counterpoint: its bound to your body

@coolbean @snacks im not talking about afterlife beliefs, im thinking of mystical experiences, living mummies enlightenment...