Chapter 122 Consciousness
Will consciousness still exist after a person faints or even dies? Du Jin was faced with this problem at this time:
As the saying goes, "Death is like a lamp going out." Most people think that after death, there will be nothing and everything will be over. We can easily understand that after death, whether cremated or buried, the body will eventually turn into ashes and blend with nature. However, in addition to the visible body, human beings also have an invisible consciousness. Does consciousness also disappear with death? What will it eventually become?
Death is a process............................
Most people respond to this question by shrugging and saying, "We can't bring dead people back to tell us, so we'll never know the answer to this question." The traditional view among scientists is that consciousness is in Produced in neural networks, if there were no neural networks, there would be no consciousness. Crick, who won the Nobel Prize for discovering the double helix structure of DNA, directly pointed out that for an individual, his joy, sorrow, memory and ambition, his proprioception and free will are actually nothing more than The collective behavior of a large population of nerve cells and their associated molecules. According to these scientists, connections between nerve cells will be lost after death, and consciousness will disappear.
However, as scientists have deepened their research on this issue, people's understanding of death has also undergone a fundamental change. It is generally believed that a person is either alive or dead, with no transitional stage in between. In other words, when a person's heart stops beating and the brain stops working, the person is dead.
However, in fact, there will be a period of time between a person's heart stopping and actual death. Because the heart loses its ability to pump blood, the blood cannot provide enough oxygen to the cells, and the cells in the human body will fall into a state of "suffocation". Within about 5 minutes, the structure and function of these cells will be destroyed. After about an hour, these cells are severely damaged, and even if the heart resumes beating and pumping function, the person will no longer be able to survive. Over the next few days, cells in the body continue to decay until the entire body rots away.
From this point of view, death is not a certain moment, but a process from when the heart stops beating to the gradual decomposition of body cells. In this case, what changes will occur to human consciousness during the entire process of death? Will it disappear immediately when the heart stops beating, will it continue for a while, or will it be there forever? This also means that when a person dies, his or her consciousness may still be there.
Du Jin naturally did not agree with this somewhat fantasy speculation before. Although there is a lot of evidence to support the existence of consciousness after death, research in this field is still in its infancy. The scientific system and methods for studying death have not yet been established. In the past, most of the research was based on the subjective feelings of individual people. However, in the past decade, significant advances in medicine and technology, especially the development of freezing technology, have greatly extended the survival time of human cells after death. After death, although the brain cells lose the supply of oxygen and energy within four to five minutes, the brain cells can continue to survive for eight hours without being damaged, but at this time they are unable to perform their functions. This means that if freezing technology and resuscitation methods are used properly, people can still be revived several hours after death.
But the reality is that this technical direction is not going smoothly in view of the extremely high fatality rate of sudden diseases such as brain death. But it was only then that Du Jin truly realized the existence of these two things, "soul" and "consciousness". After he passed out, his consciousness seemed to be pulled out of the body, but even so, he could still see some of what happened next, and saw the corpse that was originally full of vitality and had no idea how much negative impact it would have on human beings in the world. The transformation was directly drained by the black blood mark in his body, which made all kinds of extreme situations that Du Jin expected to be "stillborn".
Not long after he passed out, Du Jin's consciousness seemed to be separated from his body and surrounded above his body. This floating feeling made him very uncomfortable and even a little scared, just like many people in the selection process of pilots and astronauts. Those who were unsuccessful did not have substandard theoretical knowledge or professional knowledge, but fear of weightlessness. In fact, when most people leave the ground, the pull of gravity and their own "uncomfortable feeling" will make people instinctively All kinds of negative emotions arise, not to mention that Du Jin is not as simple as losing weight at this time... .....................
.
But after he watched the red aura gathered around his body being absorbed by his "body", Du Jin's consciousness was suddenly pulled back into his body, and then a chilly feeling that he was very familiar with spread throughout his body. Du Jin quickly opened his eyes and found that he had returned to the previous universe that seemed to be swallowed up by flesh and blood infection. He remembered very clearly that the last time there was a creature behind him, he had a conversation with it, and those in front of him were shattered by something unknown. The lifeless flesh and blood planet seemed to want to drag himself into it and devour it. Du Jin could clearly remember the scene at that time:
"In the haze, he saw a universe. At the beginning of his vision, there were blood-red debris everywhere. Several blood-red planets seemed to have been smashed to pieces by some huge force. The original round shape was torn apart. "Irregular gaps were made one after another, and debris of flesh and blood material were scattered around the flesh and blood planet. The surface of the planet seemed to be eye-shaped objects with countless tentacles completely filled with blood red. Du Jin could basically determine this with just a glance. , these planets that were beaten like this probably have no "life" anymore.
Before Du Jin could think about anything further, there were some harsh buzzing sounds in his ears, no! Rather than a buzzing sound, it could be said that it was the sound of certain languages superimposed together. The mixed murmurs made Du Jin feel as if his eardrums were about to burst. He had no way or interest in carefully distinguishing the details. As for Du Jin, When he felt like he was falling fast and was suffocated and the pain in his ears was causing him to lose consciousness, all the feelings in his body suddenly disappeared. In other words, those negative feelings suddenly disappeared. He was just like those in this universe. The blood-red powder floated in the air, and there was an eerie silence in his ears. If he hadn't felt the feeling of suffocation and "implosion", he would have really meant that he was in space.
And in such a mysterious situation, Du Jin could clearly see the flesh and blood "wandering" in space, which seemed to be purely organic matter piled up with flesh. You could roughly see the wrinkles and crystals in the blood-red flesh. But it gave Du Jin a feeling of discomfort originating from his soul, as if he was looking at the corpse of some kind of creature, but he suddenly realized that the "owners" of these flesh and blood were those blood-red planets, which seemed to mean something. "
Du Jin had just finished thinking about it. Behind him, especially on the back of his neck, there was the same cold and bone-piercing breath as before. It was obvious that the creature who had spoken to him before had not left, but was "guarding" at this position. "Corpse", according to the current situation, the other party must have succeeded, but the fear in Du Jin's heart is not as strong as before, because before the last "travel", the unknown creature answered his question, saying that this place is called "blood "Moon Dimension", and still warned him not to come here, so Du Jin concluded that the other party had no murderous intention towards him, but of course he could only say that he didn't have it now.
After thinking for a few seconds, Du Jin tried to calm down and said in a trembling voice:
"Hello, we meet again."
This is not because Du Jin is afraid, but mainly because the cosmic space called the "Blood Moon Dimension" where he is currently is too cold, and the function of the body temperature regulation system is quite complicated, which has not yet been fully understood. Certain thermoregulatory processes are controlled by hormones. For example, thyroid acid produced by the thyroid gland increases heat production in the body. It increases in cold environments and decreases in hot environments. In general, body temperature regulation mainly relies on neural regulation and humoral regulation.
Chilling is an important means for the human body to resist low temperatures. It is an involuntary contraction of skeletal muscles and a reflex activity caused by cold receptors in the skin. Skeletal muscles produce a large amount of heat when they contract. The lower the temperature, the stronger the shivering and the more heat produced, thus keeping the body temperature constant. When a person is resting in a warm environment, visceral heat production accounts for 57.6% of the total heat production. However, when muscles are active, this heat production distribution ratio changes fundamentally. For example, during moderate-intensity exercise, the total heat production increases by three times. At this time, skeletal muscle heat production accounts for 75%-80% of the total heat production. Therefore, moving your hands and feet frequently in a cold environment can also increase heat production and achieve the purpose of resisting the cold.
But unfortunately, now Du Jin seems to be bound by an unknown force and cannot move his limbs at all. Therefore, Du Jin's speech at this time is naturally trembling due to this reason, but after Du Jin said these words, There was no response from his words. If the cold breath hadn't disappeared, Du Jin might have left because of the unknown creature. And from Du Jin's subjective level, he didn't want to stay here all the time. , in this environment of gradual paralysis due to low temperature, if he cannot escape in time, he will die in a very painful way. That feeling will definitely make Du Jin realize what real pain and despair are.
