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That's not a phrase a physician would typically use. Laypeople sometimes use it to describe respiratory and/or cardiac arrest.

Thanks. I have no medical training, so that helps. So the brain can still function for a while during cardiac arrest?

Yes. In fact you can be "dead" for rather a while and still get better under very specific circumstances, typically involving hypothermia.

I think the saying is, “Nobody is dead until warm and dead.”