Scientists find life in dead brain cells

The claim that this was true was rejected years ago, but thinking about it is scary.

What you're describing is physically impossible and has in fact never been observed by science. Electrical activity implies chemical activity and an active metabolism. Dead brain cells lose their electrical potential, eventually the cell walls break down and spill their dead biochemical machinery, effectively liquefying the organ. Our cemeteries are not full of intact, electrically active brains somehow.

When a neuron is deprived of oxygen, it shuts down. Some intracellular processes run until their educts are exhausted, and then come to a stop. When an anoxic brain cell is then re-supplied with oxygen after this shut down has progressed too far, the sudden resumation of processes means that these previously accumulated cytotoxic reaction products are now suddenly disrupting normal biochemical processes - this disruption leads to the death of the cell after it has been re-supplied. We call this category of damage reperfusion injuries.

Reperfusion damage is perverse in the sense that, while the neuron was damaged during anoxia, its actual death only plays out once its chemical programs start running again. But in a way this is also promising, since in the future we should be able to prevent this kind of cell death, effectively prolonging the time a patient can survive anoxia without brain damage. There are drugs that we give stroke patients today with this mechanism in mind, but so far the results have been mixed.

> stroke or in coma and have large areas of the brain with dead cells

In a live body, dead brain cells quickly break down and are resorbed. There is nothing left to fix there. The correct time to take action is while cells are still intact, in the delicate stage before and shortly after oxygen supply is restored.

[1] https://www.npr.org/2020/03/24/820601571/all-of-this-panic-c...