like the brain is literally encased in the body so how can it be separate? like if you go around licking lamp posts you’re going to pick up some germ that’s gonna make you feel like crap and you get insomnia or fever and your brain will definitely be impacted. and so you’ll have short temper and that’ll get you into trouble.

  • Passerby6497@lemmy.world
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    1 day ago

    Nevertheless, there have been cases of brain dead people’s body adapting to the lack of central nervous system

    We’re they on life support, or do you have an example of it happening without any outside assistance?

    so the body is more independently alive than we tend to give it credit.

    Being able to biologically adapt to a different control mechanism is cool, but it’s not necessarily ‘alive’ depending on your definition. The biological mechanisms may still fire, but that doesn’t mean that you’re doing anything more than keeping a meat sack functioning while it otherwise atrophies.

    • reliv3@lemmy.world
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      1 day ago

      You are correct, the person was on life support. But they grew and went through puberty like any other normal functioning human. (I believe the person was born brain dead, and the wealthy parents couldn’t let go so they kept the person on life support at home).

      Cells are living things by definition. So it is alive, though the body functions more like a tree than a mammal at that point. But a decentralized nervous system grew around the different vital organs.