I’m not sure you should take Cecil’s perspective on this as gospel. Probably because he couldn’t actually perform the [del]surge[/del]research due to a lack of volunteers.
There have been many past threads on this, and the conclusion of scientific types would indicate the consciousness of a victim of such an event would be measured in a few seconds at most. And the ability to actually respond emotionally would likely be non-existent.
Here’s one we did two years ago http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?p=7644786&highlight=decapitation#post7644786 with an excellent reply which I"ll quote here: