Consciousness after decapitation

What I deduce from Cecil’s article, is that some people remain conscious, and others don’t.

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. :slight_smile:

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: