I watched part of a program on Discovery last night which featured a prisoner in French Guiana being decapitated by a guillotine. While shocked to see, for the first time in my life, an actual beheading, I became curious. I recall some scientific experiments performed on executed prisoners maybe during the French Revolution, where researchers prearranged ways to communicate with severed human heads through blinking “yes” and “no” responses to questions. Am I remembering this research correctly? Are there other cases I could look at? How long could the human head remain cognizant after being severed from the body?
Cecil has addressed this question:
Just out of curiosity, which documentary was this that showed the beheading footage? And, by any chance, was it the film clip with all the witnesses (That’s what I guessed they were, anyway) gathered around the guillotine in a semicircle, carrying umbrellas?
Ranchoth
I remember something similar to this, the person being decapitated tried to blink as many times as he could after the blade struck. I think he got 13-15 blinks or something like that, when his head was completely off