Scientists have restored the circulation of cut pork brains in one step that blurs the definition of death

It is a cliché image taken from a bad science fiction: the "living brain in a jar". Scientists from Yale University say they did it.

Pork heads: A team led by Nenad Sestan tells Nature today how she was collecting pork heads cut from a slaughterhouse in New Haven and trying to return traffic a few hours after the death.

The experiments managed to keep alive and running multiple cells inside the brain for more than one day. The MIT Technology Review released for the first time pork brain experiments in April 2018.

Not aware: Sestan said that as long as the brain cells were alive, the team did not detect the electrical signaling organized by the neurons. This would have suggested that disembodied brains regained consciousness.

An ethicist involved in the study said during a conference call with reporters that had there been evidence of consciousness, the studies should have been discontinued. Sestan insists that brains are "not alive".

High-tech pot: The researchers used a device that they built and called BrainEx, which restores the circulation of fluid carrying oxygen to the brain, including their small blood vessels, with the help of a series of pumps, filters and surgical connections.

Death in question: Doctors may declare a deceased person a few minutes after stopping the heart – sometimes by quickly harvesting the heart and kidneys for others. But this technology could blur the definition of death.

"If technologies similar to BrainEx are improved and developed for use in humans, people who have been declared brain dead … could become candidates for brain resuscitation rather than for organ donation," write Stuart Youngner and Insoo Hyun, bioethicists at Case Western University.