The idea of death is the key to one's understanding of the event. There are many scientific methods and various interpretations of the concept. In addition, the advent of life-sustaining medicine and the many ways to define death from a medical and legal point of view, have made it difficult to form a single unified concept.
One of the challenges in defining death is separation from life. In the long run, death may seem to refer to the time when life ends. Determining when death occurs is difficult, as the suspension of life function usually does not occur simultaneously in all organ systems. Therefore, such determination requires drawing on the precise boundaries between life and death. This is difficult, because there is little agreement on how to define life.
It is possible to describe mental health. When consciousness is terminated, it can be said to be dead. One of the drawbacks of this approach is that there are many living things that they may not be aware of (for example, single-celled organisms). Another problem lies in defining knowledge, which has many different interpretations given by modern scientists, psychologists, and philosophers. Additionally, many religious traditions, including the Abrahamic and Dharmic traditions, believe that death does not cause (or will not cause) the end of consciousness. In some cultures, death is a process rather than a single event. It suggests a gradual transition from one atmosphere to another.
Those who hold to the fact that only the neo-cortex of the brain is needed for information sometimes argue that only electrical activity should be considered when describing death. Ultimately it is possible that the cause of death will be a permanent and irreversible loss of mental function, as evidenced by the death of the cerebral cortex. All hopes of a return to human thought and personality are gone from the present and modern medical technology. At present, in many places a strong definition of death - the irreversible cessation of electrical activity throughout the brain, as opposed to the neo-cortex itself - has been adopted (for example the United States Death Detection Act). In 2005, Terri Schiavo's case brought up the question of brain death and pre-existing food in American politics.
Even with the conditions of a perfect brain, the determination of brain death can be difficult. EEGs can detect false electrical impulses, while certain drugs, hypoglycemia, hypoxia, or hypothermia can temporarily suppress or stop brain function. Because of this, hospitals have procedures for determining brain death involving EEGs at very different times under specified conditions.
In the past, the adoption of this definition of the perfect brain was the conclusion of the Presidential Commission on the Study of Medical Behavior and Biomedical Research in 1980. They conclude that this definition of death is sufficient to achieve the same meaning throughout the world. A number of reasons have been presented in support of this definition, which include: similarity to the legal requirements for establishing death; use of family funds to obtain artificial health support; and the formal establishment of a mortality measurement for brain death and further donation of organs.
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