Blogs / Discoblog

Coming back from the dead sounds like the stuff of science fiction, but it happened to a 23-year-old U.K. man: His pulse began again half an hour after doctors pronounced him dead. Sadly, his heart stopped beating permanently two days later, and a coroner declared death due to natural causes.

It’s not the first time someone has literally come back to life—but, with only 38 cases reported worldwide, it’s pretty rare. The condition is called Lazarus Syndrome, an allusion to the Biblical story in which Jesus raised Lazarus from the dead, and it occurs when a person’s circulation spontaneously returns after resuscitation attempts fail.

In the past, the syndrome has triggered fears of being buried, or even autopsied, while still alive. It’s a pretty creepy thought… one that we’ll try not to consider ever again.

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Image: flickr / ernstl

It’s like they waved a magic wand over 26-year-old Josh Villa’s head. For the first time, researchers have used a magnet to literally jolt a person out of a vegetative state. Villa had spent the past three years in a coma, after a car crash left him with traumatic brain injuries.

The “magic,” of course, was no magic at all, but rather an example of transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS), a brain stimulation technique that uses magnetic fields to stimulate nerve cells in the brain by placing a large electromagnetic coil on a person’s scalp. Typically, TMS is used to treat patients suffering from migraine, stroke, Parkinson’s disease and depression—but in this case, scientists used TMS as a last resort to treat Villa after he showed no signs of improvement after spending a year in a coma.

Here’s how it worked:

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