More recently, in 1989, an Army veteran told of seeing a friend decapitated in a car crash. According to the story, the severed head showed emotions of shock, followed by terror and grief, its eyes glancing back at its separated body. …

Recent animal studies, however, lend some credence to those chilling stories.

In 2011, Dutch scientists hooked an EEG (electroencephalography) machine to the brains of mice fated to decapitation. The results showed continued electrical activity in the severed brains, remaining at frequencies indicating conscious activity for nearly four seconds. Studies in other small mammals suggest even longer periods.

If true in humans, those few seconds would provide enough time for a strange and terrifying experience: count off four seconds (“one Mississippi…”), and notice how much of your surroundings you can register.