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Moult studies have shown the control power our brain has.

From relaxing yourself, to decreasing your breathing rhythm and auto-hypnotizing yourself to sleep (all three of which I have experienced), we have a lot of control on our bodies and functions.

I have heard (no sources to back this claim up) that one is unable to commit suicide by not breathing if in an oxygen-ful environment. The reason I heard is that one may stop breathing until passing out, but then normal operation mode resumes once you are passed out: one starts breathing again.

Since we have so much control on our bodily functions, shouldn't it theoretically be possible to commit suicide by requesting a brain shutdown.

The heart is an automatic organ which does not need a brain to function. So stopping one's heart by will isn't possible.

The brain on the other hand, is easily tricked and hypnotized. Which makes me wonder if someone suffering from severe depression could hypnotize themselves / meditate into a coma which may end in death.

Am I assuming too much power to our brain bodily function controls? Or, on the other hand, do my claims seem feasible?

ChrisR
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    What is the difference between eating and breathing? People have stoped eating by will. Death by hunger strike has been observed. – user unknown Apr 22 '11 at 23:58
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    @user unknown: Eating is not an involuntary process. If food is in your mouth, you'd have to be awfully distracted to chew and swallow and not notice it, and if you were unconscious you wouldn't eat. Most of the time, I don't notice my breathing, and if I were unconscious I'd still be breathing. – David Thornley Apr 23 '11 at 01:47
  • But isn't that circular logic? If you can resist to (eat|breath|drink), it doesn't count as suicide by will, because... ? Because what? You can't eat unvoluntary, yes, but we talk about not eating, voluntary. The opposite of the opposite, so to say. If breathing is performed without thought, stopping to breath wouldn't mean suicide through thought. – user unknown Apr 23 '11 at 02:01
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    Could you please provide a reference to "Moult studies"? – Oddthinking Apr 23 '11 at 07:20
  • @@Oddthinking, I was referring to studies about placebo and nocebo effects which have shown that if one does not believe a treatment will be beneficial, the treatment may turn out not be as beneficial for the patient cf http://www.sciencedirect.com/science?_ob=ArticleURL&_udi=B6T0F-4NBR44R-5&_user=10&_coverDate=06%2F29%2F2007&_rdoc=1&_fmt=high&_orig=gateway&_origin=gateway&_sort=d&_docanchor=&view=c&_searchStrId=1728192625&_rerunOrigin=scholar.google&_acct=C000050221&_version=1&_urlVersion=0&_userid=10&md5=8dfea841a48498b70370c4307a88490c&searchtype=a . – ChrisR Apr 23 '11 at 11:44

4 Answers4

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The concept of "bone pointing" (a.k.a. Kurdaitcha) comes from some Australian aboriginal cultures.

The idea - from Western eyes, at least - is that, once cursed, a victim becomes convinced that they will die, and soon after do.

Many of the stories about such incidents are anecdotal, folklore or there may have been other more prosaic reasons for the death, but at least one case has been documented.

Now, if this were true, you could argue that it is a situation where the brain has been tricked into dying. However, in the recorded case, the victim refused food, so perhaps it cannot be counted under your definition.

Oddthinking
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  • This example is very interesting. It is exactly what I was thinking of. More specifically, as noted in your link, some argue that loneliness may eventually lead to death ( James J. Lynch: A Cry Unheard: the Medical Consequences of Loneliness Bancroft Press, Baltimore MD (2000)). By combining both hypothesizes, I suppose one could trick their brain into dying, even though one may somewhat unconsciously refuse food. What I mean here by "unconsciously" is that in their eyes, they are not "refusing" food but more so "no interested" in eating. Does that make sense? – ChrisR Apr 23 '11 at 12:01
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It's not possible for a perfectly healthy person to will themselves to die. If it were, how many seriously depressed people would just up and die?

But, I do believe it's quite possible for a person who is in poor health, perhaps suffering from a serious disease, or a victim of a car crash, to will themselves into a state where they just don't want to keep living, and they die. It's a documented fact, that if a person doesn't want to live, then they have a harder time surviving such an ordeal. In fact, there is a paper that shows that having depression is shown to increase the likelihood of death, and that it's not related to suicide.

PearsonArtPhoto
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    Just because the average depressed person can't kill themselves by thought doesn't mean that no person can kill themselves by thought. – Christian Apr 23 '11 at 13:58
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    #Christian: Depression can suppress a lot of things, and typically will seriously inhibit anything that requires a lot of will power. – David Thornley Apr 23 '11 at 15:43
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    What I learned in a psychology course is that you need to be very careful treating depression: A fully depressed person may wish to commit suicide but is incapable of doing it because of depression. With medication that lifts the depression, they become capable of suicide. – gnasher729 Apr 09 '22 at 07:01
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I don't think there a way to answer this question definitely. For ethical reasons it's not really a phenomena you would be expected to be well studied.

The heart is a bit autonomous but it's possible to effect it via thought. People can learn to affect their heart rate through biofeedback.

What the hurdle when you want to stop your own heart or lung? If you have a lot of CO2 in your blood it increases the activity of your sympathicus. Sympathicus activity increases breathing rate and depth. It also increases your heart rate. I don't know of a way to block this process.

Instead of stopping your heart there's however also the possibility to speed it up. If your heart beats at 300 beats per minute it can't fill itself fully before the blood get's pumped out. Sympathicus activity would rather raise the heart rate then lower it. Tachycardia where the heart beats too fast already happens in some people with unhealthy hearts in nature. If it's fast enough and the heart stays too long at that level of activity people die from it.

There are a lot of factors involved that might prevent someone from killing himself this way but I wouldn't discount the possibility.

Christian
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It is not possible to stop breathing voluntarily. Unless there is a serious medical condition (e.g., sleep apnea) this is ruled out.
I assume you are talking of some sort of nocebo effect, which is voluntary. I believe nature has built life to preserve itself, hence what you are talking is not natural. This is why, most of the life sustenance operations are involuntary, not controlled by brain. If it were, the entire euthanasia debate would be irrelevant.

CMR
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    You could need much practice, to control your brain that far. However, I disagree with your statement 'Nature has build ... to ...'. No - that's religion. Nature has no will and plans. – user unknown Apr 22 '11 at 23:57
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    Also, whomever mastered the skill could not really teach it to anyone ;-) – Sklivvz Apr 23 '11 at 00:16
  • @Sklivvz, good point, you should make it into an answer. – CMR Apr 23 '11 at 03:12
  • How do you know that one can't voluntarily go through the same process that a person with sleep apnea goes through? If there a way something can happen accidentally why shouldn't it possible to go the same way consciously? – Christian Apr 23 '11 at 11:48
  • If people with a lot of control of their own bodies could kill themselves through thought that wouldn't invalidate the euthanasia debate. – Christian Apr 23 '11 at 11:49
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    Yes, I was somewhat referring to the nocebo effect (term which I wasn't familiar with until now). More specifically, I was skeptical about one falling into depression (for any reason it may be) and due to the nocebo effect die within a couple of weeks: a death linked to complete loss of hope for life. In other terms, a brain influenced and unconscious death. Kurdaitcha (see answer below) seems more in tuned with this. – ChrisR Apr 23 '11 at 11:53
  • The euthanasia debate would continue. First, it is empirically not possible for everybody to kill themselves with an act of will. Second, the debate would continue about removing life support from an unconscious patient. – David Thornley Apr 23 '11 at 15:42
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    @user unknown - Religious views may sometimes coincide with nature's desires (i.e. evolution) – apoorv020 Apr 23 '11 at 17:39
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    Nature's desire? Mother nature? A being with desires? Nature has no desires. – user unknown Apr 23 '11 at 18:12
  • @user-unknown, nature may not have desires, but it is natural to have desires and desires have specific natures. – CMR Apr 24 '11 at 19:53
  • Nice game with words, but your argument was, `breathing is involuntary to preserve life`. Clearly, eating isn't involuntary, but necessary to preserve life too. Your argumentation seems a bit weak. – user unknown Apr 24 '11 at 22:01
  • @user-unknown, eating/drinking/mating is not entirely controlled by self: it has an `external dependency`. Your argument is akin to, "_what if there is no oxygen? Life cannot preserve itself._" Agreed, animals with very high intelligence, like yours faithfully, are different. It is possible to commit suicide with extreme [inedia](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inedia), but that may not qualify as _death by thought_ – CMR Apr 24 '11 at 23:22
  • @userunknown: The laws of nature dictate that a species that routinely forgets to breathe, or wills itself to not breathing, is at a sharp evolutionary disadvantage, as -- all other things being equal -- more of this species would die than of a species that does not do this. There is no "will" of nature involved, that was *your* interpretation of CMR's words. ;-) – DevSolar Nov 10 '17 at 10:56
  • @DevSolar: Nobody talked about forgetting to breath, that's a straw man. So we are talking about will not to breath. Okay - what's about a species, which is able to climb on a tree willfully and jump down into death? Isn't that a sharp evolutionary disadvantage? Your argumentation is flawed as a possibility to behave in a certain way may have evol. advantages in some cases and disadvantages in other cases. What is disadvantageous for an individual might be an advantage for the population. And the environment is permanently changing, so what was an advantage yesterday (favoring sweet and fat) … – user unknown Nov 10 '17 at 12:24
  • … needn't be an advantage today. And, for example, you couldn't dive through water, if you couldn't willfully stop breathing for a certain amount of time. Since I'm not a mind reader, I have to interpret what CMR has written, not what he might have thought. He or she might edit his or her post to clarify, what is meant by nature, building something, to achieve a goal. – user unknown Nov 10 '17 at 12:29
  • @userunknown: I don't think we'll get anywhere in the scope of the SE format. I take exception at your labeling CMR's statement as "religion", and your suggested edit would do nothing to improve his answer, IMHO. Let's let it rest there. – DevSolar Nov 10 '17 at 13:04