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In most healthcare settings, the first thing you usually find on top of any medical professional's notes is the patient's mental status; listed as (1)Alert or Unconscious, (2) Responsive/Non-responsive (to: verbal stimuli, light touch, pain, etc), and (3) Oriented (person?place?time?) or Confused. Our state of alertness, responsiveness, and awareness of our environment is the result of the collective work of our bodily systems. Our senses perceive sounds, sights, and textures through rapid communication that passes from neuron to neuron via electric and chemical means. Our brain stores these as memories and uses them later on to formulate a response to future situations. Our way of clothing, the way we talk, our manners -- they are all a result of our interaction with our environment and our genetic predisposition ("crime gene" or the "athletic gene"). Social norms also come into play -- for example, if your facial structure or height comes off as being "good" or "bad", it affects the way you interact with other people. All of this to say that the human "soul" is not a supernatural, invisible, single form of energy but instead, it is made up of billions of components that come together in order for us to be alert, responsive to stimuli, and oriented to our environment. Once those neurons stop interacting with one another, you're essentially dead. Legal death does not necessarily mean that a person's heart has to stop beating - it can simply mean a person is brain dead. Needless to say, I do not believe a person's consciousness "goes on" after the body dies. If you want to be poetic about it, I suppose you can live on in memory.
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  Alastor Crow
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