A scientific experiment to reanimate dead brains could lead to humans enduring a ‘fate worse than death,’ an ethics lecturer has warned.

Last month Yale University announced it had successfully resurrected the brains of more than 100 slaughtered pigs and found that the cells were still healthy.

The reanimated brains were kept alive for up to 36 hours and scientists said the process, which should also work in primates, offered a new way to study intact organs in the lab.

Although the pigs did not regain consciousness, the team admitted that it may be possible to restore awareness, and the experiments open the door to the prospect of human brains being kept alive outside of the body.

However, Nottingham Trent ethics and philosophy lecturer Benjamin Curtis said it could lead to humans enduring a "living hell".

“Even if your conscious brain were kept alive after your body had died, you would have to spend the foreseeable future as a disembodied brain in a bucket, locked away inside your own mind without access to the sense that allow us to experience and interact with the world,” he told The Conversation. “In the best case scenario you would be spending your life with only your own thoughts for company.