The Op mentioned a magic cable as well. Perhaps the magic cable supports those functions with a advanced technology that we do not yet understand.

There's a video called Experiments in the Revival of Organisms where Russian scientists are depicted bringing a severed dog head to life. There's evidence to suggest that it was fake, though.

Could you imagine the phantom pain, of a whole body.

I read some accounts from back when they were using the guillotine where they said that the eyes would blink and look around and the jaw tried to move for a minute or so after getting chopped off on some executions. Keeping the brain alive? You would have to reproduce the functions of most of the organs in the body in some way, from nutrients to cleaning the blood to regulating temperature and hormone levels. Then, if you want to communicate, provide some way to move air across the vocal cords and have an anchor point for the neck and jaw muscles so that one could at least inflect the voice instead of wheezing it out.

With Billions of dollars and enough time it might be done. All for someone to come along and trip over the power cord. Or use your room as a storage shed for old paperwork. You know, we are going to just have to move you back a few feet kind of thing.

Being alive as a head in a jar being stuck beside Robbin William's head.

Pure hell. Kill me now.

Human Head is dead.

apparently one scientist did it to chimps too

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NJE7IRK7k7Y (watch at own risk)

The trauma and shock of removing it would kill you. If you could bypass it and hook it up to some machines perhaps?(maybe)?

I don't wanna be a head in a jar...I wanna be like DR.MOBIUS....

....

Okay yea I don't know if a head could live away from the body without a way to breath/eat/have blood flow/not be killed by some random scared person.

I'd spend my time as a head in a jar reading my days away.

I always thought that if you stripped away all the skin and bones on the body of a human but left the head on and then put it all in a metal case with the head poking out, it would work.

After all, what are our skin and bones other than support for the vital things?

Bones are a fairly key part of our ability to breathe; skin generates vitamin D; and probably various other things whose absence that would make the continuation of life a bit awkward.

Exhulted One ,
I have recieved transmission 2574A . Everything is in place and is going as we planned. I await your instructions. These stupid earthlings are a laughable species.

All could be solved by keeping a supply of the native blood on hand and pumping it through the head at nominal pressure while supplying that blood elsewhere in a system with O2 and glucose. Remember, the blood carries the other 2 things.

Would also probably need some sort of filtering system for the blood that returns with toxins and CO2.

Robocop style?