When someone becomes a witch or wizard, their consciousness/soul/whatever is removed from the brain, leaving the body a mindless puppet. The magic proceeds to control the body, but when the magic is exhausted it is no longer able to do so, and the body falls down unconscious.
This also explains why wizards are more resistant to damage (it’s just the mindless puppet that’s being hurt, so unless you hurt it enough that it can’t be fixed, everything is alright, even if it’s a Bludger to the head), and how Animagi can think when their human brains are transfigured into animal brains (the human brain wasn’t doing any work, anyway).
Nice theory, but it has a flaw : effects on the body of the wizards do affect their mind, eating chocolate helps to counter the Dementor effect, alcohol seems to have the normal effect, and (at least in canon) the wizard teens are affected by hormones like normal teens. So it would require the magic to scan that, and affect the mind in a similar way than a normal chemical effect on the brain would work, but yet still preserve the “resistant to damage” property ? Well, starts to be quite un-occamian.
When someone becomes a witch or wizard, their consciousness/soul/whatever is removed from the brain, leaving the body a mindless puppet. The magic proceeds to control the body, but when the magic is exhausted it is no longer able to do so, and the body falls down unconscious.
This also explains why wizards are more resistant to damage (it’s just the mindless puppet that’s being hurt, so unless you hurt it enough that it can’t be fixed, everything is alright, even if it’s a Bludger to the head), and how Animagi can think when their human brains are transfigured into animal brains (the human brain wasn’t doing any work, anyway).
But they don’t wear any fancy jewelry, though. And their animal familiars are not nearly as cute.
Edit: Hmm, Soul Gems as Horcruxes… Horcrux’d wizards as liches… we’re on to something here.
Nice theory, but it has a flaw : effects on the body of the wizards do affect their mind, eating chocolate helps to counter the Dementor effect, alcohol seems to have the normal effect, and (at least in canon) the wizard teens are affected by hormones like normal teens. So it would require the magic to scan that, and affect the mind in a similar way than a normal chemical effect on the brain would work, but yet still preserve the “resistant to damage” property ? Well, starts to be quite un-occamian.
If this is true, it should follow that brain surgery would have no effect on wizards. It should be pretty easy to test.
So wizards are Zombies...