Imagine reliving your entire life in the space of seconds. Like lightning, you’re out of your body, watching memorable moments you’ve lived.
This process, known as “life recall,” can be similar to having a near death experience. What happens inside your brain during these experiences and after death are questions that have puzzled neuroscientists for centuries.
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However, a new study published in the magazine Frontiers in Aging Neuroscience suggests that your brain may remain active and coordinated during and after the transition to death, and may even be programmed to orchestrate the entire experience.
When an 87-year-old patient developed epilepsy, Dr. Raul Vicente from the University of Tartu (Estonia) and colleagues used continuous electroencephalography (EEG) to detect the seizures and treat it. During these recordings, the patient had a heart attack and died. This unexpected event allowed scientists to record the activity of a dying human brain for the first time.
understanding challenged
“We measured 900 seconds of brain activity at the time of death and set a specific focus to investigate what happened in the 30 seconds before and after the heart stopped beating,” said Ajmal Zemmar, a neurosurgeon at the University of Louisville (USA), who organized the study.
“Shortly before and after the heart stopped working, we saw changes in a specific range of neural oscillations, the so-called gamma oscillations, but also in others such as delta, theta, alpha and beta oscillations.”
Brain oscillations (more commonly known as “brain waves”) are patterns of rhythmic brain activity normally present in living human brains. The different types of oscillations, including gamma, are involved in highly cognitive functions such as concentration, dreaming, meditation, memory retrieval, information processing, and conscious awareness, as well as those associated with memory flashbacks.
“Through the generation of oscillations involved in memory retrieval, the brain may be reproducing a last recollection of important life events shortly before we die, similar to those reported in near-death experiences,” speculated Zemmar. “These findings challenge our understanding of when exactly life ends and raise important subsequent questions, such as those related to the timing of organ donation.”
source of hope
While this study is the first of its kind to measure live brain activity during the dying process in humans, similar changes in gamma oscillations have previously been observed in mice kept in controlled environments. This means that it is possible that, during death, the brain organizes and executes a biological response that could be conserved across species.
These measurements are, however, based on a single case and come from the brain of a patient who has suffered injury, seizures and swelling, which makes the data difficult to interpret. However, Zemmar plans to investigate more cases and sees these results as a source of hope.
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“As a neurosurgeon, I sometimes deal with loss. It is indescribably difficult to break the news of death to distraught family members,” he said.
“Something we can learn from this research is: although our loved ones have their eyes closed and are ready to let us rest, their brains may be reliving some of the best moments they’ve had in their lives.”
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