Scientists accidentally recorded a patient’s brain waves just before and 30 seconds after the heart stopped beating, revealing neural activity related to memory.
Many people who have seen death in the face describe the experience of pre-death in an incredibly similar way: netta sfeeling of being out of your body, intense and welcoming lights with a feeling of extreme tranquility, memories that quickly run through the mind.
Although there is a lot of anecdotal evidence of people having related their near-death experience (NDE), it has never been possible to observe what happens in a person’s brain while they are dying. Now it happened, by chance. Scientists from the University of Louisville in the United States led by neurosurgeon Ajmal Zemmar in collaboration with Canadian colleagues have for the first time recorded the brain waves of a man who died of a heart attack discovering that the brain, even after the heart has stopped beating, still continues its activity: just thirty seconds, truly the last of life. Through the generation of oscillations involved in memory retrieval, the brain could reproduce a last memory of important life events just before dying, say the scientists who published their study in Frontiers in Aging Neuroscience.
The 87-year-old patient admitted to the Vancouver Hospital had demonstrated epileptic fits after a decided surgery following a fall and for this he was constantly monitored with a electroencephalogram. She suddenly had a heart attack and died, but the instruments continued to register signs of brain activity. Around the time of death we measured 900 seconds of brain activity and focused on the 30 seconds before and after the heart has stopped beating Zemmar explained.
Immediately before and immediately after cardiac arrest was recorded an increase in very specific brain waves known as gamma oscillationslinked to activities such as the recovery of memory, meditation and dreaming. According to the team, it could mean (although many more studies would be needed) that we could see some sort of cinematic reel of our best memories as we die. It is impossible to know if the brain of the patient examined has actually lived the memory of some moments of life for a few seconds: the study has only recorded brain activity linked to memory and in any case opens the way for other research focused on the last moments of life.
The authors report deficits in their study: the patient suffered from epilepsy and his brain was bloody and swollen. In addition, he had been given massive doses of antiepileptic drugs that may have influenced neural oscillatory behavior. Nevertheless, the study is of great value. In fact, we cannot have access to such data in healthy patients whose death is impossible to predict, so the near-death records could only come from patients who are already ill.
February 28, 2022 (change February 28, 2022 | 10:51)
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