The stories that before death “the whole life flashes before the eyes”, apparently, are not far from the truth …
The nature of the brain waves observed right before and immediately after the moment of death is similar to the scenario of brain activity at a time when a person remembers the past, and also dreams or meditates. Such a discovery was made by an international group of scientists, whose article in Frontiers in Aging Neuroscience.
For the first time, researchers have been able to observe in real time how the electrical activity of the brain of a dying person changes. This happened by accident. The fact is that an 87-year-old man after a fall received a head injury, and he developed epileptic seizures.
To monitor the onset of seizures, the patient in the intensive care unit was continuously filmed an electroencephalogram. However, at some point, the patient suddenly had a heart attack and died. So scientists have the opportunity to see what happens in the brain during dying.
“We analyzed parameters of brain activity for 15 minutes around the time of death. We were especially interested in what happens within 30 seconds before and after the heart stops beating, ”said Ajmal Zemmar, one of the authors of the article, a neurosurgeon from the University of Louisville (USA), in a comment for the PsyPost website.
He and his colleagues found that during this period the brain actively generates gamma, delta, theta, alpha and beta waves, the rhythmic scenario of which is characteristic of memories of the past. This may indicate that people who have experienced clinical death and talk about their near-death experiences are absolutely right — the brain, before dying, “plays” memories of important life events for the last time, Zemmar noted.
“Our findings are changing our understanding of exactly when life ends and death occurs, which could have implications for organ donation. It seems that the brain remains active and coordinated not only during the moment of death, but also after it. Apparently, he is programmed to manage the entire process of dying, ”Zemmar explained.