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Death and what follows has fascinated humanity since forever. Yet science still has more questions than answers about this. For example, it is still unknown what happens to human consciousness when the body dies. The neurologist Dr. Cameron Shaw, however, decided to shed some light on the very moment of death. He claims that he was able to determine what was happening to the body 30 seconds before he died.
- The moments before death have always remained unclear, although scientists are constantly trying to learn as much as possible about the process
- There are also discussions about the truthfulness of near-death experiences, when a person saying goodbye to life sees deceased relatives or a tunnel at the end of which there is light
- According to the neurologist, within 10-20 seconds of death, a person loses human features and memories
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The neurologist examined the patient’s brain to assess the time of death
The journalist of the magazine “Vice” decided to find out what dying really looks like. To this end, he went to the neurologist Dr. Cameron Shaw. And this one conducted a study on the body of a woman who agreed to share her corpse for the sake of science.
As Dr. Shaw explained, death is a “catastrophic loss of blood flow to the brain”. And this, in turn, is to explain the vision of the tunnel seen by people experiencing clinical death.
“We know tunnel vision occurs when there is a disruption in the blood supply to the brain. The first thing you see when you pass out is narrowed vision followed by darkness, said the neurologist. According to the doctor, death resembles the feeling of losing consciousness.
- See also: Types of death and causes of death – how to deal with the loss of a loved one? [WE EXPLAIN]
At the same time, the doctor questioned the truth of the near-death experiences, saying that in his opinion it was the sensations that preceded fainting, and not something that happened after losing consciousness.
The rest of the text is below the video.
How does the brain die? Other areas begin to shut down
In the course of evolution, the human brain was changing, its successive layers were created. From the most basic ones, responsible for drives or motor functions, through the more complex ones, thanks to which we feel emotions, store memories or learn new things.
At the time of death, Dr. Shaw says, the brain shuts down in stages. First comes the time for those layers that evolved last. In practice, this means that the traits that make us human are the first to go away.
30 seconds before death, due to circulatory failure, the areas of the brain responsible for self-awareness, sense of humor and planning skills are turned off. They disappear within 20 seconds. Later, memories and speech skills go away as well. When all these areas of the brain stop working, a person goes into a vegetative state.
“You can say that they are dead because they are unaware and unaware of what is around them,” explained Dr. Shaw. At the same time, technically such people can still breathe and have a palpable pulse.
As explained by the neurologist, the soul or those features that we identify with it go away first. According to the doctor, it is the body that dies last.
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- Our body does not all die at the same time. He dies in installments