In the film Armageddon, Harry Stamper's life flashes before his eyes when he sets off a bomb to save planet Earth. There are clues that recall may not be hyperbole.
An international team of scientists recorded the brain activity of an elderly patient as he died.
The man was admitted to the hospital emergency department after a fall that resulted in a bleed in the brain. The doctors discovered the patient had developed a condition called synechia. He had a heart attack and died.
The recordings of the 30 seconds before and after the man's heart stopped beating suggest that he experienced changes in his brain waves. After the blood stops flowing in the brain, interactions between different types of brain wave continue.
It's intriguing to think that activity between alpha and gamma could support a last, given that it's involved in cognitive processes and memory recall in healthy subjects.
The findings are based on a single person's recordings, and the researchers urge caution, noting that traumatic brain injuries and white matter damage can affect brain waves, while activity of networks in the brain can be affected by anticonvulsant medication.
The results could have important implications.
The findings challenge our understanding of when exactly life ends and generate important questions, such as those related to the timing of organ donation.
It was not possible to plan the collection of such recordings because the data was pretty unique, according to Prof Anil Seth, who was not involved in the research. He said that questions remained.
The study shows a burst of brain activity in rodents prior to death, with some brain activity continuing even after cardiac arrest.
This study, showing similar findings in a dying human, is both moving and fascinating, but whether the recorded activity underlies any particular kind of subjective experience.
Dr Steve Taylor, a psychologist, said that he didn't think it was a representative example of how the human brain behaves at the point of death.
There are many cases of life reviews during falls when people are not close to death.
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