The Brain Waves of a Dying Person Have Been Recorded in Detail For The First Time

People who have looked their mortality in the face often describe their near-death experiences in similar terms, such as vivid memories, a sense of standing outside of their body, and a feeling of tranquility.

Scientists don't have a lot of data on what happens in the brain as people transition into death, despite anecdotal evidence from people who have hadNDEs. Under tragic circumstances, scientists have collected the first continuous data on the neural dynamics of the brain.

When an 87-year-old patient developed seizures after undergoing surgery, doctors usedEEG to monitor his condition, but sadly the patient deteriorated and sadly passed away while these recordings were taking place.

Due to the do-not-resuscitate status of the patient, scientists were able to record the electrical activity of a dying human brain.

We measured 900 seconds of brain activity around the time of death and set a specific focus to investigate what happened 30 seconds before and after the heart stopped beating.

Before and after the heart stopped working, we saw changes in a specific band of neural oscillations, which were called the gamma oscillations.

Brain waves are electrical activity in the brain and are called neural oscillations. The waves of electrical activity happen at different frequencies, and various frequencies have been linked to different conscious states.

Neurosciences has been able to associate different frequencies of brain waves with different functions.

The patient's brain activity showed a spike in the power of the gamma band that was interacting with the most alpha waves.

It is intriguing to speculate that such activity could support a recall of a last call.

The authors note a few things. The patient had suffered from bleeding, swelling, and seizures and was in a post-traumatic state. The patient had received a lot of anti-seizure drugs.

There was no baseline brain scans to compare the brain activity to. We cannot have access to such data in healthy patients whose deaths are impossible to anticipate. The recordings of the near-death phase could only be obtained from an already sick patient.

Despite these limitations, the team's findings do point to a potential link between brain waves observed during death with the phenomenological experiences of NDEs, where participants describe their life flashing before their eyes.

Evidence that the brain may go through a stereotyped activity pattern during death is based on what we know about brain waves during memory retrieval. The authors note that the findings are similar to what has been observed in rodents.

The results are consistent with the idea that the brain organizes and executes a biological response to death.

Zemmar takes some comfort in the idea that our brains may immerse us in our most beloved memories while we leave the world, even though researching what happens to the brain during death can be difficult.

Although our loved ones have their eyes closed and are ready to leave us to rest, their brains may be replaying some of the nicer moments they experienced in their lives.

The case report was published.