Scientists have taken a look at the effect dying has on the human brain and what they found is pretty insane.
The idea that your brain just stops working when you die couldn’t be further from the truth, according to a 2022 study published in Frontiers in Aging Neuroscience.
A group of neuroscientists from the University of Tartu, Estonia ended up taking a deep dive into the brain of a patient who suffered with epilepsy.
Dr Raul Vicente and his team initially used continuous electroencephalography (EEG) to treat the patient, and to try to detect the seizures before they happened.
However, under supervision, the patient sadly had a heart attack and died.
Scientists took a deep dive into a dying human brain (Getty Stock Images)
Despite the tragic incident, the scientists went and looked at a dying brain for, supposedly, the first time ever.
“We measured 900 seconds of brain activity around the time of death and set a specific focus to investigate what happened in the 30 seconds before and after the heart stopped beating,” said Dr Ajmal Zemmar, a neurosurgeon at the University of Louisville, US, who organised the study.
“Just before and after the heart stopped working, we saw changes in a specific band of neural oscillations, so-called gamma oscillations, but also in others such as delta, theta, alpha, and beta oscillations.”
They were able to confirm that the rhythmic brain wave patterns at the time of death were similar to the wave patterns when dreaming, memory recall, and meditation.
It gave a possible explication for why people often have vivid life recall in near-death experiences.
The age old saying of ‘life flashing before your eyes’ might have some truth in it.
So, there are different types of brain oscillations (brain waves), defined as patterns of rhythmic brain activity present in living human brains.
The scientists were stunned at what they found (Getty Stock Images)
Gamma oscillations, for example, are present when concentrating, dreaming, and in memory and information.
“Through generating oscillations involved in memory retrieval, the brain may be playing a last recall of important life events just before we die, similar to the ones reported in near-death experiences,” Zemmar added.
“These findings challenge our understanding of when exactly life ends and generate important subsequent questions, such as those related to the timing of organ donation.
“As a neurosurgeon, I deal with loss at times.
“It is indescribably difficult to deliver the news of death to distraught family members.
“Something we may learn from this research is: although our loved ones have their eyes closed and are ready to leave us to rest, their brains may be replaying some of the nicest moments they experienced in their lives.”
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