Before death, do life pass on to people? What the New Study Says

What happens to the brain before death? Scientists unwittingly recorded the brain activity of an 87-year-old dying man giving a mirror of what is thought to happen to the brain.

The elderly man was admitted to the hospital after a fall and his seizure appeared. Dr. Raul Vicente from Estonia and his colleagues used continuous electroencephalography (EEG) to detect crises and treat the patient. During these records, the patient suffered a heart attack and passed away. This unexpected event allowed scientists to record the activity of a dying human brain and believe that it is the first time that happens.

Reports of people whom life passed by when they had an experience that was near death have been repeatedly documented and puzzled by neuroscientists. A 2017 psychological study of the phenomenon revealed that those who experienced it had many similarities and that memories were not linear in their lives but were related to important things.

This new research, which was published Tuesday in Frontiers magazine in Aging Neuroscience, examined the neurological reasons for the phenomenon and suggests that the brain may be active and long co-ordinated and even after the passage to death.

We measured 900 seconds of brain activity around the time of death and set a specific focus to investigate what happened in 30 seconds before and after the heart stopped beating,” said Dr. Aymal Zemmar, a neurosurgeon at Louisville University, U.S.A.

“Pax before and after the heart stopped working, we saw changes in a specific place of nerve shaking, so-called gamma swings, but also in others like delta, eight, alpha and beta”.

Brain swings (more often known as <x0) brain waves” are patterns of rhythmic activity in the brain of living people. The various types of swings, including gamma, are involved in high cognitive functions, such as concentration, dreaming, meditation, memory return, information processing, and conscious perception.

“Between generating the impacts involved in restoring memory, the brain may recall important life events just before we die, similar to those reported in near death experiences,” speculated Zemmar.

However, these data is based on a single case and stem from the brain of a patient who had suffered injuries, concessions, and swelling that complicate the interpretation of data. Researchers hope that the study can lead to further studies.