A medical team records, by accident, the brain activity of a person during the period before and following his death.
By Carlos Sanchez
It’s a day like any other at the hospital. The health workers are preparing to perform the brain wave measurement test on an 87-year-old man, who had had epileptic seizures following an accident. Little did they know that they were on the verge of an amazing find.
During the encephalogram, the patient went into cardiac arrest and died. But the machines, with a cool disinterest in the unexpected, kept going and recorded his brain activity.
The evidence
According to the study published by the medical team in the journal Frontiers in Aging Neuroscience:
“After cardiac arrest, delta, beta, and alpha powers were reduced, but a higher percentage of relative gamma power was observed (…) even following cerebral blood flow ceased.” “Our data provide the first evidence of the dying human brain in a clinical setting (…) and argue that the human brain may possess the ability to generate coordinated activity during the dying process.”
In an interview at the BBCDr. Ajmal Zemmar, neurosurgeon (University of Louisville, USA) and co-author of the study, states:
“It is the first time in history that the activity of a human brain is recorded from the state of being alive to deceased (…) we found certain rhythmic patterns in the brain waves, which are what happen in the brain of human beings when we have recall of memories, meditation, we concentrate our attention or in dreams (…) occurs before and following the heart has stopped beating».
On a more subjective level, Dr. Ajmal shares his ideas: “It seems that this new phase of death begins when the person is regarding to die (…) this leads us to the intriguing speculation that here we have the neurophysiological correlate to those near-death experiences (NDEs) that people repeatedly witness (…) and who report having a recollection of their life».
The plan
Following the publication of the study, many press articles have announced the finding of the scientific basis for NDEs. Specifically, from the experience “life passes you by, like a movie” described by people who were clinically dead, but survived. This conclusion might be true, but they focus the debate on whether or not the new medical discovery is reliable proof of such experiences.
What is amazing is the fact itself, fascinating, without further proof, that something happens in our brains following we die. We have a behavior installed for the dying process, even without heart rate.
When we are born, we come with numerous reflexes, which remain active during the first year of life: apprehend with the hands, suck with the mouth, tense the neck and stretch an arm if placed face down (so as not to drown), etc. And they all have justification in our survival
Then the question arises: What use would Darwinian evolution have for a brain mechanism in the process of death and with the heart stopped? In that state we can no longer compete with our peers, like a lion in the savannah. And it is evident that we are not going to reproduce ourselves, we are not for those fights. So why do we have an activity programmed in our minds, with the last bits of energy, even following clinical death? ; Could it be that the plan of evolution and life is another?
Because the dominant belief gets drunk on telling us that here we come to compete among equals, to continuously trample on other human beings, to accumulate power, and that our genes are the ones that achieve the future. An inflated ego not only in life but for ever and ever. In addition, we are surrounded by the behavior of animal species ready to justify such a conclusion.
But a program loaded into our genetic code waits patiently, unhurriedly, for its time to come, just before it dies. As if it were a computer virus. Perhaps it is programmed to make it easier, during death, for us to see the essence of what our life was. Perhaps he wants to help us reveal something that our conscience might only touch in our existence. Perhaps it is the genetic reflection of the phrase “real wisdom is in the depths of your conscience as true love is in the depths of your heart.” (Silo, “The Cure of Suffering” 1969)
Other articles by the author:
The ear, our last connection before dying.
A study by the University of Vancouver shows that hearing is the last sense that is disconnected before death, even remaining active without the patient’s apparent awareness. This lays a scientific basis for spiritual currents and traditions that, today and for centuries, perform ceremonies or speak in the ear of people when they are on their deathbed.
We come from the confluence and cooperation of human species, not from their competitiveness.
New archaeological findings disarm the evolutionary theories accepted until now, and reveal that we come from sustained hybridization between different hominid species for tens of thousands of years.
