Scientists accidentally record activity brain a patient before he died. They also found, brain usually invites the owner back to the past through flashes of memory.
Launch Live Science, the recording was obtained 30 seconds before the patient’s heart stopped beating. From the recording it is known, the patient’s brain waves are similar to the waves commonly seen when a person dreams.
The phenomenon of repeating past memories when a person is dying has been reported several times. The reports come from those who almost died.
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But this accidental recording is the first evidence that memory repetition may be true. However, further assumptions are impossible because this phenomenon is only recorded once.
The scientists recorded the brain activity in 2016. They were studying the brain activity of an 87-year-old Canadian man with epilepsy.
The experts used the electroencephalogram (EEG) technique, a test that detects abnormal electrical activity in the brain. Through this technique, the experts wanted to see what happened during the study.
Unexpectedly, the patient had a heart attack and died. As a result, the experts also recorded brain activity for 900 seconds.
Of the total duration, the experts found that there were unusual changes in the patient’s brain waves in the 30 seconds before and after he died.
“We measured 900 seconds of brain activity at the time of dying and set a specific focus to investigate what happened 30 seconds before and after the heart stopped beating,” said Dr. Ajmal Zemmar, a neurosurgeon from the University of Louisville, United States, who made this study as reported by Frontiersin.
“Just before and after the heart stops working, we see changes in specific neural oscillation waves, called gamma oscillations, but also in others such as delta, theta, and beta oscillations,” he added.
Brain oscillations are normal patterns of brain rhythmic activity and are common in the living human brain. Different oscillations in the brain, including gamma, are involved in cognitive functions such as concentration, meditation, memory generation, information processing, and conscious perception, as is associated with memory repetition.
“Through the oscillations involved in memory generation, the brain may play a key event in life, before we die, similar to what is reported to occur when humans are dying,” Zemmar speculated.
“This discovery challenges our understanding of exactly when life ends and raises important subsequent questions, such as whether it correlates with the timing of organ donation,” he added.
The research of Dr Zemmar and his colleagues has been written in the journal published by Frontiersin entitled Enhanced Interplay of Neuronal Coherence and Coupling in the Dying Human Brain. JThe journal was published in February 2022.
(lth)
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