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Remember Me Before You Die

Does life end when the heart stops beating, or after the brain death? The doctors detected brainwaves 30 seconds after the patient’s heart had stopped beating, which is assumed to be a final recall of life before death.

Dr. Ajmal Zemmar, a neurosurgeon at the University of Louisville, describes the discovery by chance of the research team of a study published in Frontiers in Aging Neuroscience. During the brain activity recording of an 87-year-old sedentary ailment who suffered an acute heart attack and was dying, the research team discovered that in the last 30 seconds of life before the patient’s heart stopped supplying blood to the brain, the patient’s brainwave record had the same pattern as dreaming or recalling memories.

The last brain activity came 30 seconds just after the doctor announced that the patient had died as his heart had stopped beating. The brainwaves during that time have the same pattern as the cognitive brain activity, such as meditation, dreaming, or recalling memory. The discovery is consistent with another study in 2013, which reported high levels of brainwave activity in healthy rats which died 30 seconds after their heart stopped beating, characterized the same as those found in patients with epilepsy.

The findings, however, still had some limitations and could not be generalized, as the patient had epilepsy with cerebral hemorrhage and cerebral edema, which made it more complicated. Dr. Zemmar still believes that, depending on the memorable experiences of each person, the brain is likely to remind you good things rather than bad things.

Although this study cannot tell us whether we choose or force our brains to recall memories of whom we love or are happy with in a specific moment of time of our death, it could be a foundation for further studies about the last moments of life.

Source:
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-60495730