Doctors find brain activity ten minutes after ‘death’

THE brain can continue to show signs of life after patients have been declared clinically dead, researchers found.

In one case, persistent brain activity continued for ten minutes after the heart had stopped beating.

Canadian doctors who made the discovery described the case as ‘extraordinary and unexplained’.

Tests were carried out on four patients in intensive care after their life-support machines had been switched off. Doctors attempted to confirm each patient was dead through a range of normal observations, including the absence of a pulse and unreactive pupils.

In three of the four cases, brain activity ceased just before the heart stopped.

But in one case the patients’ brain appeared to keep working – experiencing the same kind of brain waves that are seen during deep sleep. Researchers from the University of Western Ontario, who published their results in the Canadian Journal for Neurological Science, say the reasons for the phenomenon are unclear.

Experts have always thought that brain activity ends before or shortly after the heart stops beating.

The latest findings potentially raise difficult questions about when a patient is dead and therefore when it is medically and ethically correct to use them for organ donation. Up to a fifth of those who survive heart attacks report having had an other-worldly experience while being ‘clinically’ dead.

But scientists say it is too early to speculate on its consequences as the phenomenon was only seen in one patient.

In 2013, a similar phenomenon was found in an experiments on rats. Some brain signals were up to eight times stronger during a short burst after the heart stopped. And two studies last year demonstrated that genes continue to function, in some cases more energetically, in the days after death.