LIFE REVIEW
Life does flash before your eyes before you die, it turns out, but it doesn’t work on drugs...
In a recent paper in the journal Frontiers in Aging Neuroscience
a group of researchers report on a one-off opportunity to gain a deeper understanding of what happens in the human brain as we die. An 87-year-old man with epilepsy, in hospital to have his brain scanned for signs of seizures after falling and striking his head, had a heart attack while being scanned, dying shortly after. This meant that his brainwaves were being recorded throughout the process, from 30 seconds prior to the heart attack until after the patient’s heart stopped beating.
“This was actually totally by chance – we did not plan to do this experiment or record these signals,” said study leader Dr Ajmal Zemmar, a neurosurgeon at the University of Louisville, Kentucky. In the 30 seconds before the patient’s heart stopped, his brainwaves followed the kind of patterns seen when we are conscious and highly alert, such as when we are concentrating, dreaming or recalling memories, and these continued for 30 seconds after the patient’s heart stopped beating. These brainwaves are also linked to conscious perception, memory retrieval and information processing, particularly memory flashbacks, which supports reports from people who have had near-death experiences (NDEs) where they find themselves recalling important life events in rapid succession (see FT159:34-40).
While the researchers are cautious about the larger implications of their findings, given that this is a single case and the patient had experienced a head injury, they do note that the brainwave patterns are similar to those recorded in rats when they die, suggesting that it is possible that the brain’s response to death is consistent across species. The similarities are “astonishing”, Dr Zemmar said. “Something we may learn from this research is: although our loved ones have their eyes closed and are ready to leave us to rest, their
His brainwaves were recorded after his heart stopped beating
brains may be replaying some of the nicest moments they experienced in their lives,” he added. “These findings challenge our understanding of when exactly life ends and generate important subsequent questions, such as those related to the timing of organ donation.”
It has been suggested that the experiences people have when using the drug dimethyltryptamine (DMT) are similar to NDEs, and that the brain releases a DMT-like substance as we die. New research, though, suggests this is probably not the case. Researchers carried out brain scans and interviewed regular DMT users about their experiences, finding that DMT produces changes in brainwaves that are more like those found when people are dreaming. Also, rather than the kind of reflective life reviewing or “journey into the light” experiences of NDEs, DMT users seemed to experience novel worlds and meet completely new entities while on the drug. “The two broadest, most generic dimensions to the experience were… entering Other Worlds and Encountering Other Beings. In fact, 100% of our 36 interviews involved the former, and 94% (34) demonstrated the latter,” said study author Pascal Michael of the University of Greenwich. He added that when DMT users encountered “humanoid” entities during their experiences, these would often have “stylised features such as being clown-like or even octopoid, with an often shifting, sometimes geometric form,” and that the encounters usually involved the entity teaching or presenting the experiencer with something. “These meetings were also overwhelmingly positive, with over half of participants conveying the entities’ enchanting nature… Almost half felt some, usually ‘telepathic,’ communication from the entity, mostly happening to be on the subject of cosmic insight or love for others and oneself,” he said. This makes the DMT experience closer to dreaming, alien abductions or shamanic experiences, and only superficially like NDEs, conclude the researchers. psypost. org, 21 Feb; zmescience.com, technologynetworks.com, 22 Feb; BBC News, 23 Feb 2022.