Life really does flash before your eyes on your deathbed

OUR LIFE may very well flash before our eyes when on the brink of death, according to the first recording made of a dying brain.

A coincidence saw a patient die while still having their brain activity monitored and it showed an uptick in activity linked to memory recall and dreaming.

Experts believe this backs up reports from people who have suffered neardeath experiences and claim to have seen their life flash before their eyes.

This is the first empirical data from an actual death to support the theory.

The unfortunate individual to have died while having their brain activity monitored by electrodes is an anonymous 87-year-old man from Estonia who went to hospital after a fall.

He was sent for scans after admission which found a significant brain bleed and an operation was successful. Afterwards, the patient was stable for two days in intensive care. He then began to suffer epileptic seizures, undergoing at least a dozen episodes. The clinicians organised an electro-encephalography (EEG) to help track and treat his brain activity. While the EEG was still ongoing, the patient suffered a cardiac arrest and died.

Dr Ajmal Zemmar, a neurosurgeon at the University of Louisville who analysed the case study, told Frontiers Science News that either side of the heart’s last contraction, there was a change in a certain type of brainwave, called gamma oscillations. Previous studies have found gamma waves to be linked to concentrating, dreaming, memory retrieval and conscious perception.

Writing in their study, which is published in the journal Frontiers in Aging Neuroscience, researchers from the United States, China, Australia and Estonia say the data “advocate that the human brain may possess the capability to generate co-ordinated activity during the near-death period”.