WEIRD SCIENCE

Dying brain ‘flashed through man’s life’

IT’S an age-old adage – that your whole life flashes before your eyes just before you die. But it could actually happen.

In 2016, Canadian scientists were measuring the brain waves of a man suffering with epilepsy when he suddenly had a heart attack and died.

It allowed the scientists, unwittingly, to make the first recording of a dying brain, and later it was noticed that patterns in the 87-year-old’s brain activity in the 30 seconds before and after his death were almost identical to those seen when people dream or recall memories. Similar patterns have been seen in rats, so the experience may even be shared by other mammals.