Researchers studied the brains of people on their deathbeds. They claim that end life may be more colourful than perceived. Although most patients were comatose, their last moments were ethereal like heart attack survivors.
The authors wrote
Near-death experiences (NDE) reported to be highly lucid, ‘realer than real’, and common to people from diverse cultural and religious backgrounds, have been described by 10 to 20 percent of cardiac arrest survivors,
However, “NDE represent a biological paradox that challenges our fundamental understanding of the dying brain, which is widely believed to be nonfunctioning under such conditions.
Despite this, earlier research on animals has demonstrated that the abrupt cessation of cardiac activity increases brainwave activity within the gamma frequency band, which is connected to conscious processing. The study’s authors looked at the EEG measurements of four cardiac arrest patients who passed away in the NICU at Michigan Medicine, University of Michigan. They did so to evaluate if the same thing happened in humans.
After the heart attacks, all four patients were unconscious and unresponsive. Furthermore, their life support was eventually turned off when it was determined that they couldn’t be saved. The researchers saw a rise in heart rate and a spike in gamma wave activity in two of the patients soon after the oxygen supply was interrupted.
Hot Zone of the Brain
This activity was detected where the temporal, parietal, and occipital sutures meet. It is the hot zone of the brain, linked with conscious activity. It is activated during waking and dreaming states.
The author of the study, Nusha Mihaylova said there is no concrete evidence of whether patients saw a white light or any other conscious phenomena. Since none survived the experiences.
We are unable to make correlations of the observed neural signatures of consciousness with a corresponding experience in the same patients in this study
However, the observed findings are definitely exciting and provide a new framework for our understanding of covert consciousness in the dying humans.
