The new science of death: 'There's something happening in the brain that makes no sense'

[littlemissmartypants]

This article is more than 8 months old

The new science of death: ‘There’s something happening in the brain that makes no sense’

This article is more than 8 months old

New research into the dying brain suggests the line between life and death may be less distinct than previously thought

By Alex Blasdel

Tue 2 Apr 2024 00.00 EDT

Patient One was 24 years old and pregnant with her third child when she was taken off life support. It was 2014. A couple of years earlier, she had been diagnosed with a disorder that caused an irregular heartbeat, and during her two previous pregnancies she had suffered seizures and faintings. Four weeks into her third pregnancy, she collapsed on the floor of her home. Her mother, who was with her, called 911. By the time an ambulance arrived, Patient One had been unconscious for more than 10 minutes. Paramedics found that her heart had stopped.

After being driven to a hospital where she couldn’t be treated, Patient One was taken to the emergency department at the University of Michigan. There, medical staff had to shock her chest three times with a defibrillator before they could restart her heart. She was placed on an external ventilator and pacemaker, and transferred to the neurointensive care unit, where doctors monitored her brain activity. She was unresponsive to external stimuli, and had a massive swelling in her brain. After she lay in a deep coma for three days, her family decided it was best to take her off life support. It was at that point – after her oxygen was turned off and nurses pulled the breathing tube from her throat – that Patient One became one of the most intriguing scientific subjects in recent history.

For several years, Jimo Borjigin, a professor of neurology at the University of Michigan, had been troubled by the question of what happens to us when we die. She had read about the near-death experiences of certain cardiac-arrest survivors who had undergone extraordinary psychic journeys before being resuscitated. Sometimes, these people reported travelling outside of their bodies towards overwhelming sources of light where they were greeted by dead relatives. Others spoke of coming to a new understanding of their lives, or encountering beings of profound goodness. Borjigin didn’t believe the content of those stories was true – she didn’t think the souls of dying people actually travelled to an afterworld – but she suspected something very real was happening in those patients’ brains. In her own laboratory, she had discovered that rats undergo a dramatic storm of many neurotransmitters, including serotonin and dopamine, after their hearts stop and their brains lose oxygen. She wondered if humans’ near-death experiences might spring from a similar phenomenon, and if it was occurring even in people who couldn’t be revived.

Dying seemed like such an important area of research – we all do it, after all – that Borjigin assumed other scientists had already developed a thorough understanding of what happens to the brain in the process of death. But when she looked at the scientific literature, she found little enlightenment. “To die is such an essential part of life,” she told me recently. “But we knew almost nothing about the dying brain.” So she decided to go back and figure out what had happened inside the brains of people who died at the University of Michigan neurointensive care unit. Among them was Patient One.

Snip...more... https://www.theguardian.com/society/2024/apr/02/new-science-of-death-brain-activity-consciousness-near-death-experience

[Callie1979]

1. The stories that amaze me are the ones where they see things they couldn't "see"

I haven't read this linked story yet, but what I'm referring to are the people who talk about things that happened OUTSIDE their hospital room that there's no way they could see.

[John1956PA]

2. Once there was put in place a controlled experiment.

The purpose of the experiment was to determine if it was possible for a "spirit" of a "dying" hospital patient to "see" an electonic display which presented randomly-generated sentences. The electronic display was placed in a position not observable from the patients' beds.

I do not know for how long the experiment was continued. I do not know if any out-of-body experiences were reported by patients while the electronic display was operating.

[PoindexterOglethorpe]

3. Several similar attempts to "prove"

survival of the soul, personality, what have you, and they are all failures. Probably because those people are too busy being amazed at what they are experiencing to go looking for such things.

Meanwhile, there are many thousands of accurate reports of, for instance, conversations that took place some distance away.

[pscot]

4. I've gone thru this

I had a heart attack in January of this year. I'm 85. My heart stopped and i quit breathing. I was in the hospital at the time following a series of heart attacks; very painful, by the way. The docs called my wife at home and asked if they should try to revive me. I had no visions; heard no voices. No angels or ancestors appeared. A tiny light came on and I was lying at the bottom of a very deep hole. Then I became aware of someone holding my hand and telling me not to die. I woke up on a ventilator. For a while afterwards I had weird,symbolic death dreams but normalcy resumed gradually. It was pretty intense and it has changed the way I view things. In a sense it was a liberating experience. I realized I'm not afraid of death.

[mitch96]

5. "dramatic storm of many neurotransmitters, including serotonin and dopamine" So near death experience is just

a chemical event in the brain?
m