Serious Scientific Q.: What Was Going On In Patient One's Brain -- As She "Died"?

The Guardian (UK) has a very provocative life-science tale this morning. Or, perhaps -- more precisely. . . a death-science piece.

What will be required for a better understanding of the physiological phenomenon is. . . more people (with terminal conditions) signing informed consents to allow invasive -- and comprehensive -- monitoring of their brain-wave functions, as they approach and pass into. . . what we think of as clinical death. Do go read it all -- and come to your own conclusions:

. . .In the moments after Patient One was taken off oxygen, there was a surge of activity in her dying brain. Areas that had been nearly silent while she was on life support suddenly thrummed with high-frequency electrical signals called gamma waves. In particular, the parts of the brain that scientists consider a “hot zone” for consciousness became dramatically alive. In one section, the signals remained detectable for more than six minutes. In another, they were 11 to 12 times higher than they had been before Patient One’s ventilator was removed.

“As she died, Patient One’s brain was functioning in a kind of hyperdrive,” Borjigin told me. For about two minutes after her oxygen was cut off, there was an intense synchronisation of her brain waves, a state associated with many cognitive functions, including heightened attention and memory. The synchronisation dampened for about 18 seconds, then intensified again for more than four minutes. It faded for a minute, then came back for a third time.

In those same periods of dying, different parts of Patient One’s brain were suddenly in close communication with each other. The most intense connections started immediately after her oxygen stopped, and lasted for nearly four minutes. There was another burst of connectivity more than five minutes and 20 seconds after she was taken off life support. In particular, areas of her brain associated with processing conscious experience – areas that are active when we move through the waking world, and when we have vivid dreams – were communicating with those involved in memory formation. So were parts of the brain associated with empathy. Even as she slipped irrevocably deeper into death, something that looked astonishingly like life was taking place over several minutes in Patient One’s brain. . . .

Fascinating. She did not survive, so we will never have her report of what she was experiencing. But provocatively. . . intriguing just the same. Patient One was a few weeks pregnant at the time of death, so could it be that it was an accounting of two lives rather than one? We will never know -- but fascinating, indeed.

Equally obviously, if hundreds (or thousands) of patients were to sign such consents. . . it will be very likely that at least some few, will pass into "clinical death", and then return for a bit, from it -- hopefully able to report on what it was they'd experienced, when/if their brains went into an objectively observable "hyper-drive" mode.

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