Strange activity found in the brains of people who are dying
Scientists looked at the EEG and ECG signals of four dying patients to get a better understanding of what happens in the brain when a person dies.
Ankush Pandey
The mysteries of the brain have been unraveled through the work of neuroscientists from all over the world. A group of scientists has now distinguished a puzzling flood in movement in the cerebrums of two individuals who were nearly passing on, and as they progressed into death.
For a long time, scientists have been trying to figure out the science of the brain and what happens in a person's dying moments before it completely shuts down. Past examinations in creatures have shown a flood of gamma waves as they go into cardiovascular and respiratory capture.
The human brain has recently been found to have a similar activity. Gamma waves are present during conscious perception and are linked to memory processing in the brain.
Researchers from the University of Michigan in the United States analyzed the electroencephalogram (EEG) and electrocardiogram (ECG) signals of four dying patients prior to and following the cessation of ventilatory support in order to gain a deeper comprehension of what takes place in the brain during the dying process. The four individuals were in a coma.
ECG is used to check the condition of the heart, whereas EEG is used to monitor the functioning of the brain and track the electrical activity of the brain by detecting signals that are produced by the neurons.
According to the findings that were published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, researchers discovered that in two of the patients, hypoxia, or low oxygen levels in the brain, was accompanied by an increase in gamma activities.
"The state of the brain during cardiac arrest is poorly understood. "It is unclear whether patients can possess covert consciousness during the dying process, although the loss of overt consciousness is invariably associated with cardiac arrest," scientists stated in the paper.
Since 2014, cases of patients who passed away in the neuro-intensive care unit were examined by researchers at Michigan Medicine, the academic medical center of the University of Michigan. They saw a sharp leap in gamma waves in a single piece of the cerebrum that laid out a long-range association across the two halves of the globe of the mind.
According to the abstract of the paper, "Perception of bright light or familiar faces reported by survivors of clinical death suggests a preserved capacity in the dying brain to process internally generated vision."
According to the team, it has not yet been determined whether the dying human brain has activated the posterior cortical regions, which are responsible for processing visual information and are located at the back of the head.
The gamma wave was initially found in the so-called hot zone of the brain, which has previously been linked to dreaming and visual hallucinations in seizure patients. It is known that conscious processing relies on the brain's hot zone.
However, the elevated gamma waves prevented the patients from describing what they saw.
"These data demonstrate that the dying brain can still be active, despite the fact that the mechanisms and physiological significance of these findings have not been fully investigated. "They also suggest that the role of the brain during cardiac arrest needs to be reevaluated," the team said in the paper.
