I’m sure there would be a long line of willing terminal and euthanasia patients who would join a study to record their final moments, I’m surprised this hasn’t been done yet.
I agree. I read an article a few months ago about how frequent MAID (medical assistance in dying) is in Canada. I am surprised that that has not led to larger scale studies about the dying process.
In this particular case, the press release notes "Scientifically, it's very difficult to interpret the data because the brain had suffered bleeding, seizures, swelling...". That does seem to limit how much can be generalized from this one case. A larger study of MAID patients would be more useful.
Edit: Maybe the issue is that the MAID itself would alter the brain state. That actually seems pretty plausible.
I developed epilepsy a few years ago and each of the two times I had a waking tonic clonic aka “Grand Mal” it felt like they describe the brain when it’s dying.
It’s the closest thing I’ve heard people describe as dying so it can be profound.
Incidentally my neurologist said that she had patients that don’t stop their seizures because they feel like they areare mystical or part of their mental work. That’s a wild thought to me given the risks, but I can understand it, given how you feel on the other side.
I got electructed when I was 19 while trying to kick a colleague who was fused to an industrial distribution cabinet away from it. I was dead for 7-8 minutes and had these flashbacks. They were fast and felt more like drifting from one dream to another. Can't recommend though got visual cortex hyperactivity with a bad case of visual snow syndrome and tinnitus ever since.
FTA: “When is exactly the time when we die? We may have tapped the door open now to start a discussion about that exact time onset”
They must not have been paying attention during their studies. That discussion has certainly been going on ever since we managed to restart a human’s heartbeat. Philosophers likely have discussed it for centuries, if not millennia, before that.
“Two categories of legal death are death determined by irreversible cessation of heartbeat (cardiopulmonary death), and death determined by irreversible cessation of functions of the brain (brain death)”
(And, of course, “irreversible” changes as science progresses)
I have lost consciousness several times in my life. Not a pleasurable experience specially as last time I did it because of such extreme pain that I thought I was passing away.
However I have had always recollection of those seconds or minutes when I was unconscious: there was always an intense and quick succession of memories and images accompanied by sound. At some point the external sound from people trying to reanimate me took over and I was able to gain consciousness again.
I always felt that was how the brain acted before passing away, and also how some literature and cinema were right when depicting flashbacks.
I passed out in the gym doing a set of deadlifts. I remember setting the bar down and then I was on the floor next to it. Was just a few moments. No flashbacks or anything, just momentary oxygen depletion.
I once lost consciousness after a bad bike wreck that left me bleeding significantly from both knees. I lost consciousness while sitting on a bench waiting for my wife to arrive after walking my bike back to the trail head.
I remember having a very vivid and pleasant dream (riding in a car with some friends and laughing) while I was "out". I came-to when a bystander started beckoning to me ("Sir! Sir!"). Their calls bled into my dream first, then I awoke and realized I was laying face-down in the grass by the bench.
The pain was gone in the dream, but, of course, came back when I awoke. I sort of wished I could just pass out again.
Interestingly that dream has stuck with me in a way that typical sleeping dreams don't.
all of my incidents of losing consciousness were absolute voids to me. Once I apparently hit the back of a car on my bike and I just kind of woke up with no idea what had happened (I say "apparently" because I don't really know... I was riding my bike and suddenly I was laying on the side of the road, no in between. The other time my father punched me in the face, knocking the back of my head into the corner of a metal oven hood. I remember that but then the next thing was coming to on the ground with him over me, hands around my neck squeezing. Nothing whatsoever in between the start and end of events.
When I was around 15, I used to hang out with a guy who was much senior to me, and he would bully us sometimes. One day, when we were bantering, I cracked a joke that a third guy with us (who was my age) found funny and crackled. The bully grabbed my neck and choked me till I lost consciousness. I remember having memory flashbacks related to missing a train, and someone waiting at the wagon door, waving at me to hurry and jump in before it is too late. I remember feeling stressed about missing the train. The next thing I remember is slowly regaining consciousness to see the bully and the 3rd guy splashing water at my face, looking very amused.
This is my nightmare. That me dying will feel just like my regular nightmares that I have today, which are all about common day stressful situations like not finding my partner in a crowd, or constantly chasing the same person and never catching up to them.
Essentially, the brain is doing a last-ditch systems check — replaying memories, emotional anchors, and learned survival cues to find any relevant information or pattern that might aid escape or coping.
I read an article a while back, than when something really bad happens to the body, the brain looks back into memories to "see" how to solve the problem - maybe it happened before and it will know what to do (like when you cut yourself the second time, you know exactly what to do).
But because it never encountered something like it, it cannot find a solution.
And apparently this is why people when they die see their life flashing before their eyes.
I was reading the comments trying to find something similar to this. I remember reading a similar explanation. The brain in a ultimate attempt of solving that fatal situation goes deeply thought memories to find anything that could help. Evolutionarily, this would make sense.
Some hypothesize that flashbacks might be the brain searching for relevant useful memories, or hallucinating if it can’t find any. Or, perhaps emotions or physical issues cause your brain to function differently and it’s not an adaptive trait.
Time slowing down does seem useful in the event you can actually affect your circumstances.
But as the person had epilepsy, which happens as a result of "abnormal electrical brain activity", I wonder how general those results are. I'm surprised this hasn't been done on a 'healthy' patient
If your perception of time is distorted in those last moments, perhaps you live another thousand or million years in what was your life in what was only a few seconds for the people watching you die. After this thousand or however many years you experienced, you are ready for the experience to be over.
Now what happens to people who are shot directly in the head with a gun? Or have their brain otherwise abruptly massively damaged.
What if that's the hell or heaven some of us were told about?
If you live a good life, having it flashed in front of you could be a calming thing, but if you've been a person that caused lots of pain to other people, being reminded of it in the last few seconds of your life — that's a hellish experience.
However, what if you've been a generally good person but were a subject of rape or some heinous crimes — having to relive that again... that's even worse than hell..
I have been unable to find the article since—I think it must have been Scientific American. Perhaps in the 1980s.
In any event, it described training a neural network, perhaps it was number recognition. The author said that when they "destroyed" the network it began to have "flashbacks" that resembled early training sessions.
In the 90s, psychiatrist Rick Strassman proposed in his book DMT: The Spirit Molecule that large quantities of DMT (an endogenous psychoactive substance), are released into the brain upon death. I don't know that we have any clear evidence of this, but its certainly an interesting perspective on what might account for near death, and death experiences.
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[ 4.1 ms ] story [ 85.5 ms ] thread“I say to you that I am dead!”
- https://www.online-literature.com/poe/30/
In this particular case, the press release notes "Scientifically, it's very difficult to interpret the data because the brain had suffered bleeding, seizures, swelling...". That does seem to limit how much can be generalized from this one case. A larger study of MAID patients would be more useful.
Edit: Maybe the issue is that the MAID itself would alter the brain state. That actually seems pretty plausible.
It’s the closest thing I’ve heard people describe as dying so it can be profound.
Incidentally my neurologist said that she had patients that don’t stop their seizures because they feel like they areare mystical or part of their mental work. That’s a wild thought to me given the risks, but I can understand it, given how you feel on the other side.
They must not have been paying attention during their studies. That discussion has certainly been going on ever since we managed to restart a human’s heartbeat. Philosophers likely have discussed it for centuries, if not millennia, before that.
Modern medicine definitely doesn’t use “has no heartbeat == is dead”. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Legal_death#Medical_declaratio... adds “irreversible” to the definition:
“Two categories of legal death are death determined by irreversible cessation of heartbeat (cardiopulmonary death), and death determined by irreversible cessation of functions of the brain (brain death)”
(And, of course, “irreversible” changes as science progresses)
However I have had always recollection of those seconds or minutes when I was unconscious: there was always an intense and quick succession of memories and images accompanied by sound. At some point the external sound from people trying to reanimate me took over and I was able to gain consciousness again.
I always felt that was how the brain acted before passing away, and also how some literature and cinema were right when depicting flashbacks.
I don't remember a thing between seeing the car pull out infront of me and waking up on the floor looking at the ambulance.
From my perspective that was worth about 1h of dreaming normally.
I remember having a very vivid and pleasant dream (riding in a car with some friends and laughing) while I was "out". I came-to when a bystander started beckoning to me ("Sir! Sir!"). Their calls bled into my dream first, then I awoke and realized I was laying face-down in the grass by the bench.
The pain was gone in the dream, but, of course, came back when I awoke. I sort of wished I could just pass out again.
Interestingly that dream has stuck with me in a way that typical sleeping dreams don't.
https://www.abc.net.au/listen/programs/godforbid/near-death-...
An anxiety filled death is what I have coming.
If you haven't watched the movie, now would be a good time.
But because it never encountered something like it, it cannot find a solution.
And apparently this is why people when they die see their life flashing before their eyes.
Time slowing down does seem useful in the event you can actually affect your circumstances.
Now what happens to people who are shot directly in the head with a gun? Or have their brain otherwise abruptly massively damaged.
In any event, it described training a neural network, perhaps it was number recognition. The author said that when they "destroyed" the network it began to have "flashbacks" that resembled early training sessions.
That always stuck with me.
Simulating Brain Damage:
https://www.cs.toronto.edu/~fritz/absps/sciam93.pdf
No, they rewrite it from scratch, everytime. /s