Doctors have witnessed someone's life flashing before their eyes – in a sense.
In an unexpected twist of fate, an 87-year-old Canadian man with epilepsy who was undergoing a electroencephalogram (EEG) suddenly had a heart attack and died. Never before had anyone been undergoing this kind of brain scan at the moment of their death.
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Because the scan was ongoing, doctors were able to witness the brain's electrical activity both before and after the patient's death, and what they saw was a lot of activity in the brain regions associated with memory, dreaming, and meditation. Furthermore, because high-frequency gamma waves were present, the doctors believe the man's brain was replaying memories from his life.
“Through generating oscillations involved in memory retrieval, the brain may be playing a last recall of important life events just before we die, similar to the ones reported in near-death experiences,” neuroscientist Ajmal Zemmar said in a news release. "Surprisingly, after the heart stops pumping blood into the brain, these oscillations keep going. So that was extremely surprising for us to see."
The patient had a no-resuscitation order in place, so doctors were not allowed to try to bring him back to life after his heart attack.
The bizarre brain:
- The brain can't feel pain; some brain surgery is performed without anesthesia, with the patient fully conscious.
- Your brain never shuts off; while you sleep, your brain is doing things like preserving information and making sure you don't move about.
- The brain is made up of two separate hemispheres that operate almost independently of each other.