An amazing piece of new scientific research has indicated that our life may very well flash before our eyes at the moment of death. The phenomenon has often been spoken about by people who have had near-death experiences and parodied relentlessly in tv shows and cartoons, but new evidence shows there might just be some truth in those experiences.
The paper in Frontiers in Aging Neuroscience looked at an experiment involving an 87-year-old patient who was attached to an electroencephalography (EEG) device for his epilepsy. However, during his treatment, he died of a heart attack. What this meant was that his last 15 minutes of life were recorded on the EEG machine.
What the researchers found was that the brain underwent wild gamma oscillations that are normally associated with memory retrieval, thus indicating that an individual might be seeing their life flash before their eyes.
"We measured 900 seconds of brain activity around the time of death and set a specific focus to investigate what happened in the 30 seconds before and after the heart stopped beating. Just before and after the heart stopped working, we saw changes in a specific band of neural oscillations, so-called gamma oscillations, but also in others such as delta, theta, alpha and beta oscillations."
Dr. Ajmal Zemmar, of the University of Louisville, said of the findings:
"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."
"These findings challenge our understanding of when exactly life ends… Something we may learn from this research is: although our loved ones have their eyes closed and are ready to leave us to rest, their brains may be replaying some of the nicest moments they experienced in their lives."
Similar findings have been found in dying rats in the past, meaning this may be a phenomenon across a range of organic species.
Source: www.thinkinghumanity.com
