Neuroscientists have recorded the activity of a dying human brain and discovered rhythmic brain wave patterns around the time of death that are similar to those occurring during dreaming, memory recall, and meditation. Now, a study published to Frontiers brings new insight into a possible organizational role of the brain during death and suggests an explanation for vivid life recall in near-death experiences.
This is a dumb journal article to declare that this is the “first time ever” that someone has died while on EEG. It’s not even the first time someone has published a report of someone dying on EEG. The last time I looked I found a journal article from something like 1990. People die on EEG all the time. These people are often in the ICU facing numerous serious health issues like sepsis on top of multi-organ failure. To believe that this is the “first time” is to believe that there has never been someone in the hundreds if not thousands of ICUs and EMUs around the world that have died before now. I hate that this article gets any sort of recognition from the scientific journalism community.
The article does not say that this is the first time ever that someone has died while on EEG, but that this is the first time that someone has died while on EEG with a high-density electrode array that allows for a detailed analysis of the brain waves. The article also acknowledges that there have been previous reports of EEG recordings of dying patients, but they were either limited by low spatial resolution, short duration, or lack of behavioral data. The article claims that this is the first study to provide a comprehensive and multimodal description of the brain activity and behavior of a dying person.
Might be an interesting way to die. If you are in hospice agree to be hooked up and have them scan your final moments. Maybe something useful in terms of medical science comes out of it. Also I love sci-fi so I firmly believe if this happens future people can and will bring me back to solve a problem only I can solve and I will have a street smart tough as nails super cop sidekick.
https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamaneurology/article-abstract/586814
You can edit lemmy comments.
I just tried to edit your comment. Now I feel like a dumbass.
Well I got a chuckle out of it at least.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5839318/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2095624/
… could it be the first time ever this has been analyzed intentionally?
Doubtful. People have been dying for a long time. Non-dying people have always wanted to know what dying is like, so I’m sure there have been countless attempts at gathering measurable data of those in their last moments of life.