Brain Knows When You Just Died
Studying the wakeful death experience.
In a face up-melting flake of science, a massive study has confirmed that we retain consciousness in death for an unspecified amount of time. How witting volition your brain be? Enough that you lot'll probable hear medical staff "call it" should you expire in infirmary. Actually. Go ahead and add together os-spooky to face-melting then accept a skillful shudder. I'll wait. The report, simply called AWARE (brusque for Sensation during REsuscitation), is the largest of its kind. It looked at 2060 survivors of cardiac arrest, closely examining those who were pronounced dead past all medical measures but to exist brought dorsum to life. Dr. Sam Parnia, director of research in cardiopulmonary resuscitation and assistant professor at the Stony Brook University Schoolhouse of Medicine, pb his team to interview 140 fatal flatliners (later they got their hearts pumping over again). The data collected was, scientifically speaking, creepy. Even after all signs of actual life as we recognize them had stopped, the brain stayed "aware". Of the subjects interviewed, some recounted exactly what was going on around them after being pronounced expressionless: medical professionals on staff at the time of death gave full corroboration of post mortem goings on in the room. Science hasn't unpacked precisely how this happens only reanimated patients "described awareness with explicit recall of 'seeing' and 'hearing' bodily events related to their resuscitation." Unsurprisingly, heart patients who have suffered serious cardiac events or fifty-fifty flatlined but to be resuscitated often come back with PTSD. Largely because they think things like defibrillator zaps and staff scurrying nigh to bring them back from the brink, or beyond information technology. Parnia's ongoing research centers around both critical cardiac care and NDEs (near death experiences). He's also the director of the Homo Consciousness Project at the Academy of Southampton and wrote a book called What Happens When We Dice. I'll save you a chapter: i of the things that happens is we know we're expressionless. Some solace (though precious little) tin be taken in the low numbers who reported the wakeful expiry experience: only 2% exhibit total awareness. But an impressive 46% shared post-resuscitation memories that touched on seven recurring themes: "fear; animals/plants; bright calorie-free; violence/persecution; deja-vu; family; and recalling events post-CA." But at least nine% described textbook NDEs. The about common clarification? Floating above one's body towards a bright light while remaining softly tethered by a fragile, spectral cord. Fun fact: Parnia has been known to hide images effectually ER trauma rooms that tin can only be seen from the ceiling. For Parnia, cardiac patients serve his ongoing research because "technically, that's how you get the fourth dimension of death – it's all based on the moment when the heart stops". He says, "once that happens, blood no longer circulates to the brain, which means encephalon function halts nearly instantaneously. You lose all your brain stalk reflexes – your gag reflex, your pupil reflex, all that is gone." Except, it seems, for awareness. Parnia is clear that his inquiry "supports other contempo studies that have indicated consciousness may be nowadays despite clinically undetectable consciousness." By default, the scientific search for evidence of a soul likewise gets wrapped up in Parnia's data. Although, if post-mortem brain activity provides irrefutable proof of our spiritual essence, rodents may have souls besides. A study of neurological bustling in dead rats could propose they all become to heaven. I'll take it. Still, Parnia says something documentable is going on, in dead humans at least, that nosotros only don't grasp yet. "What tends to happen is that people who've had these very profound experiences may come back positively transformed — they become more altruistic, more engaged with helping others. They notice a new meaning to life having had an encounter with death." Ultimately, Parnia and his team are "trying to empathize the verbal features that people experience when they go through death, considering we understand that this is going to reflect the universal experience we're all going to have when nosotros die." The field may lead to concrete information that would allow united states all to meet our quietus in peace. Go science. Every bit Parnia puts it, "consciousness is non annihilated" in death. Okay. And then, it's marginally less creepy that yous have the presence of listen to acknowledge your ain demise if you cling to the squeamish floaty stuff. Unless, of course, you're 1 of the 46% who feel "violence" and "fear" when your ticker ticks its last.
Source: https://www.cbc.ca/life/wellness/ugh-when-you-die-your-brain-knows-you-re-dead-1.4365039
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