What Happens After Death

In our quest for knowledge, there are some questions and mysteries that are more difficult to decipher than others. The question of death is arguably the most difficult of all. What really happens when the end comes? Can we ever be completely sure until we ourselves reach that point? These are problems that human beings have always wrestled with, but have we finally been given a glimpse of the truth?

In February 2022, news broke of an accidental recording of a dying brain, which reportedly has given scientists a unique snapshot into a person’s final moments. Although details of the recording were released in 2022, the event in question actually took place six years earlier, in 2016. An 87-year-old patient in Canada was being treated for epilepsy, which involved doctors taking brain scans to measure his neural activity. However, when the patient unfortunately suffered a heart attack and died during one such scan, it meant that researchers had captured a unique series of moments within his brain - before, during and after death.

With around 900 seconds of brain activity measured in total, analysts were subsequently able to specifically pinpoint thirty seconds before (and thirty seconds after) the patient passed away. And what they found appeared to support a long-held theory about dying… that your life flashes before your eyes. According to the study, published in the journal “Frontiers in Aging Neuroscience”, the dying brain showed an increase in gamma activity, releasing brain waves that are ordinarily linked to memory recall. The patterns that were recorded also relate to complex functions such as dreaming and meditation. The suggestion is, then, that when death arrives the brain perhaps does embark on the phenomenon sometimes known as life recall... and, in the case of this particular patient, it may last for up to thirty seconds after the heart stops beating.

Up until now, most of what’s known about this comes from the testament of those who have had a near-death experience. The sensation of having revisited key moments from their lives is one of the most often reported by anyone describing an NDE. Scientists have also seen similar gamma surges in the brains of dying animals such as rats during testing, but this latest study offers a unique look at what happens to the human brain.

Although this study appears to be ground-breaking, there are still plenty of questions and mysteries left to be solved. The patient had been diagnosed with epilepsy, which may have affected how his particular brain reacted to death. Similarly, the medications that he had previously taken might’ve had an effect, too. And, as no “normal” brain activity had been measured beforehand to serve as a comparison, it can’t be clearly proven that any of the changes in the dying brain were that dramatically different to the patient’s standard brain activity.

But, nevertheless, this study could yet serve as one of the most significant moments in our quest to understand the dying brain, and the human brain in general. For many, the twenty-first century is shaping up to be an incredibly important period for neuroscience. We’ve already made important breakthroughs regarding how we understand the senses, and how we view the importance of sleep. And, thanks to an ever-increasing mass of data, researchers can better than ever before map the brain and identify neurological processes.

The Human Connectome Project (or HCP) is perhaps the most ambitious research initiative relating to the brain, overall. A US state-sponsored effort to map the human brain in its entirety, it was started in 2009, originally with a five-year goal for completion. So massive has the task proven to be, however, that it still hasn’t been finished, thirteen years later in 2022. The scope of the HCP has grown and grown in that time, though, so that it’s now a multi-faceted, international venture.

For now, the study of the dying brain is an exceptionally rare event. And, while we might expect more examples to emerge as technology improves and evolves, for now, it has set something of a new precedent. Until now, the notion of a dying person’s life flashing before their eyes has perhaps been treated somewhat sceptically. No matter how many near-death experiences are reported, the apparent similarities between them are often put down to things like the stress of the event, misremembering, or confirmation bias.

It’s said that patients may recall certain aspects of an NDE only because that’s what they had previously expected would happen during one. But now there appears to be genuine scientific findings to support the claims. The idea of “life recall” may no longer be so easily dismissed, as we know that in at least this one case the areas of the brain involved with memory recollection were particularly stimulated right at the end of life.

Unfortunately, what this study cannot do is stop death in its tracks. The search for immortality goes on across all sectors of science and technology. But one consideration might be whether this latest development will lead to us managing death a little differently in the future. If we’re now getting a grip on the brain activity of death itself, then might we soon be able to offer more comfort and support around it? Could we find ways to make the process less frightening or anxiety-inducing for those who are facing it? These are all questions that will need to be explored in the future, but for now, the study of the dying brain offers a glimpse into one of life’s greatest mysteries - and one that may now be a little less mysterious than it was before.