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Neuroscientists have recorded the activity of a dying human brain

bsmitty5000 5y ago
> “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.” Note to self: die in a way that keeps my brain intact for a few seconds after death.
- dkural 5y ago
  One my fears is that as I am dying my brain will get stuck in a subjective time loop, in essence, the last 30 seconds will subjectively stretch out to a thousand years... but with only a handful of repeating feelings and sensations. What if due to other physical discomfort, your memories replayed are those of regret or other unpleasant sensations? (similar to a "bad trip").
  - kingkawn 5y ago
    Don’t worry, even if there is a period of bad trip it will be dwarfed by the subjectively infinite relaxation into oblivion
    - konart 5y ago
      Except you will never know because you are not the observer of this oblivion unlike that of a bad trip.
      - kingkawn 5y ago
        You are until you aren’t
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
  - datavirtue 5y ago
    I have always wondered if our last DMT moments were perceived as timeless. People imagine darkness but seem to forget that our minds reconstruct all of reality in real time. So you could conceivably live another life in your last moments.
  - Andrew_nenakhov 5y ago
    Not too likely. Did you ever experience a moment subjectivity stretched a thousand years? If no, why do you think there is a special mechanics for the event of system shutdown? If anything, any sensation or thought requires energy. Experiencing 1000x or 100000x more sensations in the same space of time takes 1000x/100000x amount of energy, and it's not like your dying organism has hidden last reservoir of energy to power your brain activity. Did I comfort you?
    - benibela 5y ago
      That reminds me of a old comment on Reddit. The poster wrote that he got assaulted by a football player, fell on the ground, and somehow hurt his head. Then he met a girl, they got married after two years and then had a child. Another two years later they had another child. He also had a great job, and bought a house, where he lived with his wife and family for like 10 years. One day he was sitting on the couch, looked at a lamp, and noticed that the lamp did not look right. The perspective was off. He stared at the lamp for three days. Then he realized that is not a real lamp. Nothing was real. Then he woke up, still laying on the ground where he had hurt his head 15 minutes ago.
    - bumby 5y ago
      I think the distinction is the subjective perception that time has stretched out a thousand years. It's not that time has literally dilated, just that our "normal" perception of time has changed. Perceived time dilation occurs under certain drugs (to include those endogenous to the human body) and the OP thought has been something that has occurred to me (and others) as well. IIRC, the movie American Beauty suggests it in the last scenes.
      - Andrew_nenakhov 5y ago
        Subjective perception still requires energy to percept. Thus, to perceive time dilation your brain needs more energy to process it, but there is no a source of such energy.
        bumby 5y ago
- giantg2 5y ago
  They're just theorizing here. Generally that would be something to say to console someone, just like "They're in a better place". It could be just as likely that if the person had strong memories of traumatic experiences, they could be remembering them.
  - awb 5y ago
    Yeah, it sounds like the researcher is looking at this data through the lens of consoling surviving family members. > “As a neurosurgeon, I deal with loss at times. It is indescribably difficult to deliver the news of death to distraught family members,” he said.
  - xwdv 5y ago
    It seems likely to me it depends on the person dying. If you always saw yourself as a victim, if you wallowed in the trauma and abuse that life gave you, then your final moments are likely spent remembering all that trauma and how shitty and unfair your life was, and convincing yourself you’re better off dead and gone far away from this world. A crude way to die.
    - wing-_-nuts 5y ago
      Whatever the truth, this is a pretty unempathetic view of trauma. People don't wallow in it, some simply don't escape it.
- hatchnyc 5y ago
  I am afraid that the last few minutes of life will be like a confusing and disoriented nightmare. That has always seemed to me to be the most likely scenario as your brain is shutting down.
  - awb 5y ago
    Have you ever been knocked out or disoriented? It's mostly confusing. Death could be like that too. A flood of signals you're unfamiliar with and a lack of signals you're used to having. It probably depends on how much warning you have and your willingness / readiness to pass as well. Kind of like if you're really tired and can't wait to fall asleep vs. scared and trying to keep yourself awake.
    - goldenkey 5y ago
      Reading your comment gives me such an unsettling feeling. You nailed it. I think death is the ultimate form of discomfort. Our bodies refuse to let us die peacefully under most circumstances. They fight with every last breath and every last heartbeat, to keep going. And all the usual signals of comfort are gone, with one just left bare before the universe. Think motion sickness + nausea + all the other terrible feelings combined, and you cannot just give in, you just have to endure until you're gone. [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hGuXaFyU5lY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hGuXaFyU5lY
  - tayo42 5y ago
    If its like psychedelics I don't think it would be. Which i think the initial parts could be similar since they decrease blood flow to the brain, seems the same as dieing? IME there is nothing to fear, fear (emotions in general) is a higher level concept and those seem to be the first thing fall apart. Thoughts about thoughts, self identity, are made up to make living and thinking easier. my guess is you slowly transition to simple machine with sense inputs and outputs until it all shuts down.
  - anotherman554 5y ago
    Interestingly there are two David Lynch movies (Lost Highway and Mulholland Drive) that can be interpreted as just that: someone's disorienting nightmare as they are dying.
- awb 5y ago
  > discovered rhythmic brain wave patterns around the time of death that are similar to those occurring during dreaming, memory recall, and meditation There are other possibilities besides memory recall. It sounds a little bit like falling asleep, where there might be some thoughts, some stillness (meditation) and some dreaming.
- wrycoder 5y ago
  > nicest moments Some people are optimists.
giantg2 5y ago
Has there really never been anyone who died while hooked up to an EEG? That seems unlikely to me. Edit: liars liars pants on fire. It has been done before. https://www.sciencealert.com/brain-activity-recorded-as-much-as-10-minutes-after-death-human-science https://www.sciencealert.com/brain-activity-recorded-as-much...
- dkural 5y ago
  Read the article.
  - giantg2 5y ago
    I did. I find this unbelievable and was asking if this is really true, or if this is just the first time someone wanted to publish it. "This unexpected event allowed the scientists to record the activity of a dying human brain for the first time ever."
    - emteycz 5y ago
      EEG is not easy to get right, any muscle movement from the neck up scrambles the signal. It's unlikely you'd be able to get a usable recording without planning - usually you'd be trying to save the dying person by any means and you'd do that without any regards to EEG signal quality.
      - giantg2 5y ago
        Here we go. Seems like the person writing this article didn't research very well since the link below shows that it has been planned/done before. https://www.sciencealert.com/brain-activity-recorded-as-much-as-10-minutes-after-death-human-science https://www.sciencealert.com/brain-activity-recorded-as-much...
      - rootusrootus 5y ago
        > usually you'd be trying to save the dying person by any means I expect that in the majority of deaths, nobody is making any effort whatsoever to save the dying person.
DonCarlitos 5y ago
This corresponds with what I've read previously about brain activity following clinical death. What appears to be the case is that the brain continues to work for a period after the heart stops and a last breath is taken. So what that might mean is that if one is with a person who has just died, a relative or friend, there is still a moment, just a moment, to say good bye and I love you. And it is comforting to know that during that moment, the brain of the deceased might just be reliving all the greatest moments of that individual's life.
- tmikaeld 5y ago
  Beautifully said, reminds me of "All these years, all these memories, there was you. You pulled me through time." from the fountain.
  - nefitty 5y ago
    I'm rewatching Midnight Mass on Netflix with my wife. They have some very powerful monologues on death. This is one that occurred to me just now, when two characters are discussing what they believe happens after death: "When I die, my body stops functioning. Five minutes later, my brain cells start dying. But in the meantime, in between, maybe my brain releases a flood of DMT – the psychedelic drug released when we dream – so I dream. I dream bigger than I have ever dreamed before because it’s all of it. Just the last dump of DMT all at once, and my neurons are firing and I’m seeing this firework display of memories and imagination. My mind’s rifling through the memories, long and short term, and the dreams mix with the memories. And it’s a curtain call. One last great dream as my mind empties the fuckin’ missile silos, and then I stop. My brain activity ceases and there is nothing left of me. No pain, no memory, no awareness that I ever was. That I ever hurt someone. That I ever killed someone. Everything is as it was before me. All of the other little things that make me up – the microbes and bacterium and the billion other little things that live on my eyelashes and in my hair and in my mouth and on my skin and in my gut and everywhere else, they just keep on living and eating. And I’m serving a purpose. I’m feeding life and I’m broken apart and all the littlest pieces of me are just recycled and I’m billions of other places. And my atoms are in plants and bugs and animals, and I am like the stars that are in the sky. There one moment and then just scattered across the goddamn cosmos.” https://adrianvstheworld.com/2021/10/05/midnight-mass-and-the-monologue-that-shattered-me/ https://adrianvstheworld.com/2021/10/05/midnight-mass-and-th... And, another moving monologue, this one's a spoiler so heads up: https://www.reddit.com/r/HauntingOfHillHouse/comments/pxw74y/midnight_mass_final_soliloquy_about_the_nature_of/ https://www.reddit.com/r/HauntingOfHillHouse/comments/pxw74y... Either way, this show hit me unexpectedly. One of my favorite "deep watches" in a long time.
Dylovell 5y ago
Misread this as 'dyeing' and was very confused.
ipnon 5y ago
Something beautiful about the brain running "Beauty, Awe, and Wonder" one last time before the final SIGTERM is sent. If there is a Big Neuroscientist in the Sky, he clearly has some affection for us.
richm31415 5y ago
We've known about this since 1983: https://youtu.be/mTYRH3xpt44 https://youtu.be/mTYRH3xpt44
schodi 5y ago
I have that inner emotion, when thinking about death. It makes me very uneasy. When We die, if there is nothing coming, how is it to not exist? I mean, what is it like? Pure black and emptyness? I then comfort myself into thinking, in the end it comes down to energy. Like being part of that endless stream of energy that became matter and probably will return to energy somewhere in infinty. Or do we maybe just restart. All this is completely mind boggling. Then again how did it all start? Causality is completely broken, when it comes to these things.
- wintorez 5y ago
  Have you ever been under general anesthesia? For me, that's the closes you can experience "not existing". Also, you have already experienced not existing; that is before you were born. How did that feel? Was it painful?
- ipnon 5y ago
  Everyone has been dead before: Do you have any trepidations about the times before you were born? It's trite to say this, yes, but it gives some comfort to know we are born with the experience of not being alive. Of course Your Metaphysics may apply.
  - wrycoder 5y ago
    Can I ask you something? How come the Russians never smile? I’ve never seen them smiling.” “They’re at work. They're Russians.” "Is it normal for them to eat without talking to one another?” “This is their job. They get 20 minutes to eat.” “Yeah, but they never smile. Are they happy?” Are the Russians happy? Is anyone happy? Can one ever truly be said to be happy? I am tempted to go full Slav on Conor, to explain to him how we are all just grains of dust suspended in the howling void, searching for meaning in the fleeting moments before we are yanked back to the oblivion from whence we emerged, naked and screaming. But for all his faults he's just a kid stuck spending his summer microwaving Yorkshire puddings for difficult people. I take pity. “Russians are formal. It would be weird of them to act relaxed on duty. They are all smiling on the inside.” -- https://idlewords.com/2018/12/gluten_free_antarctica.htm https://idlewords.com/2018/12/gluten_free_antarctica.htm
_Microft 5y ago
If you were concerned about the ethics of the situation like I was, then here is an excerpt from the paper itself that you might find reassuring: "After discussion with the patient’s family and in consideration of the “Do-Not- Resiscitate[sic!] (DNR)” status of the patient, no further treatment was administered and the patient passed away."
kowlo 5y ago
I dread that it might be like my usual (nightly) sleep paralysis, except it will be the one time I don't wake up...
- jcadam 5y ago
  Used to get sleep paralysis a lot as a kid/teenager. Definitely not fun. I haven't had an episode in a long time, fortunately.
- nefitty 5y ago
  This is a big factor in my insomnia. Not necessarily the fear that I'll die in my sleep (God willing, that's my preference in old age) but the realization that every night, I'm getting a little more and more acquainted with oblivion. Knowing that you and everyone else here is in the same boat helps a lot. Maybe it's trite, and silly, but the phrase "We're all in this together" brings me a little bit of comfort, a tiny slice of what I imagine the spiritual feel in greater quantities. As I get older I suspect more and more that humans are not adapted for atheism. Even us hard atheists tell each other stories of chemicals and stuff and cosmos and infinity. I have an ongoing conversation with my wife on whether we'll raise our future children Catholic or not. I think we might. The lure of those stories, the grandiosity of those narratives, the imagery and ritual... Those are just buttons that I don't know if an atheistic upbringing could press. I'm not saying it's not possible... Would a reverential trip to the Grand Canyon, a late night summer trip to Amboyd Crater, fulfill the need for awe that a child has as she's growing up? If I could will it I would have her completely skip the existential terror that I've contended with throughout my life, but of course, she would be her own person and her own mind, regardless of my plans.
  - amatecha 5y ago
    Yes, seriously, most nights I am kept awake by that same existential dread. since I was too young to even know how to speak, actually. it's haunted me my entire life. I am of the fundamental belief that consciousness is nothing more than the functioning of our biological brain. I've never seen even the tiniest shred of evidence to suggest otherwise (in fact I have become more and more certain as I live more years on this earth and observe more humans in varying states of functioning/life/consciousness/etc.) ...
ge96 5y ago
Unrelated but there was an old trippy (freaky) movie about this Brainstorm
- jll29 5y ago
  Thanks, I was just about to post it (I remembered it as "Project Brainstorm", but as you state it's actually just called "Brainstorm"). One of the most remarkable movies I've ever seen. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brainstorm_(1983_film) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brainstorm_(1983_film)
DanHulton 5y ago
There's an awful lot of uncritical supposition in this article. Sure, the brain MAY be recalling all the best moments of your life before you die, but there's zero evidence that that's what those recordings mean, aside from whimsy and hopefulness. It could just as easily be near-random memory access, similar to when we dream, and that, to me, sounds a lot more likely. I know I'm the big grumpy curmudgeon here, but I think the question itself is full of sufficient wonder and beauty that we don't need to invent beautiful lies around the meager data we've been able to collect so far.
- SketchySeaBeast 5y ago
  Yeah, I didn't see any evidence in that article that it was positive - for all we know it it's the brain serving up a collection of every time you told the waiter "you too" right after they said "enjoy your meal".
  - civilized 5y ago
    Die faster, stupid brain
  - sn41 5y ago
    yeah... I never get over how stupid I feel when I say that. I keep doing it, especially when I am already slightly flustered.
    - johnisgood 5y ago
      "Thank you" is the default to me, so I typically say that. It has been working out well so far. The only funny thing that I keep doing is this: we have two phrases we use when we say "see you" on the phone, and in person, and I sometimes use the phrase in person that is intended to be used for ending a phone conversation! It is pretty hilarious. I wonder if they notice or what they think about it.
- stubish 5y ago
  To me the 'and be programmed to orchestrate the whole ordeal' is the key bit of uncritical supposition. As if our brains have evolved/were created to ease the transition to death. I don't know if the actual study concluded this, or if it was added as editorial.
thewakalix 5y ago
Nobody make any strange images based on this data…
progman32 5y ago
> “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,” Zemmar speculated. I wonder what the adaptive benefits of near-death flashbacks are. Perhaps as a way to give last-ditch motivation. We have plenty of accounts of what it's like to have a heart stop. Thank defibrillators for that. Of course, the whole ordeal may not be accurately committed to memory.
- mLuby 5y ago
  It doesn't have to have adaptive benefits. The critical path is molded by natural selection but the rest grows wild, mutating as it pleases until it either helps or hinders gene replication. For example, if humans exploded like a bomb when we died the way some insects do to protect their colony, that might be selected for or against by evolution. Or if somehow eating the deceased's heart or brain actually transferred their strength or memories to the consumer, as some cultures believed. But no, death by old age just doesn't interest evolution.
  - progman32 5y ago
    True! That was my initial thought too. I'm trying to find a possible adaptive benefit to flashbacks in near death (not actual death, but how would the body know the difference, really), but there may be none. Hard to say. I've certainly heard stories of people "cleaning up" and improving their lives in some way post-flashback, but who's to say the flashback was part of the cause.
anamax 5y ago
There's an assumption that the brain knows that its support structure, aka the body, has stopped functioning in a permanent sense. I can see how brains could evolve to do status checks and respond to survivable events. But, I don't see how it could evolve to have a different response to non-survivable events. What I'm getting at is, do folks who survive report that they had a nice experience? If not, how did brains get a different mechanism for/response to not-survivable experiences?
- john_moscow 5y ago
  Or it merely enters a power-saving mode once the oxygen levels drop, survivable or not.
  - anamax 5y ago
    The assertion was that the brain behaved differently in non-survivable situations than in bad but survivable ones.
mdb31 5y ago
Via news.ycombinator.com: Actual title of the post is "A replay of life: What happens in our brain when we die?" -- please respect the submission rules... Via reddit.com: How vile of the liberulz to mis-characterize Trump's new social network like that -- please don't do that here... [Edit: and yes, downvoted within 2 minutes... How. Surprising]
andygroundwater 5y ago
Macabre stuff, but indisputably scientific all the same.
csee 5y ago
A good avenue of future study to correlate these with case reports of Near Death Experiences.
hnthrowaway0315 5y ago
Since the birth of our son, I have been thinking about death a lot. He takes comfort when he is in my wife's hug and sometimes refuses to sleep if she is not around. I'm sure he remembers nothing about this when he grows up (< 2 yr now). But then I wonder, maybe many years later, when he passes away, surely this replay of memory might give him the last comfort? Anyway, as a (not 100%) materialist, I feel uneasy when I think about death. The older I am the more uneasy I feel. Of course there is no way to cheat death, but I'm looking forward to training myself to accept the inevitable before it is too late. Or maybe there IS life after death, or certain kind of existence. I'm also looking forward to that too.
MaxMoney 5y ago
UltraViolence 5y ago
I'm very skeptical of this, mostly because there's no logical reason for this to exist. Everything in our behavior and bodies has a purpose, for the most part pure survival or reproduction. There's no use for replaying memories of one's "best moments" in life. More likely, these are random accesses of vivid memories (the ones that have been strongly imprinted on the brain) and these could be both happy or sad ones.
- ASalazarMX 5y ago
  My mother's family has a history of seeing deceased relatives when they're about to die. It has become such tradition that some have even reported to see the dead waving and calling them to the light, but turns out they weren't at risk of death. Autosuggestion is a powerful phenomenon. They're convinced they'll see the welcome party, and they will if their death is not sudden.
unfocussed_mike 5y ago
“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.” Or replaying their greatest embarrassments. That's what my brain will be doing -- why change the habit of a lifetime?
polishdude20 5y ago
This makes me think of an interesting theory I've been thinking of: Say your brain has a bunch of neurons in place that form every experience of your life and form every thought system you have. Surely a specific structure of your neurons also causes you to feel the experience of being a "self" and everything else as being the "other". Now, as we die, it's easy to imagine that our neurons are still living on that last bit of oxygen and energy. Systems start to slowly shut down. One of those systems is the one described above. The one which separates the "experiencer" from the experience. At some point, you transition to a point where you can't tell yourself apart from anything else. You lose the self forever. Must be a wild ride.

> “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.” Note to self: die in a way that keeps my brain intact for a few seconds after death.

dkural 5y ago
One my fears is that as I am dying my brain will get stuck in a subjective time loop, in essence, the last 30 seconds will subjectively stretch out to a thousand years... but with only a handful of repeating feelings and sensations. What if due to other physical discomfort, your memories replayed are those of regret or other unpleasant sensations? (similar to a "bad trip").
- kingkawn 5y ago
  Don’t worry, even if there is a period of bad trip it will be dwarfed by the subjectively infinite relaxation into oblivion
  - konart 5y ago
    Except you will never know because you are not the observer of this oblivion unlike that of a bad trip.
    - kingkawn 5y ago
      You are until you aren’t
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- datavirtue 5y ago
  I have always wondered if our last DMT moments were perceived as timeless. People imagine darkness but seem to forget that our minds reconstruct all of reality in real time. So you could conceivably live another life in your last moments.
- Andrew_nenakhov 5y ago
  Not too likely. Did you ever experience a moment subjectivity stretched a thousand years? If no, why do you think there is a special mechanics for the event of system shutdown? If anything, any sensation or thought requires energy. Experiencing 1000x or 100000x more sensations in the same space of time takes 1000x/100000x amount of energy, and it's not like your dying organism has hidden last reservoir of energy to power your brain activity. Did I comfort you?
  - benibela 5y ago
    That reminds me of a old comment on Reddit. The poster wrote that he got assaulted by a football player, fell on the ground, and somehow hurt his head. Then he met a girl, they got married after two years and then had a child. Another two years later they had another child. He also had a great job, and bought a house, where he lived with his wife and family for like 10 years. One day he was sitting on the couch, looked at a lamp, and noticed that the lamp did not look right. The perspective was off. He stared at the lamp for three days. Then he realized that is not a real lamp. Nothing was real. Then he woke up, still laying on the ground where he had hurt his head 15 minutes ago.
  - bumby 5y ago
    I think the distinction is the subjective perception that time has stretched out a thousand years. It's not that time has literally dilated, just that our "normal" perception of time has changed. Perceived time dilation occurs under certain drugs (to include those endogenous to the human body) and the OP thought has been something that has occurred to me (and others) as well. IIRC, the movie American Beauty suggests it in the last scenes.
    - Andrew_nenakhov 5y ago
      Subjective perception still requires energy to percept. Thus, to perceive time dilation your brain needs more energy to process it, but there is no a source of such energy.
      - bumby 5y ago
giantg2 5y ago
They're just theorizing here. Generally that would be something to say to console someone, just like "They're in a better place". It could be just as likely that if the person had strong memories of traumatic experiences, they could be remembering them.
- awb 5y ago
  Yeah, it sounds like the researcher is looking at this data through the lens of consoling surviving family members. > “As a neurosurgeon, I deal with loss at times. It is indescribably difficult to deliver the news of death to distraught family members,” he said.
- xwdv 5y ago
  It seems likely to me it depends on the person dying. If you always saw yourself as a victim, if you wallowed in the trauma and abuse that life gave you, then your final moments are likely spent remembering all that trauma and how shitty and unfair your life was, and convincing yourself you’re better off dead and gone far away from this world. A crude way to die.
  - wing-_-nuts 5y ago
    Whatever the truth, this is a pretty unempathetic view of trauma. People don't wallow in it, some simply don't escape it.
hatchnyc 5y ago
I am afraid that the last few minutes of life will be like a confusing and disoriented nightmare. That has always seemed to me to be the most likely scenario as your brain is shutting down.
- awb 5y ago
  Have you ever been knocked out or disoriented? It's mostly confusing. Death could be like that too. A flood of signals you're unfamiliar with and a lack of signals you're used to having. It probably depends on how much warning you have and your willingness / readiness to pass as well. Kind of like if you're really tired and can't wait to fall asleep vs. scared and trying to keep yourself awake.
  - goldenkey 5y ago
    Reading your comment gives me such an unsettling feeling. You nailed it. I think death is the ultimate form of discomfort. Our bodies refuse to let us die peacefully under most circumstances. They fight with every last breath and every last heartbeat, to keep going. And all the usual signals of comfort are gone, with one just left bare before the universe. Think motion sickness + nausea + all the other terrible feelings combined, and you cannot just give in, you just have to endure until you're gone. [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hGuXaFyU5lY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hGuXaFyU5lY
- tayo42 5y ago
  If its like psychedelics I don't think it would be. Which i think the initial parts could be similar since they decrease blood flow to the brain, seems the same as dieing? IME there is nothing to fear, fear (emotions in general) is a higher level concept and those seem to be the first thing fall apart. Thoughts about thoughts, self identity, are made up to make living and thinking easier. my guess is you slowly transition to simple machine with sense inputs and outputs until it all shuts down.
- anotherman554 5y ago
  Interestingly there are two David Lynch movies (Lost Highway and Mulholland Drive) that can be interpreted as just that: someone's disorienting nightmare as they are dying.
awb 5y ago
> discovered rhythmic brain wave patterns around the time of death that are similar to those occurring during dreaming, memory recall, and meditation There are other possibilities besides memory recall. It sounds a little bit like falling asleep, where there might be some thoughts, some stillness (meditation) and some dreaming.
wrycoder 5y ago
> nicest moments Some people are optimists.

giantg2 5y ago

Has there really never been anyone who died while hooked up to an EEG? That seems unlikely to me. Edit: liars liars pants on fire. It has been done before. https://www.sciencealert.com/brain-activity-recorded-as-much-as-10-minutes-after-death-human-science https://www.sciencealert.com/brain-activity-recorded-as-much...

dkural 5y ago
Read the article.
- giantg2 5y ago
  I did. I find this unbelievable and was asking if this is really true, or if this is just the first time someone wanted to publish it. "This unexpected event allowed the scientists to record the activity of a dying human brain for the first time ever."
  - emteycz 5y ago
    EEG is not easy to get right, any muscle movement from the neck up scrambles the signal. It's unlikely you'd be able to get a usable recording without planning - usually you'd be trying to save the dying person by any means and you'd do that without any regards to EEG signal quality.
    - giantg2 5y ago
      Here we go. Seems like the person writing this article didn't research very well since the link below shows that it has been planned/done before. https://www.sciencealert.com/brain-activity-recorded-as-much-as-10-minutes-after-death-human-science https://www.sciencealert.com/brain-activity-recorded-as-much...
    - rootusrootus 5y ago
      > usually you'd be trying to save the dying person by any means I expect that in the majority of deaths, nobody is making any effort whatsoever to save the dying person.

DonCarlitos 5y ago

This corresponds with what I've read previously about brain activity following clinical death. What appears to be the case is that the brain continues to work for a period after the heart stops and a last breath is taken. So what that might mean is that if one is with a person who has just died, a relative or friend, there is still a moment, just a moment, to say good bye and I love you. And it is comforting to know that during that moment, the brain of the deceased might just be reliving all the greatest moments of that individual's life.

tmikaeld 5y ago
Beautifully said, reminds me of "All these years, all these memories, there was you. You pulled me through time." from the fountain.
- nefitty 5y ago
  I'm rewatching Midnight Mass on Netflix with my wife. They have some very powerful monologues on death. This is one that occurred to me just now, when two characters are discussing what they believe happens after death: "When I die, my body stops functioning. Five minutes later, my brain cells start dying. But in the meantime, in between, maybe my brain releases a flood of DMT – the psychedelic drug released when we dream – so I dream. I dream bigger than I have ever dreamed before because it’s all of it. Just the last dump of DMT all at once, and my neurons are firing and I’m seeing this firework display of memories and imagination. My mind’s rifling through the memories, long and short term, and the dreams mix with the memories. And it’s a curtain call. One last great dream as my mind empties the fuckin’ missile silos, and then I stop. My brain activity ceases and there is nothing left of me. No pain, no memory, no awareness that I ever was. That I ever hurt someone. That I ever killed someone. Everything is as it was before me. All of the other little things that make me up – the microbes and bacterium and the billion other little things that live on my eyelashes and in my hair and in my mouth and on my skin and in my gut and everywhere else, they just keep on living and eating. And I’m serving a purpose. I’m feeding life and I’m broken apart and all the littlest pieces of me are just recycled and I’m billions of other places. And my atoms are in plants and bugs and animals, and I am like the stars that are in the sky. There one moment and then just scattered across the goddamn cosmos.” https://adrianvstheworld.com/2021/10/05/midnight-mass-and-the-monologue-that-shattered-me/ https://adrianvstheworld.com/2021/10/05/midnight-mass-and-th... And, another moving monologue, this one's a spoiler so heads up: https://www.reddit.com/r/HauntingOfHillHouse/comments/pxw74y/midnight_mass_final_soliloquy_about_the_nature_of/ https://www.reddit.com/r/HauntingOfHillHouse/comments/pxw74y... Either way, this show hit me unexpectedly. One of my favorite "deep watches" in a long time.

Dylovell 5y ago

Misread this as 'dyeing' and was very confused.

ipnon 5y ago

Something beautiful about the brain running "Beauty, Awe, and Wonder" one last time before the final SIGTERM is sent. If there is a Big Neuroscientist in the Sky, he clearly has some affection for us.

richm31415 5y ago

We've known about this since 1983: https://youtu.be/mTYRH3xpt44 https://youtu.be/mTYRH3xpt44

schodi 5y ago

I have that inner emotion, when thinking about death. It makes me very uneasy. When We die, if there is nothing coming, how is it to not exist? I mean, what is it like? Pure black and emptyness? I then comfort myself into thinking, in the end it comes down to energy. Like being part of that endless stream of energy that became matter and probably will return to energy somewhere in infinty. Or do we maybe just restart. All this is completely mind boggling. Then again how did it all start? Causality is completely broken, when it comes to these things.

wintorez 5y ago
Have you ever been under general anesthesia? For me, that's the closes you can experience "not existing". Also, you have already experienced not existing; that is before you were born. How did that feel? Was it painful?
ipnon 5y ago
Everyone has been dead before: Do you have any trepidations about the times before you were born? It's trite to say this, yes, but it gives some comfort to know we are born with the experience of not being alive. Of course Your Metaphysics may apply.
- wrycoder 5y ago
  Can I ask you something? How come the Russians never smile? I’ve never seen them smiling.” “They’re at work. They're Russians.” "Is it normal for them to eat without talking to one another?” “This is their job. They get 20 minutes to eat.” “Yeah, but they never smile. Are they happy?” Are the Russians happy? Is anyone happy? Can one ever truly be said to be happy? I am tempted to go full Slav on Conor, to explain to him how we are all just grains of dust suspended in the howling void, searching for meaning in the fleeting moments before we are yanked back to the oblivion from whence we emerged, naked and screaming. But for all his faults he's just a kid stuck spending his summer microwaving Yorkshire puddings for difficult people. I take pity. “Russians are formal. It would be weird of them to act relaxed on duty. They are all smiling on the inside.” -- https://idlewords.com/2018/12/gluten_free_antarctica.htm https://idlewords.com/2018/12/gluten_free_antarctica.htm

_Microft 5y ago

If you were concerned about the ethics of the situation like I was, then here is an excerpt from the paper itself that you might find reassuring: "After discussion with the patient’s family and in consideration of the “Do-Not- Resiscitate[sic!] (DNR)” status of the patient, no further treatment was administered and the patient passed away."

kowlo 5y ago

I dread that it might be like my usual (nightly) sleep paralysis, except it will be the one time I don't wake up...

jcadam 5y ago
Used to get sleep paralysis a lot as a kid/teenager. Definitely not fun. I haven't had an episode in a long time, fortunately.
nefitty 5y ago
This is a big factor in my insomnia. Not necessarily the fear that I'll die in my sleep (God willing, that's my preference in old age) but the realization that every night, I'm getting a little more and more acquainted with oblivion. Knowing that you and everyone else here is in the same boat helps a lot. Maybe it's trite, and silly, but the phrase "We're all in this together" brings me a little bit of comfort, a tiny slice of what I imagine the spiritual feel in greater quantities. As I get older I suspect more and more that humans are not adapted for atheism. Even us hard atheists tell each other stories of chemicals and stuff and cosmos and infinity. I have an ongoing conversation with my wife on whether we'll raise our future children Catholic or not. I think we might. The lure of those stories, the grandiosity of those narratives, the imagery and ritual... Those are just buttons that I don't know if an atheistic upbringing could press. I'm not saying it's not possible... Would a reverential trip to the Grand Canyon, a late night summer trip to Amboyd Crater, fulfill the need for awe that a child has as she's growing up? If I could will it I would have her completely skip the existential terror that I've contended with throughout my life, but of course, she would be her own person and her own mind, regardless of my plans.
- amatecha 5y ago
  Yes, seriously, most nights I am kept awake by that same existential dread. since I was too young to even know how to speak, actually. it's haunted me my entire life. I am of the fundamental belief that consciousness is nothing more than the functioning of our biological brain. I've never seen even the tiniest shred of evidence to suggest otherwise (in fact I have become more and more certain as I live more years on this earth and observe more humans in varying states of functioning/life/consciousness/etc.) ...

ge96 5y ago

Unrelated but there was an old trippy (freaky) movie about this Brainstorm

jll29 5y ago
Thanks, I was just about to post it (I remembered it as "Project Brainstorm", but as you state it's actually just called "Brainstorm"). One of the most remarkable movies I've ever seen. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brainstorm_(1983_film) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brainstorm_(1983_film)

DanHulton 5y ago

There's an awful lot of uncritical supposition in this article. Sure, the brain MAY be recalling all the best moments of your life before you die, but there's zero evidence that that's what those recordings mean, aside from whimsy and hopefulness. It could just as easily be near-random memory access, similar to when we dream, and that, to me, sounds a lot more likely. I know I'm the big grumpy curmudgeon here, but I think the question itself is full of sufficient wonder and beauty that we don't need to invent beautiful lies around the meager data we've been able to collect so far.

SketchySeaBeast 5y ago
Yeah, I didn't see any evidence in that article that it was positive - for all we know it it's the brain serving up a collection of every time you told the waiter "you too" right after they said "enjoy your meal".
- civilized 5y ago
  Die faster, stupid brain
- sn41 5y ago
  yeah... I never get over how stupid I feel when I say that. I keep doing it, especially when I am already slightly flustered.
  - johnisgood 5y ago
    "Thank you" is the default to me, so I typically say that. It has been working out well so far. The only funny thing that I keep doing is this: we have two phrases we use when we say "see you" on the phone, and in person, and I sometimes use the phrase in person that is intended to be used for ending a phone conversation! It is pretty hilarious. I wonder if they notice or what they think about it.
stubish 5y ago
To me the 'and be programmed to orchestrate the whole ordeal' is the key bit of uncritical supposition. As if our brains have evolved/were created to ease the transition to death. I don't know if the actual study concluded this, or if it was added as editorial.

thewakalix 5y ago

Nobody make any strange images based on this data…

progman32 5y ago

> “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,” Zemmar speculated. I wonder what the adaptive benefits of near-death flashbacks are. Perhaps as a way to give last-ditch motivation. We have plenty of accounts of what it's like to have a heart stop. Thank defibrillators for that. Of course, the whole ordeal may not be accurately committed to memory.

mLuby 5y ago
It doesn't have to have adaptive benefits. The critical path is molded by natural selection but the rest grows wild, mutating as it pleases until it either helps or hinders gene replication. For example, if humans exploded like a bomb when we died the way some insects do to protect their colony, that might be selected for or against by evolution. Or if somehow eating the deceased's heart or brain actually transferred their strength or memories to the consumer, as some cultures believed. But no, death by old age just doesn't interest evolution.
- progman32 5y ago
  True! That was my initial thought too. I'm trying to find a possible adaptive benefit to flashbacks in near death (not actual death, but how would the body know the difference, really), but there may be none. Hard to say. I've certainly heard stories of people "cleaning up" and improving their lives in some way post-flashback, but who's to say the flashback was part of the cause.

anamax 5y ago

There's an assumption that the brain knows that its support structure, aka the body, has stopped functioning in a permanent sense. I can see how brains could evolve to do status checks and respond to survivable events. But, I don't see how it could evolve to have a different response to non-survivable events. What I'm getting at is, do folks who survive report that they had a nice experience? If not, how did brains get a different mechanism for/response to not-survivable experiences?

john_moscow 5y ago
Or it merely enters a power-saving mode once the oxygen levels drop, survivable or not.
- anamax 5y ago
  The assertion was that the brain behaved differently in non-survivable situations than in bad but survivable ones.

mdb31 5y ago

Via news.ycombinator.com: Actual title of the post is "A replay of life: What happens in our brain when we die?" -- please respect the submission rules... Via reddit.com: How vile of the liberulz to mis-characterize Trump's new social network like that -- please don't do that here... [Edit: and yes, downvoted within 2 minutes... How. Surprising]

andygroundwater 5y ago

Macabre stuff, but indisputably scientific all the same.

csee 5y ago

A good avenue of future study to correlate these with case reports of Near Death Experiences.

hnthrowaway0315 5y ago

Since the birth of our son, I have been thinking about death a lot. He takes comfort when he is in my wife's hug and sometimes refuses to sleep if she is not around. I'm sure he remembers nothing about this when he grows up (< 2 yr now). But then I wonder, maybe many years later, when he passes away, surely this replay of memory might give him the last comfort? Anyway, as a (not 100%) materialist, I feel uneasy when I think about death. The older I am the more uneasy I feel. Of course there is no way to cheat death, but I'm looking forward to training myself to accept the inevitable before it is too late. Or maybe there IS life after death, or certain kind of existence. I'm also looking forward to that too.

MaxMoney 5y ago

UltraViolence 5y ago

I'm very skeptical of this, mostly because there's no logical reason for this to exist. Everything in our behavior and bodies has a purpose, for the most part pure survival or reproduction. There's no use for replaying memories of one's "best moments" in life. More likely, these are random accesses of vivid memories (the ones that have been strongly imprinted on the brain) and these could be both happy or sad ones.

ASalazarMX 5y ago
My mother's family has a history of seeing deceased relatives when they're about to die. It has become such tradition that some have even reported to see the dead waving and calling them to the light, but turns out they weren't at risk of death. Autosuggestion is a powerful phenomenon. They're convinced they'll see the welcome party, and they will if their death is not sudden.

unfocussed_mike 5y ago

“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.” Or replaying their greatest embarrassments. That's what my brain will be doing -- why change the habit of a lifetime?

polishdude20 5y ago

This makes me think of an interesting theory I've been thinking of: Say your brain has a bunch of neurons in place that form every experience of your life and form every thought system you have. Surely a specific structure of your neurons also causes you to feel the experience of being a "self" and everything else as being the "other". Now, as we die, it's easy to imagine that our neurons are still living on that last bit of oxygen and energy. Systems start to slowly shut down. One of those systems is the one described above. The one which separates the "experiencer" from the experience. At some point, you transition to a point where you can't tell yourself apart from anything else. You lose the self forever. Must be a wild ride.