3 ms·

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.
      • progman32 5y ago
        Why do you expect this?
        • pasquinelli 5y ago
          consider all the people who die in hospice.
        • rootusrootus 5y ago
          Most people die from natural causes, and doctors do not perform heroic measures to try and give them a few more minutes before they succumb.
      • emteycz 5y ago
        We're talking about people lying on hospital bed tied to EEG. There are usually going to be people saving that person.
        • rootusrootus 5y ago
          Unless they are lying in bed preparing to die. In which case we could opt to hook them up to an EEG and record it, for the science. It would not be the least bit difficult to get any number of willing volunteers, it would not require some kind of accident. OP was wondering how it could be possible that nobody ever thought to do exactly that.
          • hotsauceror 5y ago
            This has been done, and in fact I believe the article was posted here on HN a couple of years ago.
  • hotsauceror 5y ago
    Unless they want to be terribly pedantic about the fact that these were EEGs, there have been several studies of brain electrical activity during human death. Jens. Drier has done several. Search for “spreading terminal depolarization” or “anoxic depolarization”. They’ve reported a “point of no return” where enough neurons are unable to maintain their transmembrane electrical gradients that the brain can no longer function. Here’s a link to one of the Drier et al. papers. https://www.researchgate.net/publication/322479687_Terminal_spreading_depolarization_and_electric_silence_in_death_of_human_cortex https://www.researchgate.net/publication/322479687_Terminal_...