67 ms·
First recording of a dying human brain shows waves similar to memory flashbacks (2022)
- vermilingua 1y agoI’m sure there would be a long line of willing terminal and euthanasia patients who would join a study to record their final moments, I’m surprised this hasn’t been done yet.
- system2 1y agoMust be a wild experience to be hooked up to a bunch of test machines while dying on schedule.
- Noumenon72 1y agoEthicists forbid studying anything interesting, leaving us to scrape up data from natural experiments like this patient having a heart attack while already hooked up to an EEG.
- hurrckplgbd 1y agoIf we were to abolish ethics in research, would you volunteer to be experimented on without bounds?
- dmacedo 1y agoWhat a weird way of phrasing that. The whole point of ethics in multiple disciplines is to try and study the principles of humanity in the society we've formed. The areas of philosophy, medicine, justice, and religion are filled with centuries of discussions trying to argue and explain a lot of these matters. But the philosopher of the Internet of today, instead of curiosity of reasoning and arguing for what should change in deontology, and why; sums it up as "ethicists forbid...". I'd really like to understand your views better on what should change and why... Especially when there's plenty of ignoring of ethics in today's world!
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- Noumenon72 1y agoThe centuries of ethics discussions have nothing to do with the current institutions that gatekeep science and health with worries and trivia, any more than philosophers of nature are responsible for enviromentalists not letting us build housing. I'm entirely referring to anti-growth bureaucrats. https://slatestarcodex.com/2017/08/31/highlights-from-the-comments-on-my-irb-nightmare/ https://slatestarcodex.com/2017/08/31/highlights-from-the-co... Ethicists seem worse for the world than actually unethical people because they bind the majority of good people from progressing, which is what gets us out ahead of our baser natures.
- beowulfey 1y agoWithout ethics, other motivations inevitably end up undermining any good intentions an experimenter may have. Ethics are the "laws" of science that constrain us for the sake of all. Your opinions here reflect a Libertarian bent, I bet.
- spookie 1y agoI believe that many of the criticisms are either naive or intentionally ignore the importance of ethical oversight in research. The existence of these processes ensures that research is conducted with rigor and thought, which is crucial for maintaining high standards. Some examples suggest they aim at those high standards, and yet fail to see the value on these. These applications allow you to dissect, discuss and reason about every presumption you had coming in, how you handle people's data with care, understand the risks and be prepared for anything. They help both you and your participants. Help you not be an idiot, help you to grow and question your own procedures, and ultimately help you write the damn paper as you have clearly given the matter enough thought at that point. You need to prove yourself, and that is a good thing.
- Sam6late 1y agoI drowned once in a swimming pool, the clear water tricked me that it was not that deep, 3 meters, then I was 7 and in my memory flashback, I was scared that I ran away from school, it warned me that I would be punished soon for it, it was my final thought until I regained consciousness after getting rescued by Badr the lifeguard there, and the nightmare of fear of punishment returned. It was a very hot summer day in 1968.That flashback was annoying the way it summarized everything in seconds.
- matwood 1y agoI went out to a loop choke once in BJJ. I wasn’t out long, but I wondered after if that’s what death is like - a flash of thought and that’s it.
- lynx97 1y agoI am not so sure about this. What would motivate someone to willingly transform their last moments into a medical experiment, with all the risks of being treated in not-so-nice ways? Almost nobody wants to die in a hospital in the first place. And as part of a medical "experiment", no thanks. Science can fuck off as long as they don't have control over their (small, but existing) emotionally detached workers. https://youtu.be/ET71mabgEuM https://youtu.be/ET71mabgEuM
- sokoloff 1y agoGiven I’m going to die anyway, I’d readily do it. How else will we increase our understanding of the brain’s experience of dying? And it seems that even beyond the mere understanding, we might be able to prepare for and manage short-term care of imminent organ donors as just one concrete case.
- BriggyDwiggs42 1y agoI don’t think most people have the perspective that you do.
- jbstack 1y agoIt doesn't matter that you aren't sure, and it doesn't even matter if most people agreed with you. Around 60 to 70 million people die every year globally, so if even a tiny fraction of these were willing to take part there would be sufficient numbers for a statistically significant study. In any case, the fact that a significant number of people opt for organ or body donation suggests they are willing to allow their deaths to be useful to others in some way.
- lynx97 1y agoOrgan donations pretty much happen after the fact, so that isn't really worth a comparison. There is a reason why Monty Python did their "can we have your liver then" sketch...
- jbstack 1y agoIt's still a worthwhile comparison because it demonstrates that some people have a desire to turn their death into something meaningful or useful to others. After, all question was "what would motivate someone to willingly transform their last moments into a medical experiment?", and my examples are about motivation. For some that motivation might be strong enough to be willing to undergo some discomfort (if, indeed there needs to be any discomfort in the first place, which isn't clear). For others, it might not be.
- bongodongobob 1y agoLmao. "After you're dead, let us know how it went."
- hydrogen7800 1y agoThis reminds me about the movie "Flatliners"[0] in my need-to-watch queue. Maybe this weekend. [0]https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0099582/?ref_=fn_t_2 https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0099582/?ref_=fn_t_2
- jodrellblank 1y agoPut in your reading list The Facts in the Case of M. Valdemar by Edgar Allen Poe “I say to you that I am dead!” - https://www.online-literature.com/poe/30/ https://www.online-literature.com/poe/30/
- ttcbj 1y agoI agree. I read an article a few months ago about how frequent MAID (medical assistance in dying) is in Canada. I am surprised that that has not led to larger scale studies about the dying process. In this particular case, the press release notes "Scientifically, it's very difficult to interpret the data because the brain had suffered bleeding, seizures, swelling...". That does seem to limit how much can be generalized from this one case. A larger study of MAID patients would be more useful. Edit: Maybe the issue is that the MAID itself would alter the brain state. That actually seems pretty plausible.
- AndrewKemendo 1y agoI developed epilepsy a few years ago and each of the two times I had a waking tonic clonic aka “Grand Mal” it felt like they describe the brain when it’s dying. It’s the closest thing I’ve heard people describe as dying so it can be profound. Incidentally my neurologist said that she had patients that don’t stop their seizures because they feel like they areare mystical or part of their mental work. That’s a wild thought to me given the risks, but I can understand it, given how you feel on the other side.
- baddash 1y agowhat was it like for you
- AndrewKemendo 1y agoFrom a personal experience perspective It’s a trip and like nothing else you’ve experienced. The only thing I can metaphorically compare it to is what it looked like when Neo got pulled out of the matrix in the movie.
- mahrain 1y agoWithout spoiling too much, this is a major theme in Dan Brown's latest novel 'the secret of secrets'.
- sans_souse 1y agoHmm is it worth the read? edit: coming from someone who overall was mildly fond of Angels and Demons and would consider that as the bar for worthwhile reading
- 1f60c 1y agoI added it to my reading list!
- ggeorgovassilis 1y ago> they areare mystical or part of their mental work. In ancient Greece, epilepsy was called the "holy disease" and it was believed that gods speak through the patient during a seizure.
- OhioMan2943 1y ago[flagged]
- BoredPositron 1y agoI got electructed when I was 19 while trying to kick a colleague who was fused to an industrial distribution cabinet away from it. I was dead for 7-8 minutes and had these flashbacks. They were fast and felt more like drifting from one dream to another. Can't recommend though got visual cortex hyperactivity with a bad case of visual snow syndrome and tinnitus ever since.
- djmips 1y agoI presume your colleague was dead for more than 7-8 minutes... That was gallant of you.
- Someone 1y agoFTA: “When is exactly the time when we die? We may have tapped the door open now to start a discussion about that exact time onset” They must not have been paying attention during their studies. That discussion has certainly been going on ever since we managed to restart a human’s heartbeat. Philosophers likely have discussed it for centuries, if not millennia, before that. Modern medicine definitely doesn’t use “has no heartbeat == is dead”. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Legal_death#Medical_declaration https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Legal_death#Medical_declaratio... adds “irreversible” to the definition: “Two categories of legal death are death determined by irreversible cessation of heartbeat (cardiopulmonary death), and death determined by irreversible cessation of functions of the brain (brain death)” (And, of course, “irreversible” changes as science progresses)
- IshKebab 1y agoAlso the question is incorrect. There isn't an exact time when someone dies.
- jimmaswell 1y agoRelevant: https://youtu.be/ibpdNqrtar0 https://youtu.be/ibpdNqrtar0
- ankitg12 1y agoThanks for sharing the link. It was as scientific as philosophical.
- netdevphoenix 1y agoGiven that we don't really have a precise definition of "alive", it should not be surprising that we are unable to tell the precise moment a person dies.
- lelag 1y agoMiracle Max gave us a clear definition if I recall, you die when you are "all dead", as long as you are mostly dead, you are slightly alive... I'll let myself out now.
- tirant 1y agoI have lost consciousness several times in my life. Not a pleasurable experience specially as last time I did it because of such extreme pain that I thought I was passing away. However I have had always recollection of those seconds or minutes when I was unconscious: there was always an intense and quick succession of memories and images accompanied by sound. At some point the external sound from people trying to reanimate me took over and I was able to gain consciousness again. I always felt that was how the brain acted before passing away, and also how some literature and cinema were right when depicting flashbacks.
- energy123 1y ago"Near death experience" or "out-of-body experience" are two search terms that surface more accounts like this.
- baxtr 1y agoSo is it similar to dreaming? Also, what do you mean by "sound"? Like music or actual sound from your memories?
- torben-friis 1y agoI’ve had similar experiences. In my case it wasn’t like dreaming exactly, more like that in between state where you’re falling into a nap but still awake. Sound was kinda like being underwater, in fact recovering consciousness very much felt like surfacing into reality for lack of a better term. It was kinda cozy, definitely not an experience to be scared of.
- tirant 1y agoCoziness was something I did not experience as my conscious losses were always triggered by highly stressful situations (pain, fear). For me it was extremely overwhelming, as if my brain was on overdrive.
- tirant 1y agoPart of it has to do with the memories, which gradually gets overtaken by the voices of my wife, doctor or whomever was trying to wake me up. As an example, I think I was around 16 years old and I was very much into sport cycling and Tour de France. When I lost consciousness a slide show of Tour de France competition accompanied by the TV commentators rush into my thoughts. All of it at very high speed and extremely overwhelming. I think of it as an analogy of a memory dump of a process that is no longer running (consciousness), and everything gets just read and dump at high speed and without any sense nor capacity to make sense of it, only leaving a small impression in my short memory area which afterwards I was able to remember for longer time.
- _2zip 1y agoWhen I was around 15, I used to hang out with a guy who was much senior to me, and he would bully us sometimes. One day, when we were bantering, I cracked a joke that a third guy with us (who was my age) found funny and crackled. The bully grabbed my neck and choked me till I lost consciousness. I remember having memory flashbacks related to missing a train, and someone waiting at the wagon door, waving at me to hurry and jump in before it is too late. I remember feeling stressed about missing the train. The next thing I remember is slowly regaining consciousness to see the bully and the 3rd guy splashing water at my face, looking very amused.
- Reflecticon 1y agoI'm sorry that happened to you. That's so horrible. Wanna make me beat up bullies, man. Got damn bullies.
- kakacik 1y agoTheir life is shit already, that's why they act as they act, passing aggression on to others in vain effort to get rid of some of that 'evil' in them. I understand this knee-jerk reaction very well, but it just feeds the neverending spiral of aggression. We humans act like storage of both good and bad, it then comes back up in various situations. What I want to say - you just beating up a bully will mean some other kid(s) will get beaten up (or beaten up even more) further down the line. I am not saying love can fix it all, it can fix many things but sometimes once people become broken they just stay broken and there is no real way back.
- exe34 1y ago> you just beating up a bully will mean some other kid(s) will get beaten up (or beaten up even more) further down the line oh you need to convince them that more beatings would be forthcoming if they step out of line again.
- btilly 1y agoThis idea is naively appealing, but is not backed up by research. Closely related, corporal punishment results in kids who are more likely to try to get their way through violence. Though they'll also take care not to be caught doing so. This is one of the big reasons why psychologists argue against using corporal punishment.
- nlitsme 1y agoIt is the brain uploading it's memories to the afterlife.
- karlkloss 1y agoThis is giving me "Brainstorm" vibes. If you haven't watched the movie, now would be a good time.
- andrehacker 1y agoJust rewatched it on Laserdisc last month (era-appropriate and all) :) The computer effects are amazing (especially considering it was made in 1983), the concept is very interesting, the acting is a bit odd, and... Natalie Wood sadly died during production (her sister stepped in to help complete the movie).
- artur_makly 1y agoHer death was even more mysterious https://people.com/natalie-wood-death-legacy-what-to-know-8643850 https://people.com/natalie-wood-death-legacy-what-to-know-86...
- silveira 1y agoJust watched a podcast on this. https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-mysterious-death-of-natalie-wood-with-daisy-eagan/id1512847066?i=1000733279299 https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-mysterious-death-o...
- artur_makly 1y agoThanks for sharing this gem.
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- ExoticPearTree 1y agoI read an article a while back, than when something really bad happens to the body, the brain looks back into memories to "see" how to solve the problem - maybe it happened before and it will know what to do (like when you cut yourself the second time, you know exactly what to do). But because it never encountered something like it, it cannot find a solution. And apparently this is why people when they die see their life flashing before their eyes.
- Gooblebrai 1y agoCould you share the link to that article?
- ExoticPearTree 1y agoSorry, but it is something I read a while back. If I find it again and don't forget, I will share.
- hn_acc1 1y agoMaybe you just need the proper threat? :-)
- xboxnolifes 1y agoWouldn't your life flash before your eyes on every new bad event then? Like your first cut?
- ExoticPearTree 1y agoI guess the example I gave was a bit dumb.
- meindnoch 1y agoA good example of what we call a "just so" theory.
- Agraillo 1y agoFinding the article is a good case for AI chats, particularly ones with the direct links from the web in the answer. I tried perplexity and google ai mode, both failed
- goopypoop 1y agoimagine your life is flashing before your eyes and you're remembering reading this comment
- NetOpWibby 1y agoThanks a lot, goopypoop, I hate it.
- mr_toad 1y agoWhat if reading this comment is the life flashing before your eyes?
- JohnnyLarue 1y agoA dataset of one (1), eh? And epileptic to boot.
- iberator 1y agoIt always starts with 1 :)
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- Pixelbrick 1y agoCan't think of a way that brains doing this is adaptive in an evolutionary sense.
- awb 1y agoSome hypothesize that flashbacks might be the brain searching for relevant useful memories, or hallucinating if it can’t find any. Or, perhaps emotions or physical issues cause your brain to function differently and it’s not an adaptive trait. Time slowing down does seem useful in the event you can actually affect your circumstances.
- qgin 1y agoHard to select for adaptive traits for something that only happens just before you die.
- helsinkiandrew 1y agoBut as the person had epilepsy, which happens as a result of "abnormal electrical brain activity", I wonder how general those results are. I'm surprised this hasn't been done on a 'healthy' patient
- Quitschquat 1y agoI usually discard studies with sample sizes of 1
- 64718283661 1y agoIf your perception of time is distorted in those last moments, perhaps you live another thousand or million years in what was your life in what was only a few seconds for the people watching you die. After this thousand or however many years you experienced, you are ready for the experience to be over. Now what happens to people who are shot directly in the head with a gun? Or have their brain otherwise abruptly massively damaged.
- anthk 1y agoInteresting. I am no expert but this might be related to photonic luminiscent emission while on stress as it happens with almost every living being.
- ASalazarMX 1y agoYou mean light? How is this related to regular emission of light?
- anthk 1y agohttps://www.sciencenewstoday.org/the-secret-glow-of-life-how-living-beings-emit-invisible-light https://www.sciencenewstoday.org/the-secret-glow-of-life-how... this
- DamnInteresting 1y agoPublished in 2022. I despise this trend of news sites hiding the publication date. It's news, the date is important.
- 6d6b73 1y agoWhat if that's the hell or heaven some of us were told about? If you live a good life, having it flashed in front of you could be a calming thing, but if you've been a person that caused lots of pain to other people, being reminded of it in the last few seconds of your life — that's a hellish experience. However, what if you've been a generally good person but were a subject of rape or some heinous crimes — having to relive that again... that's even worse than hell..
- abe94 1y agoThe new dan brown book uses this as a central concept in the story
- bena 1y agoIt's kind of the central concept of the 1990 movie Flatliners as well.
- JKCalhoun 1y agoI have been unable to find the article since—I think it must have been Scientific American. Perhaps in the 1980s. In any event, it described training a neural network, perhaps it was number recognition. The author said that when they "destroyed" the network it began to have "flashbacks" that resembled early training sessions. That always stuck with me.
- zknowledge 1y agoWas it this Geoffrey Hinton paper? It was in Scientific American in 1993. Simulating Brain Damage: https://www.cs.toronto.edu/~fritz/absps/sciam93.pdf https://www.cs.toronto.edu/~fritz/absps/sciam93.pdf
- JKCalhoun 1y agoI don't think so. When I just asked an LLM though, the Hinton paper also came up. So it does look like a strong candidate. If I am able to find it, I'll comment here.
- aantix 1y agoAre there any software engineers here that believe in the afterlife?
- QuadmasterXLII 1y agoYou can find some on the right wing catholic rationalist community on substack, I say without a hint of irony. The topic of the day is whether cloud droplets preferentially scatter forward, as pertains to the miracle at fatima
- AnimalMuppet 1y agoSure. It's not just atheists here. There's a fair number of Christians (Catholic, Protestant, some Orthodox). There's some Muslims and Jews. Hindus, if you count reincarnation as an afterlife. Probably some that I have missed.
- 3pt14159 1y agoI’ve had a wild life. I was a Protestant for over thirty years and I became a Catholic around two years ago. I’ve had more than a few demons attack me and two confirmed good spirits, probably angels. The test for spirits is to get them to agree that Jesus Christ came in the flesh. It’s sometimes difficult to understand them, but anyway I really believe the Bible and supernatural stuff. If anyone on here wants to reach out my email is in my profile.
- aj_hackman 1y agoWhat pushed you to Catholicism? I see the Catholic church as an amalgamation of human innovations that attempt to turn focus away from Christ and towards the inevitably sinful authority of the church. As much as I can't stand the watered-down one-size-fits-all non-denominational sermons of my youth, or the few fire and brimstone sessions I've been witness to, at the very least their prayers go directly to God.
- 3pt14159 1y agoI upvoted you even though we presently disagree because you bring an honest perspective to the discussion. The main reason I was drawn to the Catholic Church was that I believed in transubstantiation, or at least the real presence. I was drawn to the history of the Church and through prayer and conversations as well as a supernatural event as well as a dream I prayed for, I finally came to accept that praying with saints was not worshiping them. All prayers with saints go directly to God, but sometimes having someone intercede for you, as Mary did at the wedding feast at Cana, helps you with God. If you have an open mind to switching churches, I recommend the following: 1. Pray to God to guide you to the right Church. I believe that he may be guiding some people to the Catholic Church, others to the Orthodox Church, and some to Protestant churches. Or He may have a real preference. I'm not sure, but I tried pretty hard to figure out where to go and I ended up in the Catholic Church. 2. Take the core issues that are show stoppers for you and research (and pray) them from the other perspective. Like I did with prayer with saints. 3. If you are feeling to be led to a certain church, get the full catechism of that church and read through it. I was shocked at how little I disagreed with the Catholic Church's catechism. It gave me confidence that I was truly being led to Catholicism. 4. Talk to Christians that you look up to. This is what I did with prayer with saints. There was a Christian uncle of mine (not blood, married in) that I was just completely sure that he was a real Christian and he was a Catholic. He explained it to me in ways that made sense and he answered any of my questions. I ended up adopting his middle name Jacques. Which leads to the funny sounding name Zach Jacques Aysan. I've prayed for you. God Bless!
- squidsoup 1y agoIn the 90s, psychiatrist Rick Strassman proposed in his book DMT: The Spirit Molecule that large quantities of DMT (an endogenous psychoactive substance), are released into the brain upon death. I don't know that we have any clear evidence of this, but its certainly an interesting perspective on what might account for near death, and death experiences.
- observationist 1y agoTraumatic events, like NDEs, tend to come with lots of adrenaline, stress hormones, and a cocktail of neurotransmitters that could have the secondary consequence of slowing overall monoamine oxidation, similar to MAOIs, resulting in longer effective exposure to any chemicals like DMT that would normally be transient. You at most have around 250 μg in your system, you need at least 40 times that to get to the lower threshold of a psychedelic effect. If other factors are in play, and it doesn't get immediately metabolized because of everything else consuming the MAO supply, then it's plausible that there could be an effect. If that were the case, then you're looking at a potential last-ditch survival mechanism, reinforcing the experience and "fuzzing" the memory for maximum impact.
- squidsoup 1y agoThere is evidence for a surge in DMT production in some rats upon death: > In our previous studies, we have observed a marked elevation of some, but not all, critical neurotransmitters in rat brain during asphyxic cardiac arrest21, which we posit may contribute to the elevated conscious information processing observed in dying rats21,49. These data also suggest that global ischemia (by cardiac arrest, as in the current study), similar to global hypoxia (by asphyxia, as in21), leads to a tightly regulated release of a select set of neurotransmitters21. To test whether DMT concentrations are regulated by physiological alterations, we monitored DMT levels in rat brain dialysates following experimentally-induced cardiac arrest, and identified a significant rise in DMT levels in animals with (Fig. 4A) and without the pineal (Fig. 4B). > The cardiac arrest-induced increase of endogenous DMT release may be related to near-death experiences (NDEs), as a recent study reports NDE-like mental states in human subjects given exogenous DMT50. Not all rats in our current study exhibited a surge of DMT following cardiac arrest (Fig. 4), an interesting observation in light of the fact that NDEs are reported by less than 20% of patients who survive cardiac arrests. https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC6088236/ https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC6088236/ Presumably only 20% of the rats were religious.
- JumpCrisscross 1y agoWhat's the evidence for the brain being "programmed to orchestrate the whole ordeal"?
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- taneq 1y agoDo non-dying human brains show waves similar to memory flashbacks? What about dead human brains? Just thinking about that study on fMRI and dead trout.
- duncancarroll 1y agoIt looks like the article cited is from 2022: https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/aging-neuroscience/articles/10.3389/fnagi.2022.813531/full https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/aging-neuroscience/arti...
- mmooss 1y ago> “Scientifically, it's very difficult to interpret the data because the brain had suffered bleeding, seizures, swelling – and then it's just one case. So we can't make very big assumptions and claims based on this case. ..."
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- fnordpiglet 1y ago“””What happens inside your brain during these experiences and after death are questions that have puzzled neuroscientists for centuries.””” Centuries?
- dmbche 1y agoArguably there werent neuroscientists 1000 years ago
- ryao 1y ago> On the spiritual side, I think it is somewhat calming. I face this at times when you have patients that pass away and you talk their families; you have to be the bearer of bad news. Right now, we don't know anything about what happens to their loved one’s brain when they're dying. I think if we know that there is something happening in their brain, that they are remembering nice moments, we can tell these families and it builds a feeling of warmth that in that moment when they are falling, this can help a little bit to catch them. I do not see any connection between this and spirituality. I also see no reason to think that they must be remembering nice moments. It is possible to be remembering painful moments. This seems especially likely in cases of PTSD.
- jibal 1y agoThe word "speculated" is doing heavy lifting here.
- OfflineSergio 1y agoI the k in cases like this we (researchers) see what their looking for to see.
- Nevermark 1y agoNot exactly the topic - but I went through a strange consciousness bottleneck during a near death experience (in risk terms, not in the medical death sense), in which I was extremely lucky. A car I was driving to a parking area for someone had incredibly loose steering, and I lost some traction on a tight turn on a country highway that had been covered with gravel. As I straighten out of the turn I was heading straight at an oncoming car. I calmly jiggle the steering wheel to avoid the head-on collision, with as little adjustment as possible to avoid losing control, but the car fishtailed anyway, hit a rock cliff wall on the right, bounced 45 degrees and off a short cliff on the left side of the road. As I went off the cliff I just thought calmly "So that was it.". At the same moment, not having had the sense to be wearing my seatbelt I threw myself flat across the unified front seat. The car went over the cliff, hit it, flipping end over end and then rolled before coming to a stop, upright, facing the opposite direction I had been driving, completely destroyed. Technically, I never lost conscious, but from the moment the car launched I lost all awareness except for sound. My mind absorbed endless crashing, metal rending, glass shattering, 10 or 20 seconds of silence, and then I suddenly had vision again, and a sense that I was still in my body. Calm, with normal physical sensation, and no pain. I was incredibly banged up, but couldn't feel any of it. I moved my limbs and body carefully, guessed I was ok to travel, crawled out a missing window and sat on the bottom slope of the drop until help arrived - the oncoming driver happened to be a medic. I was so calm and lucid people expected me to stand up and find my way up a navigable part of the slope with them, and so did I. But while I had been sitting and talking without effort, I couldn't get a single muscle to actually move. When my legs wouldn't move, I tried raising an arm and it just didn't respond. I had to tell people I couldn't move, because there wasn't any evidence I was trying. Bruises of the steering wheel around my body, and other lacerations formed a visible record of my body being thrown around in complete mayhem. But all I retained is a clear disembodied memory of endless crashing, eventual silence. Without any fear or emotion, beyond a feeling of acceptance that morphed into interest in what had happened. Nothing broken - no stress or post-stress, despite a couple weeks of miserable pain and soft tissue recovery. I could be wrong, but I don't think my heart rate or breathing adjusted at all. Apparently, I survived in part by being completely relaxed the whole time.
- Roark66 1y ago
- sush1612 1y agoEssentially, the brain is doing a last-ditch systems check — replaying memories, emotional anchors, and learned survival cues to find any relevant information or pattern that might aid escape or coping.
- ZeWaren 1y agoI wonder if it also happens to people with aphantasia, who are unable to visualize things in their head.
- teamonkey 1y agoThe article doesn’t specifically mention activity in the visual cortex, just waves associated with memory retrieval.
- fourteenrhinos 1y agoRelevant here is the relatively unknown(by modern standards) Hugo Award winner The Terminal Experiment by Robert Sawyer. Man invents a high resolution brain scanner and is able to identify the exact moment of death. Book largely explores the implications of that and the existence of this tech, all wrapped up with a murder mystery. Not the best cyberpunk I’ve ever read but a solid read if you find this premise interesting.
- thatgerhard 1y agoI once read this thing somewhere, might have been reddit, but the person explained it like this and even if not completely true it makes a lot of sense. When the brain is dying, it searches through past experiences—something it’s never faced before—trying to find a way to survive. That process is what we perceive as life flashbacks.
- kderbyma 1y agoNot surprising to anyone who has had a near death experience….
- qubex 1y agoAn interesting question that arises naturally but is entirely unaddressed in the article is “why (and how) would evolution select for this kind of final behaviour?” Given that by definition the process of death occurs well after the phase of out-reproducing others, how would evolution even have an opportunity to select for this “closing of the curtains” moment. It would have to be the byproduct of something that enhances reproductive fitness during the fertile period or extends that period of fertility. Maybe those who have less traumatic near-death-experiences go on to have children (or more children) than those who faced a nihilistic experience? That really seems to be utterly marginal and likely to be swamped by genetic drift. Also remember that arguably it’s the genes that are using us to procreate, not the other way around (selfish gene hypothesis). I really don’t understand how this could arise, and insofar as I don’t understand how it could arise, I’m fairly skeptical that it’s actually occurring (slightly skewed take on scientific empiricism I know, but I’m a Bayesian at heart).