A group of doctors in a Canadian intensive care unit have recently been baffled after they allegedly found concrete evidence that could prove that people's brains can continue to work after they are clinically dead. These doctors have revealed that when life support was turned off for four terminal patients, one of them showed persistent brain activity even after they were declared clinically dead which they have then described as extraordinary and unexplained. That said, researchers from the University of Western Ontario in Canada have assessed the electric impulses in the brain in relation to the beating of a person's heart even after life-sustaining therapy was removed.
Unexplained Brain Activity Continues After Death
According to reports revealed by Science Alert, for more than 10 minutes, even after the doctors have already confirmed death through a range of observations, including the absence of a pulse and unreactive pupils, the patient appeared to experience the same kind of brain waves which they say a person can only get during a deep sleep. The team explains that this delta wave bursts are an entirely different phenomenon as compared to the sudden death wave that has been observed in rats following decapitation. In addition, the team has highly emphasized that in one patient, single delta wave bursts persisted following the cessation of both the cardiac rhythm and arterial blood pressure (ABP) while noting that death could be a unique experience for each individual, like in the case of the four patients.
Meanwhile, as per Daily Mail, the experiment allegedly raises difficult questions about when someone is dead and therefore when it is medically and ethically correct to use them for organ donation. However, considering that the brain activity has only been seen in one patient, scientists say that it's far too early to be talking about what this could mean for the post-death experience. Previously in 2013, it was found that a similar phenomenon has also been investigated on experiments on rats whose hearts had stopped, which has consequently revealed that rats had a burst of brain activity one minute after decapitation.
Is There Life After Death?
Furthermore, since the observations remain inconclusive and without biological explanation, scientists believe that the big takeaway from studies like these isn't that we understand more about the post-death experience now than we did before. Rather, phenomenon like these basically suggests that we've got so much to figure out when it comes to the process of death, and how humans and other animals actually experience it, from our bodies to our brains.
