The light at the end of the tunnel: experiences in the moment before death

The death it is the universal and ineffable event of life, which has always caused fascination in human beings, and the near-death experience (NDE) is one of its most interesting mysteries.

The near death experience It is the state of altered consciousness that occurs in that brief moment of unconsciousness that occurs in people who, due to situations of intense physical or emotional danger, have been very close to death. death.

In these circumstances, people report having seen a tunnel, a bright light or their deceased relatives; having had a sudden mental clarity or panoramic recount of your life (as the memory of your existence flashes before your eyes), and seeing your own body and the world as if floating from outside your physical body.

Most patients describe these experiences as very pleasant, but others as unpleasant. They occur all over the world and have been reported since time immemorial.

The NDE They can occur in men and women, at any age, regardless of educational and socioeconomic levels. , in patients who have had their first myocardial infarction and in those who require intensive resuscitation in hospital. They appear to be less common in older adults.

The NDE occur in 15% to 20% of critically ill patients and in 5% of the general population. It is important to understand that the incidence of NDEs has increased in recent decades due to the development of resuscitation and intensive care techniques, which have allowed a progressive improvement in patient survival.

“The tunnel of white light reported by almost everyone who came back from the dead could be explained by experiments on rats that show enormous brain activity.”

A recent article, published on February 22 in “Frontiers of Aging Neuroscience”describes for the first time, thanks to a fortuitous event, the electrical recording of the brain of a human being that died at the hospital.

The electroencephalograph, invented in 1924, is a device that records the electrical activity of the brain. By inserting thin needles (electrodes) into the scalp, it is used to study electrical pathways associated with various brain diseases in both awake and sleeping people. It is very useful in the study of epilepsy, tumors and other brain disorders.

The case

According to researchers from the University of Manitoba (Canada), an 87-year-old man was taken to the emergency department after a fall. The initial evaluation revealed that he was in a coma due to hemorrhages on both sides of the brain (subdural hematomas), and due to his rapid aggravation, the patient was immediately operated on to evacuate the hematomas. Unfortunately, during the next 48 hours, the patient worsened and began to have seizures, for which he was connected to an electroencephalograph to determine the electrical activity of the brain.

While connected to the electroencephalograph, the patient suffered an electrical cardiac arrest and, because the family had given a do-not-resuscitate order, he died while connected to the electroencephalogram machine.

The authors describe that electroencephalogram analysis during the 30 seconds before and after cardiac arrest demonstrated intense electrical activity in brain areas that, in healthy subjects, are associated with dreams and memory. This finding, never before documented, supports for the authors the story that the person who experiences a NDE he sees the memory of his entire life flash past his eyes.

The interesting thing is that, despite the fact that it happened in 2016, the authors delayed publication until 2022, because the search for similar cases in the medical literature was unsuccessful. , that demonstrated remarkably similar findings: intense brain activity in brain centers associated with memory and vision at the time of death.

Corollary

Apparently, the anecdotes told by people who have had an experience close to the deathso numerous and coincident, could have neurological explanations.

The account that “I saw my whole life flash before my eyes” is reinforced by the serendipitous documentation of brain electrical activity described in the Canadian article, which demonstrates enormous brain activity in posterior brain areas responsible for of vision.

The account given by people who have returned from the dead, that they felt their bodies float and were able to see themselves, is reinforced by recent studies that demonstrate the participation of the temporo-parietal cortex in the generation of out-of-body experiences.

The fact is that death is still a very deep mystery, but science is beginning to offer neurological explanations of the natural phenomenon that, sooner or later, we will all go through, and we are left with a disturbing question:

SUBSCRIBE TO OUR NEWSLETTER