[HN Gopher] Neuroscientists have recorded the activity of a dyin...
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Neuroscientists have recorded the activity of a dying human brain
Author : giuliomagnifico
Score : 133 points
Date : 2022-02-22 18:39 UTC (4 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (blog.frontiersin.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (blog.frontiersin.org)
| DanHulton wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| Die faster, stupid brain
| imglorp wrote:
| Perhaps not even memory access, but more like the neuron
| activation thresholds change when oxygen, ions, etc quit
| flowing to them, causing random firing.
| davidgerard wrote:
| Frontiers is a predatory open access publisher, and your first
| assumption should always be that anything in a Frontiers
| journal is pay-for-play bollocks.
| Pyramus wrote:
| Not really. You fell into the trap of judging a book by its
| cover. That is not to distract from the fact that there were
| and are controversies surrounding Frontiers - you can't just
| lazily extrapolate from that.
| Retric wrote:
| It's fine to judge things in part based on journal because
| self selection is involved. That doesn't mean anything is
| defiantly wrong with the paper, but it is a real signal.
| hutzlibu wrote:
| "It could just as easily be near-random memory access, similar
| to when we dream"
|
| Is it established that dreaming is near-random memory access? I
| thought the whole process of dreaming is quite far from being
| understood, so wouldn't it be a stretch to call it near-random,
| when in reality there might be pattern, but just one we do not
| understand yet?
| jwuphysics wrote:
| I was already on high alert when I saw that this was written in
| Frontiers, a potentially predatory journal publisher that makes
| it notoriously difficult to adequately review (and reject) bad
| papers. See e.g. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frontiers_Media#
| Editorial_conc....
| tpoacher wrote:
| "Predatory journal" is a bit overkill. Seems like an ok
| journal. https://www.scimagojr.com/journalsearch.php?q=211001
| 99831&ti...
|
| The specific journals you refer to in the wikipedia article
| have dropped in popularity, but this particular one hasn't.
| Frontiers is a huge family of journals. Some are good, some
| are excellent, some not so good. I wouldn't call any of them
| predatory though. And even if there was controversy in 2015,
| 7 years can be a very long time in publication contexts.
|
| One thing that is interesting about Frontiers is that they
| encourage open reviews (i.e. the review is public and
| accompanies the paper). This is pretty far from predatory
| journal behaviour.
| jostmey wrote:
| Meh, Frontiers is no worse than others. I've published in
| Nature. I've published in Frontiers. I have to say I had an
| easier time reproducing results published in "lower" tier
| journals than high impact journals. It is more a sign that
| peer-review is broken
| h0l0cube wrote:
| People describe a variety of near death experiences, including
| out of body experiences. A cursory Google led me to this study:
|
| https://www.southampton.ac.uk/news/2014/10/07-worlds-largest...
|
| "Among those who reported a perception of awareness and
| completed further interviews, 46 per cent experienced a broad
| range of mental recollections in relation to death that were
| not compatible with the commonly used term of NDE's. These
| included fearful and persecutory experiences. Only 9 per cent
| had experiences compatible with NDEs and 2 per cent exhibited
| full awareness compatible with OBE's with explicit recall of
| 'seeing' and 'hearing' events. "
| JohnBooty wrote:
| uncritical supposition
|
| I don't mind it because it's not masquerading as anything but
| supposition. Besides, this is the pop-sci summary of the actual
| source paper. If it's too pop-sci-ish for you, just read the
| actual source paper:
|
| https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fnagi.2022.8135...
|
| The linked paper is, of course, not necessarily super valuable
| from a scientific perspective. After all, n=1 and we're talking
| about somebody with traumatic brain injuries who has been
| administrated lots of psychoactive drugs. Not a typical healthy
| brain. But, I found it fascinating. There is some speculation
| but I would call it reasoned and restrained.
| bsmitty5000 wrote:
| > "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.
| wrycoder wrote:
| > _nicest moments_
|
| Some people are optimists.
| dkural wrote:
| 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").
| datavirtue wrote:
| 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.
| [deleted]
| Andrew_nenakhov wrote:
| 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?
| bumby wrote:
| 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.
| kingkawn wrote:
| Don't worry, even if there is a period of bad trip it will be
| dwarfed by the subjectively infinite relaxation into oblivion
| konart wrote:
| Except you will never know because you are not the observer
| of this oblivion unlike that of a bad trip.
| kingkawn wrote:
| You are until you aren't
| giantg2 wrote:
| 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.
| xwdv wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| Whatever the truth, this is a pretty unempathetic view of
| trauma. People don't wallow in it, some simply don't escape
| it.
| awb wrote:
| 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.
| hatchnyc wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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
| anotherman554 wrote:
| 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.
| tayo42 wrote:
| 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.
| awb wrote:
| > 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.
| schodi wrote:
| 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.
| agumonkey wrote:
| To me that feeling is both our survival instinct projecting,
| and our social/bonding self that anticipates the pain of
| others, something most people dread dearly.
| rootusrootus wrote:
| I figure that worrying about death is something that can, by
| definition, only torment the living. There will be no
| blackness, because that implies perception. How are you going
| to perceive it when you no longer exist?
|
| The closest survivable analog, in my opinion, is the "sleep"
| you experience when under something like sodium thiopental.
| When it works, you go from awake to awake again in an instant,
| from your own perspective. A bit jarring to lose hours or days
| like that. I assume death is similar but without the waking up
| part.
|
| Regular old sleep doesn't involve that level of
| unconsciousness.
| 2OEH8eoCRo0 wrote:
| > When it works, you go from awake to awake again in an
| instant
|
| That's my thought as well. Last time I was put under
| anesthesia I tried hard to think about how I was feeling. I
| went from awake with my eyes open to opening my eyes. I
| thought my eyes were already open? There is just literally
| nothing between that span of time.
|
| It's like that except you don't wake? But it lasted an
| instant. How can something that passes in an instant last for
| infinity? It makes my brain hurt.
| rootusrootus wrote:
| > How can something that passes in an instant last for
| infinity? It makes my brain hurt.
|
| Indeed it does. This is why I try to remind myself that
| this kind of thinking can only torment me when I'm alive,
| and I should stop wasting time. Especially at 2am, which of
| course is when I have these kinds of thoughts to begin
| with.
|
| My dad and I used to talk about this and decided that we
| lived forever, as a practical matter. "Before" and "after"
| just speculation.
| 2OEH8eoCRo0 wrote:
| I eventually came to the same conclusion. It used to
| spook me but I realized that death practically does not
| exist because I cannot experience it.
| spywaregorilla wrote:
| That is just your monkey brain freaking out to instinctual fear
| of death.
| sidewndr46 wrote:
| I think what you are referring to (the uneasiness) is your
| mortality salience.
| ipnon wrote:
| 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.
| amatecha wrote:
| Yeah, personally, I feel tons of anxiety about the
| effectively-infinite void of time before my existence, and
| that which will come after it. They are the same to me. Even
| though physically we are "born", I find it really upsetting
| that our experience and sense of selves is just an emergent
| organic process, a millisecond of a dream padded by infinite
| nothingness.
| agumonkey wrote:
| I think some culture deep sense of tradition is a way to
| cope. You inherit the past, you give it to your kids. It's
| no more a void on both ends if you carry the past along.
| Does it make sense?
| root_axis wrote:
| Far more horrifying to me is the thought that this
| millisecond of a dream is actually a process occurring in
| great abundance throughout the universe, with oscillating
| arrangements of particles facilitating whatever property of
| matter it is that embodies the phenomena of subjective
| experience. If it happened to "me" once, I don't see any
| reason why it should not happen again, or be happening
| everywhere at once in parallel, yet simply lacking
| awareness of this fact because the individual nodes don't
| share memory.
| cdelsolar wrote:
| Exactly - I think this is the actual answer. At some
| point "I" am going to be a Holocaust victim, or a drug
| cartel's victim, etc etc. It's horrifying. I think when I
| die, "I" am just going to be somebody else. Nothing else
| really makes sense to me.
| digilypse wrote:
| This is how I think of it. The experience of being "me"
| is the same for all life. An emergent process, but still
| real.
|
| I think some Buddhist concepts, like reincarnation and
| duality, can be interpreted as perspectives on this.
|
| It does increase my sense of compassion for life in
| general, and I try to lean into that.
| pasquinelli wrote:
| it's not nothingness. think of all the people that're dead
| right now, and all the people yet to live. would you
| characterize right now as nothingness?
| wrycoder wrote:
| _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
| Koshkin wrote:
| > _to eat without talking to one another_
|
| In Russian culture eating is a process not to be distracted
| from. Historically, this could be seen as a sign of respect
| on the part of a poor peasant for the food and all the hard
| labor that went into producing it.
| mattlondon wrote:
| On the flip side of that, the first time we were dead, when
| and how did we become conscious? Obviously the biological
| processes have a fairly well-defined start point (i.e.
| conception), but obviously consciousness does not start at
| conception as there is no brain yet. So when does it start?
|
| I have wrestled with this after my first kid was born - there
| was nothing and now there is this person with their own mind
| and wants. Perhaps it was just the lack of sleep that got me
| thinking. But - When did their consciousness start? What was
| that first moment of awareness? Was there that initial
| "spark" and something started happening? Or was it a slow,
| slow clearing of fog before some sort of concerted thought
| began? What was that first thought? is a baby in the womb
| aware of self? Maybe not - but if not, when does that begin?
| When is that first moment when a baby looks in a mirror and
| sees themselves? What goes through their mind that first time
| they realise the thing in the mirror is _them_?
| wintorez wrote:
| I'm not even convinced that we're self-aware at the moment
| of birth. I think self-awareness requires the brain to
| develop further. Around the time that we pass the mirror
| test is the when the self-awareness kicks in.
| Fice wrote:
| Our perception of time is very subjective: it is affected by
| our age, by what we are doing, and it is known that it can be
| significantly altered by consuming certain substances. We
| learned from others that there was time before we were born,
| but do we feel that? In my own subjective perception of time
| the moment of my birth seems to be infinitely far in the
| past, and I can't be sure that the final moment of death will
| be a finite point approachable by consciousness.
| ajuc wrote:
| Why would it be any different than being unconscious?
| eatsyourtacos wrote:
| >When We die, if there is nothing coming, how is it to not
| exist? I mean, what is it like?
|
| The question doesn't make any sense.
|
| If I smash you in the head with a hammer and you have brain
| damage which changes your personality, makes it so you can't
| access some memories, and can't control your body properly.. we
| accept that as literal brain damage- we have broke the machine
| (our brain) in some regard.
|
| Everyone accepts the reality of that situation.
|
| But when you die (i.e., your brain is completely shut off and
| non-functioning), we ask what is it experiencing? What does it
| feel like? It's literally a nonsensical question.
|
| Your brain isn't active to experience anything from its senses,
| which in turn are probably not functioning to send any signals
| either.
| bumby wrote:
| I think maybe the OP was referring to Chalmers hard question
| about consciousness. What you are talking about is closer to
| the "easy" question regarding understanding the of the
| neurological mechanisms but that's distinct from the "what is
| it like" subjective mechanisms. The hard question is hard, in
| part, because we don't (yet, at least) have a way to measure
| the way subjective experience emerges, so we don't have a way
| to measure when it stops.
| root_axis wrote:
| imo it still doesn't seem coherent even with the "hard
| question" framing, the very foundation of the hard question
| begs us to ask why it is that subjective experience _is_
| rather than not, lacking subjective experience means we 're
| discussing something outside the scope of the hard
| question, it's akin to asking "what happened before time"?
| bumby wrote:
| I believe Chalmers perspective is that consciousness is
| fundamental and irreducible. To relate it to your
| example, he says
|
| "Nobody tries to explain, say space or time in terms of
| something more basic than space or time. It's the same as
| mass or charge. They end up taking _something_ as
| fundamental "[1]
|
| In contrast, the easy problem IS trying to explain
| consciousness in terms of something more fundamental,
| like charges or energy moving across neuron synapses. The
| fact that it is reducible means it may be explained
| objectively by science, which make it the "easier"
| problem
|
| [1] _Conversations on Consciousness_ by Susan Blackmore
| ASalazarMX wrote:
| They suggest consciousness is fundamental and
| irreducible? This is like saying "where the car goes when
| you take all its pieces away?". Occam's razor suggests
| that the material (easier) explanation is much more
| likely to be the answer than any complex one.
|
| It's not even a good question unless they first prove
| consciousness can exist outside its physical support, AKA
| the immortal soul.
| wintorez wrote:
| 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?
| throwanem wrote:
| What's it like to be asleep and not dreaming?
| ASalazarMX wrote:
| Imagine is screaming at or slapping the dead was all it took
| to bring them back to life.
|
| Einstein: "I told you I was done with physics! Let me rest in
| peace already!"
| chaoticmass wrote:
| I have this weird thought from time to time-- maybe it's dumb,
| but it nags at me.
|
| Think of any time when you've been unconscious, like when under
| anesthesia, or fainting, or knocked out for some other reason.
| You experience everything leading up to the event that knocks
| you out, but the only reason you can recall any of it is
| because you did eventually wake up and regain consciousness.
| Your experience of your current self now is only because a
| moment from now you can look back and remember it. Eventually
| though, you will die, and you won't be able to look back and
| remember, and for you, it's as if nothing ever happened. So
| given that we will all die some day, how is it we even have
| conscious experience at all? I might die 5 minutes from now, or
| 5 days, or 5 decades from now, but isn't all the same?
| karaterobot wrote:
| Philip Larkin: And specious stuff that says
| "No rational being Can fear a thing it will not feel",
| not seeing That this is what we fear--no sight, no
| sound, No touch or taste or smell, nothing to think
| with, Nothing to love or link with, The
| anaesthetic from which none come round.
| schodi wrote:
| Aubade, 1977
| pasquinelli wrote:
| when you dream, all the characters in your dream are actually
| just you. your mind gives rise to them, so they're just you.
| what gave rise to your mind?
| ASalazarMX wrote:
| Your brain maturation and experiences. Newborns have very
| little mind, but their universe is also very small.
| ASalazarMX wrote:
| I've seen this answered as "Do you remember what was like
| before you were born? Being dead is the same thing".
|
| It couldn't be pure black and emptiness, for example, because
| we no longer exist to experience it.
| _Wintermute wrote:
| Reminded me of a quote:
|
| "The cradle rocks above an abyss, and common sense tells us
| that our existence is but a brief crack of light between two
| eternities of darkness. - Vladimir Nabokov "
| nbaugh1 wrote:
| Pretty sure its a lot like how it was before you were born
| [deleted]
| tekni5 wrote:
| The real question for me is if consciousness is even
| real/physical or just an illusion. After you die time has no
| meaning and we don't know what happens trillions and trillions
| of years from that point. Maybe with limited matter or
| infinity, the exact universe patterns emerge once again that
| give you consciousness. Maybe you are reborn again in the same
| identical universe that contains your biological pattern, and
| live your life again and again without knowing you have done it
| before. Since you have no perception of time when dead, it
| happens instantly. Does it have to be 100% identical or are
| some variations allowed? Maybe you live through every possible
| variation of your biological self.
|
| Or maybe quantum immortality occurs, where your consciousness
| jumps into a universe where you are still alive despite all the
| odds.
|
| Or perhaps the universe is just snapshots of infinite patterns
| locked in permanent static states and this entire progression
| of time, physics, etc is just an illusion created by the sub-
| process of consciousness that creates dynamic transitions from
| one state to another.
|
| It's probably my inability to perceive the concept of infinity
| that my mind thinks about such things, either way we will
| probably never know.
| can16358p wrote:
| Good to see someone questioning almost exactly the same
| things as me.
| inostia wrote:
| You can't describe non-existence in phenomenological or
| psychological terms because existence is required for
| experience (unless you believe in "souls"). The body will
| exist, but the neural activity that underlies experience will
| be absent.
|
| edit: another user commented and said this was "logically
| unsound 20th century positivism". Let me direct you to this
| quote ca 300BC from Epicurus:
|
| > Death, therefore, the most awful of evils, is nothing to us,
| seeing that, when we are, death is not come, and, when death is
| come, we are not.
| [deleted]
| fjabre wrote:
| If you believe in souls then why assume they dont have
| limitations as we do? Perhaps a soul if it exists is just as
| ignorant of its reality as we are of ours. Perhaps in some
| way a soul would be just as limited but in different ways.
|
| Is it neural activity that underlies all experience? Or is it
| neural activity which filters it?
| jmfldn wrote:
| There is nothing left to experience any void, as that
| experience would be something. Noone can experience death, only
| the moments leading to it. I feel pretty comfortable with that.
| On the other hand, if there is life after death then perhaps
| you live on somehow but let's discount that as unprovable and
| quite possibly not the case.
|
| Dealing with the reality we do know, I comfort myself with the
| idea that, and this sounds cheesy, all is one. Not in some
| hippy, pantheistic way. More that our experience of ourselves
| as separate from anything else is itself an illusion. There are
| no things, not nothing but "no things". Everything is a giant
| process, everything interpenetrates everything else, nothing
| exists independent from anything else.
|
| This is a somewhat Buddhist view. I'm describing emptiness in a
| way (the Buddhist term not nothingness or some sort of
| nihilistic viewpoint). It seems like a totally logical way to
| see things and, for me at least, comforting. It's all one
| process and it's all relational. It's relations all the way
| down. One Buddhist teacher I like put it this way. "All of
| reality is a vibrating verb rather than a bunch of concrete
| nouns".
|
| So back to your point, this is tantamount to being part of that
| "infinite stream of energy" as you put it perhaps.
| _Microft wrote:
| 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."_
| thewakalix wrote:
| Nobody make any strange images based on this data...
| unfocussed_mike wrote:
| _"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?
| andygroundwater wrote:
| Macabre stuff, but indisputably scientific all the same.
| MaxMoney wrote:
| UltraViolence wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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.
| ge96 wrote:
| Unrelated but there was an old trippy (freaky) movie about this
| Brainstorm
| jll29 wrote:
| 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)
| giantg2 wrote:
| 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...
| can16358p wrote:
| That was also my response: how, on Earth in complete history of
| modern medicine (or since invention of EEG), not a single death
| has been recorded?
|
| I mean if I'm dying I'd like people to take an EEG recording of
| me to shine some light to science and neurology. It seemed
| super off to me in many ways... thanks for showing that it
| really is.
| dkural wrote:
| Read the article.
| giantg2 wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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...
| rootusrootus wrote:
| > 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.
| emteycz wrote:
| We're talking about people lying on hospital bed tied to
| EEG. There are usually going to be people saving that
| person.
| rootusrootus wrote:
| 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.
| progman32 wrote:
| Why do you expect this?
| pasquinelli wrote:
| consider all the people who die in hospice.
| rootusrootus wrote:
| 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.
| giuliomagnifico wrote:
| Read before comment:
|
| > When an 87-year-old patient developed epilepsy, Dr Raul
| Vicente of the University of Tartu, Estonia and colleagues used
| continuous electroencephalography (EEG) to detect the seizures
| and treat the patient. During these recordings, the patient had
| a heart attack and passed away. This unexpected event allowed
| the scientists to record the activity of a dying human brain
| for the first time ever.
| giantg2 wrote:
| Don't be snarky. It's a real question. And apparently the
| article has incorrect information.
|
| https://www.sciencealert.com/brain-activity-recorded-as-
| much...
| Lyapunov_Lover wrote:
| There's a difference between 'after' and 'during'.
| giantg2 wrote:
| Yes, and you can see in the graphs in my link that they
| were measures before, during, and after. The "0" in the x
| axis is the time of death.
| giuliomagnifico wrote:
| The article I quoted is correct and doesn't have incorrect
| information:
|
| > Neuroscientists have recorded the activity of a dying
| human brain and discovered rhythmic brain wave patterns
| around the time of death that are similar to those
| occurring during dreaming, memory recall, and meditation.
|
| >NOW, a study published to Frontiers brings new insight
| into a possible organizational role of the brain during
| death and suggests an explanation for vivid life recall in
| near-death experiences.
|
| The record has already been done, but now the scientists
| have found what the -already recorded- data could
| tell/show.
|
| > a new study published to Frontiers in Aging Neuroscience
| suggests that your brain may remain active and coordinated
| during and even after the transition to death, and be
| programmed to orchestrate the whole ordeal.
| tomrod wrote:
| Unsure, but dead Atlantic salmon brains have been rigorously
| studied
|
| Not exactly connected to the discussion, but still worth noting
| that brain activity sensing can be difficult! (And it also
| makes me smile, thinking about a fishmonger's prized frozen
| fish undergoing a brain scan).
|
| https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/scicurious-brain/ignobe...
| kowlo wrote:
| I dread that it might be like my usual (nightly) sleep paralysis,
| except it will be the one time I don't wake up...
| ASalazarMX wrote:
| I've had sleep paralysis a few times in my life. The last time
| was 15 years ago, and it felt like something I could get used
| to now that I know what it is. It was a really interesting
| sensory hallucination.
|
| Am I crazy, or is it something you can get used to, like
| practicing lucid dreams?
| nefitty wrote:
| 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.
| ASalazarMX wrote:
| As an ex-catholic, all I can say is: if your kids grow up
| with enough common sense and pragmatism, they might resent
| the early indoctrination. Their brains have not matured
| enough to develop common sense until their teens, and
| everything the adults say will be taken as absolute truth.
| The humane thing would be raising them atheist, explain about
| agnosticism and religion, and accept their choice. All the
| rituals can be done at any age.
|
| Just like religious parents can have atheists kids, atheist
| parents can have agnostic or religious children.
| Indoctrinating them from childhood is taking their freedom of
| choice and choosing for them.
| amatecha wrote:
| 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.) ...
| nefitty wrote:
| I'll dare to be presumptuous and share what has helped me
| the most, above Buddhist studies, psychoactives,
| meditation, yoga, journaling: just removing the idea of
| mortality from my brain.
|
| "Thanks I'm cured", right? I didn't believe it would help
| when I first learned the technique. I heard it from a
| researcher who studied death anxiety in Tibetan Buddhists.
| He found that their culture makes it an overwhelming
| priority to be constantly conscious of one's mortality. He
| found that this imperative was inculcated from the very
| earliest age, and he found an unusually high correspondence
| in those beliefs to symptoms of anxiety. It was startling
| to him, as to me, because he thought the whole idea of
| Buddhism was "go with the flow dude, everything is gonna be
| alright", but in the teachings emphasized in the culture,
| it morphs into some sort of spiritual specter always
| haunting the waking lives of these people. It resonated
| with me, because Western existential philosophy also makes
| death-awareness an ideal to strive for, with the
| concomitant devil's deal of constant anxiety.
|
| He concluded that extinguishing or minimizing the idea of
| one's mortality ends up freeing one from the existential
| terror it can cause. I remember being in my living room
| cleaning as I listened to the report, and I stopped in my
| tracks and put the vacuum down. "There's no fucking way
| that works."
|
| It WORKS. It started working almost right away. If the
| thought of dying came up I just would grab the thread and
| shake it and say to myself, "Ok, so what? You have to wash
| the dishes man." I don't think I've lost any of my cynicism
| or me-ness or critical faculties in the ensuing years. That
| constant death anxiety is almost completely gone now,
| except for the most inopportune lulls before sleep or in
| idleness. I keep coming back to it. "Oh my God. I'm going
| to die one day. No. No. No. Please no... Hey! Who fucking
| cares?! Think about your puppy, look how cute she is laying
| there so innocent. Think about renewing your car
| registration. Literally everything is more important than
| that insignificantly tiny moment in the future. You're ok
| right now."
|
| I hope that helps.
| mathattack wrote:
| I came to appreciate the rituals around religion when my
| father passed. It's worth asking "Is there value to the
| activities, even if you don't believe the literal divinity of
| the stories?"
|
| The answer may vary by religion.
| jcadam wrote:
| 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.
| DonCarlitos wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| Beautifully said, reminds me of "All these years, all these
| memories, there was you. You pulled me through time." from the
| fountain.
| nefitty wrote:
| 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-
| th...
|
| And, another moving monologue, this one's a spoiler so heads
| up: https://www.reddit.com/r/HauntingOfHillHouse/comments/pxw
| 74y...
|
| Either way, this show hit me unexpectedly. One of my favorite
| "deep watches" in a long time.
| jamcohen wrote:
| I also find comfort in the idea of becoming food after we
| die. I remember reading somewhere how a beached whale in
| the arctic can be a life-saving windfall for the scavengers
| there. Helped me see the positive in something I'd always
| seen as purely tragic.
| nefitty wrote:
| Same here. It's helpful insofar as any story can be
| helpful in the face of what we have to go through.
|
| Interestingly enough, although my wife shares the same
| beliefs as me in terms of religion and God, the stories
| that resonate most with her from that show were the
| evocative ones about God and heaven. She told me that the
| science-based ones barely register to her at all, and
| almost not at all on an emotional level. As I heard the
| other character describe her idea of heaven, I too feel
| the pull of those descriptions. There's a part of me that
| agrees with the character when he says, after listening
| to her speech, wiping away tears, "I really hope you're
| right."
| mirceal wrote:
| this assumes that death is binary: you're either dead or not.
| this is not how things work. you don't know the precise time
| duration and what happens unless you are there to experience
| it. i think the best time to say goodbye and i love you is at
| any point in time
| tgv wrote:
| The brain might very well be in a weird state at that moment.
| In that case, it would be best if it is unconscious. Comfort is
| not high on nature's agenda.
| ianai wrote:
| Agree. Comfort's not high, but "survival" is. So it could be
| a really chaotic intermix of things still working and others
| not, and still others working in previously impossible
| states. Pain and possibly torture sound likely.
| KineticLensman wrote:
| > the brain continues to work for a period after the heart
| stops
|
| I had a sudden cardiac arrest (Ventricular Fibrillation). I
| felt dizzy and oriented for a few seconds (5?) after my heart
| stopped pumping blood and then I passed out. There was no life-
| flashing-before-my-eyes, no tunnels of light, just sudden
| dizziness and disorientation and then nothing. The next thing I
| remember was coming round in hospital.
| jvanderbot wrote:
| Right. I used to box and I'm now painfully aware of the
| fragility of consciousness.
|
| If you get hit right, the ~0.25-0.5 seconds _prior_ and
| _after_ to that hit do not exist for you. They are gone. You
| 'll never know how you were hit or what you were doing, your
| eyes will just _change_ instantly from "looking ahead" to
| "looking to the side/up" and you'll have to adjust very
| quickly to this new reality, despite the fact that the
| transition was instantaneous for you.
|
| One guy used to joke that if you ever said something _really_
| dumb, you 'd have about 1-2 seconds to hit the person who
| heard it so you could continue as though it never happened.
| Should tell you something about the kind of person you might
| find at a boxing gym.
| jacquesm wrote:
| Gmail has a little button at the bottom just after sending
| a mail to cancel it, that could be wired up to a boxing
| ball somehow.
| oblak wrote:
| What if you just don't remember the experiences you've had
| during this moment? Not impossible, imho
| petercooper wrote:
| It's an interesting point that rapidly becomes
| philosophical in a "if a tree falls in the woods" sense. I
| recently read a paper that suggested that sedating
| anaesthesia used with the promise of making a patient
| unaware of a procedure may actually do no such thing -
| instead they prevent the patient _remembering_ the
| procedure _afterwards._ Which as a potential patient one
| day.. is a little terrifying, because even if I don 't
| remember any trauma the next day, do I really want to
| experience it nonetheless?
| root_axis wrote:
| An interesting thought, but in my mind it also raises the
| question of the meaning behind a sequence of memories that
| you don't remember remembering, there's simply no reason to
| assume it happened at all since without memories there is
| no other evidence of the event.
| omgitsabird wrote:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anterograde_amnesia
| willis936 wrote:
| A dying person will not revisit their final moments if
| they were saved as memories. Giving comfort in passing is
| a kindness and a dignity to both the dying and the
| bereaved.
| neuronic wrote:
| True, forming memories at that time might simply be
| unnecessary overhead since you're not likely to turn back
| without significant medical help. Memories that will never
| be accessed are just pointless.
|
| But so are hiccups, who knows...
| ASalazarMX wrote:
| Also not very likely, as people who report those
| experiences say they're intense and vivid, not fleeting
| like a dream or an alcohol blackout.
| omgitsabird wrote:
| It seems strange to imagine telling someone who isn't going to
| experience anything ever again anything at all.
| fredoliveira wrote:
| At that point I would imagine the words are mostly for the
| speaker, rather than the listener. Mourning is all about
| saying goodbye.
| colordrops wrote:
| All of us will eventually never experience anything ever
| again. What's the difference between a few seconds and a few
| years.
| neuronic wrote:
| If they listen and notice they experience something right
| then and there and maybe at that point it's nice to feel
| loved... a sweet moment for a dying person briefly supercedes
| the metaphysical confusion of the living.
| pasquinelli wrote:
| people are strange then.
| qiskit wrote:
| > 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.
|
| Just because there is brain activity doesn't mean there is
| consciousness. A 10 week old fetus has brain activity. But it
| is not anything we'd call conscious. If your heart stops or
| you've stopped breathing, then it's highly unlikely you are
| conscious. But if it helps one cope with a loved one's death,
| perhaps there is no harm in letting them believe the deceased
| could hear your final goodbyes.
| namero999 wrote:
| Cognition != consciousness (or actually, [?] )
| damontal wrote:
| I wonder if there's truth to the reports of people after being
| Guillotined still being able to blink and make facial
| expressions even though their head has just been severed.
| csee wrote:
| A good avenue of future study to correlate these with case
| reports of Near Death Experiences.
| progman32 wrote:
| > "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 wrote:
| 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.
| anamax wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| Or it merely enters a power-saving mode once the oxygen levels
| drop, survivable or not.
| hnthrowaway0315 wrote:
| 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.
| Dylovell wrote:
| Misread this as 'dyeing' and was very confused.
| mdb31 wrote:
| 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]
| ipnon wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| We've known about this since 1983: https://youtu.be/mTYRH3xpt44
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