A light at the end of a tunnel, the sensation of floating on one’s own body, the displacement of an existence before the eyes… People who have almost died often claim to have had this type of experience.
The fact that these testimonies have much in common and come from people with varied backgrounds and origins suggests a potential biological mechanism that is still a mystery to scientists.
In an article published Monday in the magazine Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), researchers at the University of Michigan in the United States, observed sudden increases in brain activity in two dying patients.
This study is not the first of its kind, but it is “more detailed than any previous one,” lead author Jimo Borjigin told AFP.
a racing heartbeat
The scientists studied the records of four patients who died of cardiac arrest while their brain activity was measured by electroencephalography (EEG). These people were in a coma and their doctors had decided to stop treatment because they could no longer be saved.
When the ventilators were removed, two of them (a 24-year-old woman and a 77-year-old woman) saw their heart rate increase. His brain activity also showed a spike in gamma waves, associated with consciousness. A phenomenon that had already been observed by other studies.
This new paper goes a step further, taking a closer look at the part of the brain that was stimulated, a posterior area associated with consciousness.
An area associated with stimulated consciousness.
“If that part of the brain is stimulated, it means the patient is seeing something, can hear something, and potentially feels sensations outside of their body,” Jimo Borjigin said, adding that this area was “on fire.”
The scientists are not sure why these signs were not seen in the other two patients. Her seizure history may have had an impact, according to Jimo Borjigin.
Because the study was conducted on a very small sample of people, general conclusions cannot be drawn, the authors cautioned. And since the patients are deceased, we will never know if they had visions or not.
It’s not enough to cool Jimo Borjigin. “Our findings are certainly exciting and provide a new framework for understanding hidden consciousness in dying people,” he said in a statement from the University of Michigan.
Source: BFM TV
