Surge of neurophysiological coherence and connectivity in the dying brain
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Plain English Summary
Here's something genuinely astonishing: when the brain is dying, it doesn't just flicker out β it lights up like a fireworks show. Researchers monitored rats' brains during cardiac arrest and found a roughly 30-second explosion of gamma waves (the fast brain rhythms linked to conscious awareness). These waves were dramatically more powerful than during normal waking life β over 50% of total brain activity versus the usual 5%. Brain regions were communicating with each other at eight times their normal rate, using patterns that look remarkably like what happens during conscious visual experience. Pain wasn't driving it either, since oxygen deprivation alone produced the same results. This is a big deal for the near-death experience debate: it suggests the brain has a built-in capacity for hyper-vivid conscious experience right at the edge of death β no supernatural explanation required.
Abstract
The brain is assumed to be hypoactive during cardiac arrest. However, the neurophysiological state of the brain immediately following cardiac arrest has not been systematically investigated. In this study, we performed continuous electroencephalography in rats undergoing experimental cardiac arrest and analyzed changes in power density, coherence, directed connectivity, and cross-frequency coupling. We identiο¬ed a transient surge of synchronous gamma oscillations that occurred within the ο¬rst 30 s after cardiac arrest and preceded isoelectric electroencephalogram. Gamma oscillations during cardiac arrest were global and highly coherent; moreover, this frequency band exhibited a striking increase in anteriorβposterior-directed connectivity and tight phase-coupling to both theta and alpha waves. High-frequency neurophysiological activity in the near-death state exceeded levels found during the conscious waking state. These data demonstrate that the mammalian brain can, albeit paradoxically, generate neural correlates of heightened conscious processing at near-death.
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Cites
- Incidence and Correlates of Near-Death Experiences in a Cardiac Care Unit β Greyson, Bruce (2003)
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π Cite this paper
Borjigin, Jimo, Lee, UnCheol, Liu, Tiecheng, Pal, Dinesh, Huff, Sean, Klarr, Daniel, Sloboda, Jennifer, Hernandez, Jason, Wang, Michael M, Mashour, George A (2013). Surge of neurophysiological coherence and connectivity in the dying brain. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1308285110
@article{borjigin_2013_surge_dying,
title = {Surge of neurophysiological coherence and connectivity in the dying brain},
author = {Borjigin, Jimo and Lee, UnCheol and Liu, Tiecheng and Pal, Dinesh and Huff, Sean and Klarr, Daniel and Sloboda, Jennifer and Hernandez, Jason and Wang, Michael M and Mashour, George A},
year = {2013},
journal = {Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences},
doi = {10.1073/pnas.1308285110},
}