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Neuroscientists have recorded the activity of a dying human brain

blog.frontiersin.org

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Re: Neuroscientists have recorded the activity of a dying human brain

#91

Post by imglorp »

DanHulton wrote: post #51

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…

Perhaps not even memory access, but more like the neuron activation thresholds change when oxygen, ions, etc quit flowing to them, causing random firing.

Re: Neuroscientists have recorded the activity of a dying human brain

#92

Post by davidgerard »

DanHulton wrote: post #51

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…

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.

Re: Neuroscientists have recorded the activity of a dying human brain

#93

Post by emteycz »

rootusrootus wrote: post #49
emteycz wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> 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.

We're talking about people lying on hospital bed tied to EEG. There are usually going to be people saving that person.

Re: Neuroscientists have recorded the activity of a dying human brain

#94

Post by Lyapunov_Lover »

giantg2 wrote: post #24
giuliomagnifico wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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...

There's a difference between 'after' and 'during'.

Re: Neuroscientists have recorded the activity of a dying human brain

#95

Post by pasquinelli »

schodi wrote: post #22

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…

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?

Re: Neuroscientists have recorded the activity of a dying human brain

#96

Post by root_axis »

amatecha wrote: post #86
ipnon wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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.

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.

Re: Neuroscientists have recorded the activity of a dying human brain

#97

Post by jll29 »

ge96 wrote: post #43

Unrelated but there was an old trippy (freaky) movie about this Brainstorm

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)

Re: Neuroscientists have recorded the activity of a dying human brain

#98

Post by pasquinelli »

amatecha wrote: post #86
ipnon wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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.

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?

Re: Neuroscientists have recorded the activity of a dying human brain

#99

Post by hnthrowaway0315 »

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 (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.

Re: Neuroscientists have recorded the activity of a dying human brain

#100

Post by tekni5 »

schodi wrote: post #22

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…

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.

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