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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

#111

Post by cdelsolar »

root_axis wrote: post #96
amatecha wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 para…

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.

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

#113

Post by jostmey »

jwuphysics wrote: post #60
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…

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... .

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

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

#114

Post by 2OEH8eoCRo0 »

rootusrootus wrote: post #80
2OEH8eoCRo0 wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

> 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. "…

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.

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

#115

Post by SketchySeaBeast »

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…

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".

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

#116

Post by Pyramus »

davidgerard wrote: post #92
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.

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.

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

#117

Post by fjabre »

inostia wrote: post #37
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…

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 aw…

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?

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

#118

Post by kingkawn »

konart wrote: post #17
kingkawn wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Don’t worry, even if there is a period of bad trip it will be dwarfed by the subjectively infinite relaxation into oblivion

Except you will never know because you are not the observer of this oblivion unlike that of a bad trip.

You are until you aren’t

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

#119

Post by digilypse »

root_axis wrote: post #96
amatecha wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 para…

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.

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

#120

Post by ianai »

tgv wrote: post #40
DonCarlitos wrote: post #8

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…

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.

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.
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