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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

#61

Post by bumby »

eatsyourtacos wrote: post #44
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 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…

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.

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

#62

Post by progman32 »

> “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.

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

#63

Post by anamax »

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?

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

#64

Post by mdb31 »

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]

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

#65

Post by progman32 »

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.

Why do you expect this?

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

#66

Post by oblak »

KineticLensman wrote: post #58
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 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.

What if you just don't remember the experiences you've had during this moment? Not impossible, imho

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

#67

Post by jmfldn »

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…

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.

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

#68

Post by wing-_-nuts »

xwdv wrote: post #29
giantg2 wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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.

Whatever the truth, this is a pretty unempathetic view of trauma. People don't wallow in it, some simply don't escape it.

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

#69

Post by bumby »

Andrew_nenakhov wrote: post #56
dkural wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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").

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 p…

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.

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

#70

Post by root_axis »

oblak wrote: post #66
KineticLensman wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

What if you just don't remember the experiences you've had during this moment? Not impossible, imho

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.
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