The Brain Waves of a Dying Person Have Been Recorded in Detail For The First Time

People who have looked their mortality in the face often describe their near-death experiences in surprisingly similar terms – vivid recollection of memories, a sense of standing outside of their body, bright lights, or a feeling of tranquility.

While there is plenty of anecdotal evidence from people who have had near-death experiences (NDEs), scientists have little to no data on what happens in the brain as people transition into death. However, under tragic circumstances, scientists have collected the first continuous data on the neural dynamics of the brain during death.

When an 87-year-old patient developed seizures after receiving surgery due to a fall, doctors used electroencephalography (EEG) to monitor his condition; unfortunately, the patient deteriorated and sadly passed away while these recordings were taking place.

Due to the do-not-resuscitate status of the patient, and with the family's consent, the unexpected event allowed scientists to record the electrical activity of a dying human brain. While simplified EEG recordings have been captured from patients withdrawn from life support before, the full placement of recording equipment in this case made for an unprecedented level of detail.

"We measured 900 seconds of brain activity around the time of death and set a specific focus to investigate what happened in the 30 seconds before and after the heart stopped beating," says Ajmal Zemmar, a neurosurgeon at the University of Louisville, US.

"Just before and after the heart stopped working, we saw changes in a specific band of neural oscillations, so-called gamma oscillations, but also in others such as delta, theta, alpha and beta oscillations."

Neural oscillations are the collective electrical activity of neurons firing in the brain, and are more commonly known as brain waves. These waves of electrical activity happen at different frequencies, and various frequency bands have been linked to different conscious states.

Thus, neuroscientists have managed to associate different frequencies of brain waves with specific functions like information processing, perception, consciousness and memory during wakefulness, and states of dreaming and meditation.

Just after the patient suffered the cardiac arrest that led to his death, his brain activity revealed a relative spike in gamma band power that was interacting the most with alpha waves – a pattern not dissimilar to memory recall.

"Given that cross-coupling between alpha and gamma activity is involved in cognitive processes and memory recall in healthy subjects, it is intriguing to speculate that such activity could support a last 'recall of life' that may take place in the near-death state," the team writes.

The authors do note several caveats. Firstly, the patient's brain was in a post-traumatic state that had suffered from bleeding, swelling, and seizures. Additionally, the patient had received large doses of anti-seizure drugs, which might also affect neural oscillatory behavior.

There were also no baseline, 'normal' brain scans of this patient to compare the brain activity to. However, by definition we can't have access to such data in healthy patients whose deaths are impossible to anticipate. Therefore, obtaining recordings of the near-death phase could only come from an already ill patient.

Despite these limitations, the team's findings do point to a potential link between brain waves observed during death with the phenomenological experiences of NDEs, where participants describe their life flashing before their eyes.

What we know about brain waves during memory retrieval points to evidence that the brain may go through a stereotyped activity pattern during death. The authors also note the findings are similar to alterations in neuronal activity that have been observed in rodents during death.

Fascinatingly, the results are consistent with the notion that the brain organizes and executes a biological response to death that may be conserved across species with tied evolutionary lineage and broadly similar neuronal structures.

Although researching what happens to the brain during death can be difficult, especially when patients leave behind distraught family members, Zemmar takes some comfort in the idea that our brains may immerse us in our most beloved memories while we leave the world.

"Something we may learn from this research is: although our loved ones have their eyes closed and are ready to leave us to rest, their brains may be replaying some of the nicest moments they experienced in their lives."

I’m reading the original journal article:

“The neurophysiological footprint of brain activity after cardiac arrest and during near-death experience (NDE) is not well understood. Although a hypoactive state of brain activity has been assumed, experimental animal studies have shown increased activity after cardiac arrest, particularly in the gamma-band, resulting from hypercapnia prior to and cessation of cerebral blood flow after cardiac arrest.”

Hypercapnia is excessive carbon dioxide resulting from respiration and heart function ceasing.

The shift into the gamma frequency is a natural attribute of a person detaching from the low frequency of the physical body. It is closer to the lowest frequency of consciousness external to the physical body and the frequency which one seeks to experience in meditation to transcend self and perceive directly with consciousness and not be limited to the body senses.

When I demonstrated this in a psych research lab about twenty years ago while hooked up to an EEG, the two professors with me thought the machine was broken, even the second one when it repeated the result.

Gamma frequency was unknown prior to 1964 as the old analog electrical equipment could not measure rates over about 30 Hz, the top of the Beta frequency of consciousness.

So little is understood about gamma frequency that most researchers cap is at 100 or 200 Hz. I’ve jammed FM receivers in meditation that are in the megahertz range. It goes much higher and does not have an upper limit.

Attaining gamma frequency is what happens after the soul has been purified and stabilized. Without this, the body starts to shake and quake, thus the attributes that gave the name to the Shakers and Quakers when the Holy Spirit moved in.

Reaching the gamma frequency is how all the mystics of all religions do what they do. It’s how Jesus did what He did.

The main problem is that very few people become “whole” and balanced in their own consciousness.(Merging of their masculine and feminine consciousness.) Ten of the Dalai Lama’s monks did EEG’s at the University of Wisconsin as part of the study. They reached the gamma frequency, but with high amplitude waves. In my EEG’s it resulted in an almost flat line. If you looked carefully it looked like the small teeth on a hacksaw blade the amplitude was so low.

Low amplitude allows gamma frequency with much lower intensity of consciousness. Think of the Holy Spirit as being “High Voltage.” Like the coil on a car that steps up the voltage to jump the gap, higher consciousness increases the intensity of the consciousness spark that is generated at the Axon Hillock in the neuron where the action potential fires, creating the nerve impulse.

This is how I am able to read the lifetime of stored memories in the soul of a person. They are physical objects when perceived from a higher gamma frequency consciousness.

Yesterday I worked with a woman with advanced ovarian cancer. Her surgery is today and then chemo. It took me less that five minutes to identify the event in her life that caused her to reverse the immune system function relating to her ovaries when she was young. When I touched the stored memory many feet from her physical body, she started shaking and crying as the emotion attached to the memory reverse bridged from her soul back through her peripheral nervous system into her CNS and her awareness.

She didn’t say a word. This is hard science. It’s like x-rays to bones. Stimulus-response, repeatable.

In the death process, the consciousness frequency shift usually happens when the person goes through the pre-death agitation phase. This is the surrender of the ego which encapsulates consciousness and restricts it to the physical body. After this there is peace and contentment. Often the person sees other deceased loved ones and the Light of Heaven after this phase.

All this is physical to my perception and I have been with many people during the death process.

I printed the actual journal article and will review it in detail later today.

Ps. My dear friend Pin van Lommel is a cardiologist who was practicing before the current paddles and resuscitation procedures were used. When he began resuscitating people, and they told him of their NDE while dead. He did an extensive research study, interviewing resuscitated cardiac patients and found that 18% remembered having an NDE. His work was excellent and published in the medical journal Lancet in 2001.

“It would sad if when my life flashes before my eyes I become bored.”

Actually that is what happens in deep meditation.

The life review process is merely conscious awareness expanding beyond the physical body through the stored memories of life experiences in a person’s soul. It is not a judgement, but and increased awareness.

In meditation, you can raise the frequency of consciousness and expand your perception beyond your physical body. By attaining the gamma frequency, you can do all the things and more beyond the physical body with consciousness that you can do with your bodily senses.

In the death process the link of consciousness to the hippocampus which creates the filing system for the stored memories becomes faulty and confuses childhood memories with current memories. Think of the file directory malfunctioning on the read/write head of a hard drive.

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