What does the brain show us before death? Scientists may have an answer

Scientists have "accidentally" stumbled on new information that suggests our life may actually flash before our eyes when we die, BBC reported.

This finding came to the fore when a team of scientists was measuring the brainwaves of a patient as part of a new study in Vancouver, Canada.

The patient, aged 87, had developed epilepsy, and during the neurological recording he suffered a fatal cardiac arrest, which in turn provided an unexpected recording of his brainwaves before his death, the first of its kind. 

The recording revealed that the person's brainwaves 30 seconds before and after his death were similar to the patterns for dreaming or recalling memories, said Dr Ajmal Zemmar, a co-author of the study.

The startling findings in the study were published in Frontiers in Aging Neuroscience on February 22, according to the BBC report.

According to the researchers, this sort of brain activity could suggest that a person may experience a final "recall of life" in his last moments.

"This was actually totally by chance, we did not plan to do this experiment or record these signals," Dr Zemmar, also a neurosurgeon at the University of Louisville, told the BBC.

Dr Zemmar, however, said it was not possible to confirm yet whether our memories with loved ones and other happy memories make a flashback during those final moments.

"If I were to jump to the philosophical realm, I would speculate that if the brain did a flashback, it would probably like to remind you of good things, rather than the bad things," he said.

"But what's memorable would be different for every person."

The brainwaves observed between 30 seconds before and after the person's heart stopped followed patterns similar to when we perform high-cognitive demanding tasks such as concentrating, dreaming or recalling memories, Dr Zemmar said.

"This could possibly be a last recall of memories that we've experienced in life, and they replay through our brain in the last seconds before we die," he said.

The study also gave rise to questions about when our life ends to be exact -- when the heart stops beating, or when the brain stops functioning.

However, no broad conclusions can be drawn from this study, considering the fact that the patient was epileptic, and had a bleeding and swollen brain, Dr Zemmar and his team cautioned.

"I never felt comfortable to report one case," Dr Zemmar said.

The neurosurgeon also said after the recording was made in 2016, he looked for similar cases to strengthen the analysis for years, but was unsuccessful.

Earlier, in a prior study carried out on healthy rats in 2013, US researchers observed similar high level of brain activities at the point of the rats' deaths until 30 seconds after their hearts stopped beating. 

Dr Zemmar termed the similarities between the findings of the two studies "astonishing", BBC reported.

The scientists expressed hope that the publication of this study on one human case may pave way for more research on the final moments of life.

"I think there's something mystical and spiritual about this whole near-death experience," Dr Zemmar said.

"And findings like this – it's a moment that scientists lives for," he added.