It isn’t hard to find anecdotal accounts of Near Death Experiences (NDE). We can never know how many people imagine it, dream it or simply fake it, but what we do know is that something peculiar is happening in the brain upon its death.
Dr. Lakhmir Chawla of George Washington University used electroencephalograph (EEG), a device that measures brain activity, to monitor seven terminally ill patients. He did this to make sure that his patients, suffering from conditions such as cancer and heart failure were sedated enough to be out of pain. What he found, however was that moments before death, the patients experienced a burst in brainwave activity lasting from 30 seconds to three minutes, and this surge traveled slowly from one end of the brain to the other. As it turns out, upon death, a brain doesn’t simply stop, but rather it releases all of its energy in a cascade as it runs out of oxygen. After the surge runs its course, the patient is pronounced dead.
Doctors believe that this unusual surge of energy making its way through the brain as it dies, could account for the vivid and intense experiences reported by those who are literally brought back from the dead. Whether it is a bright light, a religious experience or the unshakable feeling of floating above ones body, a dying brain, releasing all of its energy would certainly account for some highly usual experiences.
This research, published in The Journal of Palliative Medicine is thought to be the first to suggest that Near Death Experiences have a particular physiological cause. Dr. Chawla, however, isn’t attempting to use his findings to disprove the idea of life after death, “Our findings do not really tell us anything about whether there is an afterlife or not. Even if these near death experiences turn out to be a purely biochemical event, there could still be a God.”
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/health/healthnews/7785944/A-cascade-of-brain-activity-as-people-die-could-explain-near-death-experiences.html
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