By Guillaume Thierry
The first time I reached past the sheer horror of the concept of death and wondered what the experience of dying may be like, I was about 15. I had just discovered gruesome aspects of the French revolution and how heads were neatly cut off the body by a Guillotine.
Words I remember to this day were the last of Georges Danton on April 5, 1794, who allegedly said to his executioner: “Show my head to the people, it is worth seeing.” Years later, having become a cognitive neuroscientist, I started wondering to what extent a brain suddenly separated from the body could still perceive its environment and perhaps think.
Danton wanted his head to be shown, but could he see or hear the people? Was he conscious, even for a brief moment? How did his brain shut down?
On June 14, 2021, I was violently reminded of these questions. I set off to Marseille, France, having been summoned to Avignon by my mother because my brother was in a critical state, a few days after being suddenly diagnosed with terminal lung cancer. But when I landed, I was told my brother had passed away four hours ago. An hour later, I found him perfectly still and beautiful, his head slightly turned to the side as if he was in a deep state of sleep. Only he was not breathing anymore and he was cold to the touch.
No matter how much I refused to believe it on that day, and during the several months that followed, my brother’s extraordinarily bright and creative mind had gone, vaporised, only to remain palpable in the artworks he left behind. Yet, in the last moment I was given to spend with his lifeless body in a hospital room, I felt the urge to speak to him.
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And I did, despite 25 years of studying the human brain and knowing perfectly well that about six minutes after the heart stops, and the blood supply to the brain is interrupted, the brain essentially dies. Then, deterioration reaches a point of no return and core consciousness – our ability to feel that we are here and now, and to recognise that thoughts we have are own own – is lost. Could there be anything of my beloved brother’s mind left to hear my voice and generate thoughts, five hours after he had passed away?
Some scientific experiments
Experiments have been conducted in an attempt to better understand reports from people who have had a near death experience. Such an event has been associated with out-of-body experiences, a sense profound bliss, a calling, a seeing of a light shining above, but also profound bursts of anxiety or complete emptiness and silence. One key limitation of studies looking into such experiences is that they focus too much of the nature of the experiences themselves and often overlook the context preceding them.
Some people, having undergone anaesthesia while in good shape or having been involved in a sudden accident leading to instant loss of consciousness have little ground to experience deep anxiety as their brain commences to shut down. On the contrary, someone who has a protracted history of a serious illness might be more likely to get a rough ride.
It isn’t easy to get permissions to study what actually goes on in the brain during our last moments of life. But a recent paper examined electrical brain activity in an 87-year-old man who had suffered a head injury in a fall, as he passed away following a series of epileptic seizures and cardiac arrest. While this was the first publication of such data collected during the transition from life to death, the paper is highly speculative when it comes to possible “experiences of the mind” that accompany the transition to death.
The researchers discovered that some brain waves, called alpha and gamma, changed pattern even after blood had stopped flowing to the brain. “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,” they write.
However, such coupling is not uncommon in the healthy brain – and does not necessarily mean that life is flashing before our eyes. What’s more, the study did not answer my basic question: how long does it take after the cessation of oxygen supply to the brain for the essential neural activity to disappear? The study only reported on brain activity recorded over a period of about 15 minutes, including a few minutes after death.
In rats, experiments have established that after a few seconds, consciousness is lost. And after 40 seconds, the great majority of neural activity has disappeared. Some studies have also shown that this brain shutdown is accompanied by a release of serotonin, a chemical associated with arousal and feelings of happiness.
But what about us? If humans can be resuscitated after six, seven, eight or even ten minutes in extreme cases, it could theoretically be hours before their brain shuts down completely.
I have come across a number of theories trying to explain why life would be flashing before someone’s eyes as the brain prepares to die. Maybe it is a completely artificial effect associated with the sudden surge of neural activity as the brain begins to shut down. Maybe it is a last resort, defence mechanism of the body trying to overcome imminent death. Or maybe it is a deeply rooted, genetically programmed reflex, keeping our mind “busy” as clearly the most distressing event of our entire life unfolds.
My hypothesis is somewhat different. Maybe our most essential existential drive is to understand the meaning of our own existence. If so, then, seeing one’s life flashing before one’s eye might be our ultimate attempt – however desperate – to find an answer, necessarily fast-tracked because we are running out of time.
And whether or not we succeed or get the illusion that we did, this must result in absolute mental bliss. I hope that future research in the field, with longer measurements of neural activity after death, perhaps even brain imaging, will provide support for this idea – whether it lasts minutes or hours, for the sake of my brother, and that of all of us.
Guillaume Thierry is Professor of Cognitive Neuroscience at Bangor University, UK.
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Deborah Coffey says
Very interesting. Keep working on it, Professor. One thing we know for sure is that, at some point, we’re all going to know the answer to your question.
Pierre Tristam says
I don’t know that we would have the awareness to know, unfortunately.
Celia M Pugliese says
In my deepest believe something tells me that we walk into eternity and all the ones before us including all we loved people, pets, plants that were all living things and departed earlier will be at the Gates to greet us. For that I will close my eyes and calmly will wait and hope for the Almighty on his wisdom to forgive my imperfect human sins and let me cross into His Kingdom with total absent of fear. But that is just what I believe until that day arrives…
Alonzo says
I dont know. I guess those that have left this life knows the answer.
Ben Hogarth says
I’ve never shared my own NDE story publicly before, but for the sake of advancing “the conversation,” I’d like to do so. Let me first preface my statements by explaining my “position” on exactly what “is” consciousness. I believe that consciousness itself – not the universe – is what transcends all other things. I believe that we are “thought form” beings and that our physical life experience here is designed for learning. To get into the “why” of my belief structure, you have to move on from neuroscience and dive deep into quantum mechanics / quantum theory. But that is a conversation for another time.
I was not even 5 years old when my parents received word that I would need hospitalization for a rapidly worsening condition that was not properly diagnosed immediately. At the time, I was unable to eat or even retain water that I drank, immediately regurgitating anything that went down the “hatch.” I was complaining of excruciating lower (right) abdominal pain and nausea. The first t nurses and physicians that treated me, assumed I was simply a child that was experiencing difficulties having a bowel movement – which is not at all uncommon for young children. They proceeded to conduct a small in-office procedure to help facilitate that. Bad move. My appendix ruptured and I was in immediate “septic shock.” The next several days for me were a bit of a “blur” with back and forth in and out of body (consciousness) experiences in the hospital throughout my surgeries and treatments. My total stay in the hospital was about a month.
But what I experienced in those several days that I was placed in intensive care changed my life forever. Even as a very young boy, the images and experience are so vivid as if they happened yesterday. During my stay in the hospital (in between surgery and procedures) I was receiving an incredibly large dosage of antibiotics to combat the sepsis throughout my bloodstream. I can remember how my entire body felt like it was on fire at times and the excruciating pain in my abdomen that felt as if god himself had reached into the bottom of my gut and was squeezing. When my appendix ruptured, I keeled over and blacked out. There was a substantial amount of time between that event and my next conscious “waking” experience in the ambulance and hospital. During that time, there was “nothing” – no darkness, no light, no fear, no stress, no pain, nothing. Total nothingness.
Over the next several days in ICU, I experienced incredible “brain fog” as I went from being awake in my hospital bed to “asleep” but finding myself wandering through a cold, dark hospital all alone. The wandering felt endless and timeless. As I walked, my state of mind was tantamount to “confused and curious” – unsure who I was, where I was, or why I was there. In some of my experiences, I was walking through a very lively hospital with doctors, nurses, patients, and hospital staff everywhere just like you’d see any day now. However, as I walked around, not a single person acknowledged my presence. It felt “off” – and whenever I’d start to think about how strange the experience was, I would find myself waking up back in my hospital bed. These experiences were so confusing and conflated that the week the rest of the world everyone experiences to me, felt like years.
But it was my last experience that truly changed my entire thought and belief structure. Apparently I was on my way to what would be my last procedure for treatment. By this point, the only thing I could think about was not going to “sleep” again. I was terrified that this time I would not wake up. I remember the panic and sadness overcoming me as I thought that this would be the last time I would be “alive” – and so I cried out that I wanted to see my mom. The nurse came over to me and consoled me until I found myself drifting off again. Nothingness turned to darkness. Darkness then turned to light. The light surrounded me from all sides. It was warm and inviting – the concerns and fears that I had were quickly leaving me. In the light I saw multiple “beings” who I could not see clearly as they looked more like blurs in the distance. But I just remember “hearing” them tell me that I had nothing to worry about, that I was loved, and that I would be ok. At that moment, I felt myself “let go” and I relaxed entirely. What felt like only seconds later I found myself opening my eyes in the recovery room, my life forever changed.
My one-off experience could easily be construed as anecdotal by the scientific community. No doubt I spent years trying to reconcile what I experienced with the science and societal explanations for it all. It was not until my early adulthood and college years that I began reading about the accounts of other NDE survivors. The shocking similarity of each story to my own only further piqued my interest. I opened book after book and scoured online forums for answers. Later in my 20s, I spoke with dozens and dozens of other “experiencers” only to realize that this could not simply be coincidence. The amount of correlation in our stories cannot be discounted, even if we have no method of testing these in neuroscience or otherwise.
Similarly, the accounting by hypno-therapists (specifically those specializing in regression therapy) should not be ignored. There are now hundreds and thousands of clinical records (including video) detailing findings that would posit a theory that consciousness is perhaps far more complex than what is “in our brain.”
But back to why I believe neuroscience will continue to be unable to prove or disprove the origin of these experiences. The brain is a transceiver – it transmits and receives information from the rest of the system. It is a facilitator of photon information from the eyes just as it facilitates information from throughout the nervous system. I’m not going to pretend to lecture to neuroscientists how the brain “works” – but my point is that its purpose for us is to facilitate the physical life experience we have here. My belief is that “where” we are is not our brains. I do not believe the origin of our consciousness is physically in the brain or anywhere for that matter (pun intended).
Imagine for a moment the year was 1700 and you were the greatest engineer of your age. Imagine you had just been kidnapped in a “Bill and Ted” like contraption and sent to present time period with your entire workshop intact. I approach you with a ham radio and tell you that you must explain to me how the radio “works” with just the tools at your disposal. You have all the time you need, but you cannot come out until you have all the answers. I turn the radio on and from it, you hear voices. I turn the knobs and you hear a mix between static and transition from number to number. You spend hours and hours dismantling the box, eventually identifying the speakers, the electrical conduction method, the power source (battery), and all the supporting pieces. You can spend eternity in your workshop identifying every little piece and how each works to support the other. But no matter how long you spend with the tools at your disposal, there is one thing you will never ever be able to explain in this setting – where the origin (source) of the voices (signal) is coming from. I believe our brains are not very different from ham radios – they are transceivers of information that does not source itself within the radio / brain. As a result, doctors and scientists will be forever frustrated by the seemingly endless of correlations they may draw among all the “pieces” – but never settle on an origin.
Perhaps one day I will be proven wrong or my theories “disproven” – but I doubt it. My hope is that scientists and philosophers will begin to see the middle ground that perhaps each have something to share with the other. That perhaps one day we will not allow either dogma to lock us into rigid structures, blinding us to the potential of exploring other possibilities. That we may help to finally shed light on the experiences shared by so many NDE survivors and help the mentally ill in a way that actually makes sense.
I love science. I love the exploration and uncovering of truth. Veritas above all. But I feel compelled to say to the neuroscience community that while your efforts and research are so critically important for so many reasons – don’t discount other possibilities. Mankind may stand to benefit from it.