Can This Brainwave Study Explain What Happens to Consciousness When We Die?
A new study records the brain waves of a dying person in detail for the very first time. Could the findings explain what happens in our transition into death?
While there is plenty of anecdotal evidence from people who have had Near-death Experiences or NDEs, there is little to no hard scientific data on what happens in the brain as people are dying.
Now, researchers who recorded 15 minutes of brain wave activity in a dying man, are speculating that the findings may explain the phenomenon of life recall or review that many near-death experiencers report.
Dr. Eben Alexander is a neurosurgeon who, in 2008, experienced an NDE as he lay in a coma caused by a serious case of viral meningitis. After a miraculous recovery, he went on to write about the experience in several best-selling books.
“There’s a tremendous amount of evidence that, at the end of life, our consciousness does not just disappear as one might assume if the brain created consciousness,” Alexander said. “But in fact, our consciousness seems to expand in dramatic ways, and I think this is where a deeper understanding of NDEs is crucial for us to understand the mind-brain relationship and the nature of consciousness itself.”
To Alexander, while the study is a step in the right direction towards understanding what happens when we die, it is fraught with some misunderstandings.
“Now, there are many problems with this study and the main thing I’ll point out here is, first of all, do not confuse correlation with causality,” Alexander said.
“This is a common mistake in neuroscience and it results from the unproven assumption, and in fact, I would say a disproven assumption, that the brain is creating consciousness, and therefore, to find any change in phenomenal consciousness we must look for a neural correlate; some physiologic change in the brain. And modern studies just show that that reasoning is false, there’s more to it than just what’s going on in the brain.”
Some of the strongest evidence for this thinking comes out of recent studies using sophisticated brain imaging of participants on psychedelics.
“They universally show a decrease in brain activity and a dissolution of things like the Default Mode Network that is thought to be so responsible for our sense of self and existence in the moment. If those things dissolve and disappear under the influence of these plant medicines, or entheogens, all other bets about looking at neuronal activity to try to match up to phenomenal experience are really off,” Alexander said.
“The important thing to get is: the brain is not the creator of these phenomenal experiences. It’s a filter, so it influences the experience that we have, but it’s not ultimately the complete explanation for them.”
What can be said about the findings of the recent study that suggest that the pattern of brain activity recorded corresponds to memory recall and may provide a physiological basis for the life review as experienced by near-death experiencers?
“Memories that are encountered during NDEs, such as the life review are not just vague sepia-tinted memories, these are reliving of the events in a detailed powerful fashion,” he said. “Memories are not even stored in the brain, that’s one of the last nails in the coffin of materialist neuroscience.”
Alexander and other proponents of a broader approach to studying dying have high hopes that we are headed in the right direction.
“The message is very clear when you study consciousness in large fashion, including all the evidence for non-local consciousness and the rich reports of near-death and shared-death experiences, out-of-body experiences, telepathy, things like that. Then you get into that rich literature on reincarnation — all this is telling us is we need a much bigger theater of operations to explain all this, than our simple notions of the material and physical world being all there is. This is a pathway forward for a deeper understanding of what happens when we die,” Alexander said.
When Someone Dies, Can They Come Back to See You?
No matter what your spiritual beliefs are, dealing with the death of a loved one can be incredibly difficult. The smallest message or sign from a deceased loved one can mean the world to any human being. However, there are several ways to receive messages from the dead, but they can be rather subtle and might be overlooked or discounted if you don’t know what to look for. Explore life after death to learn whether a deceased person is trying to contact you from the spirit world.
Loved Ones Communicating Beyond the Grave
There are countless cases of loved ones contacting their living counterparts after they’ve passed, or in some cases while they’ve been clinically dead, before being brought back to life.
In one instance, recounted by Dr. Raymond Moody, the researcher who coined the phrase near-death experience or NDE, a surgeon once told him that while operating on a young man, his patient went into cardiac arrest. Believing he had lost the patient, the man’s wife burst into the room screaming that her husband had visited her in the waiting room and told her the doctor thought he was dead but that he was still alive and able to be saved. The surgeon immediately began to perform resuscitation techniques and brought the patient back to life.
After-death communication is very common soon after a loved one passes away. And while everyone’s loved ones have different ways of communicating this, the signs we see are usually more than sheer coincidence.
When looking for signs of a loved one visiting or communicating with you after they have passed, think of things from their life that they had a predilection for, whether that’s a particular animal, flower, or song. These personal affections typically appear in their attempts to reach you in the physical world, and rightfully so. If there’s one thing you’d associate strongly with them, it’s sure to stand out.
