Researchers at Canada's Western University were left scratching their heads when one of the patients they were studying showed brain activity for 10 minutes after death.
Loretta Norton and her team were looking at frontal EEG recordings of four terminally ill patients when their life support was turned off. As their paper points out, there are some serious ethical questions surrounding the actual time of death, especially with regards to organ donation. So they were hoping to help clear that up, but their findings might have only muddied the water further.
Although the researchers confirmed that the one patient had indeed died – no heart beat or blood pressure were present and the pupils were unreactive – the EEG continued showing delta waves, the same ones associated with deep sleep, for 10 minutes.
Even at the moment the heart stopped, the EEG showed no change. Researchers had expected at least a blip, a "death wave" that has been seen in previous research with decapitated rats. Isn't this all cheery?
Now, there are some important considerations to remember. This was only one patient, so it's too small a sample size to draw many meaningful conclusions from. And this weird anomaly could have been due to an error, although the team couldn't figure out what that error might have been.
But even across all four patients, the team saw something interesting. Death for each patient was a unique experience. For one, brain activity stopped 10 minutes before the heart stopped. And, obviously, for another, brain activity went on well after the heart stopped.
And it should also be noted that the patients were all terribly ill and heavily medicated and sedated during this process. Nevertheless, for an anomaly, you can't help feeling fascinated about those 10 strange minutes of brain activity.
They could remain a mystery for a long time, however. This highly specialized field, necroneuroscience, has a lot more research to do.
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