We are learning more and more about why the time of our death is so serene.
The prospect of dying can be terrifying. People who have experienced a near-death experience, on the other hand, often describe feeling calm, tranquil, and comfortable throughout.
Perhaps this is how the brain deals with its own mortality. It might also be something more complicated.
Researchers have proposed numerous explanations to explain some of the strange experiences linked with NDEs, such as physiological changes in the brain produced by brain cell death.
According to Bruce Greyson, M.D., professor of psychiatry and neurobiosciences at the University of Virginia and co-founder of the International Association for Near-Death Research, many near-death experiences remain a mystery, in part because they are practically difficult to investigate in real time.
Anecdotes, recollections, and, in certain cases, animal studies are used by researchers to understand how the brain changes after death and what this can signify for future treatment.
How a near-death experience seems
Death may be described in two ways: what happens to you physically and what you experience psychologically.
Near-death experiences are typically connected with severely painful occurrences such as a head injury, heart attack, or respiratory depression.
Psychologically, the brain suppresses pain awareness - or at least the memory of it.
Julia Nicholson, a former corporate executive, human resource management specialist, and management consultant, for example, described seeing the faces of her loved ones flash before her eyes following a near-fatal vehicle accident in 1980.
"I don't recall being in pain until I arrived to the hospital," he recently told Newsweek.
It's typical in near-death experiences to see loved ones, living or dead, as if they were a brilliant light at the end of a tunnel.
Others have described more physical feelings, such as leaving the body, floating above it, physically departing the tunnel with the light at the end, or having a spiritual contact with a higher entity, an extraterrestrial, or a lost loved one.
People seldom describe experiencing fear or anguish during these extraterrestrial encounters; instead, they express an overpowering sensation of calm and love.
Some of these phenomena, at least for the time being, cannot be explained scientifically. Death researchers, however, had something they had never seen before in 2022: a picture of a dying person's brain.
During the process, certain mysteries that scientists had previously only theorized about were disclosed.
A dying man's brain picture.
In 2016, an 87-year-old man was linked up to an electroencephalogram (EEG) when he died of a heart attack. The findings were eventually published in the journal Frontiers of Aging Neuroscience.
The electroencephalogram (EEG) analyzes electrical impulses in the brain and can be used to diagnose or research specific neurological diseases such as seizures and memory loss.
Doctors were watching a guy for recent seizures when his heart abruptly stopped beating.
The researchers noted in their study that EEG scans obtained 15 seconds before the man's heart attack revealed high-frequency brain waves termed gamma waves, which are known to be critical in memory creation and retrieval.
"Extrapolating from one example to another is quite difficult.... But we can say that when we dream, recollect, or meditate, we have similar signals to a healthy person shortly before death and soon after a heart attack "Dr. Ajmal Zemmar, the study's principal author, told Insider's Anni Medaris.
Of course, these visions are snapshots of the individual seconds before death and do not fully depict the NDE in which the person is still alive. Such activity, according to Greyson, might explain why people perceive memories or faces of familiar people after they die.
Furthermore, EEG scans of persons attempting to recall their NDE experiences might give additional information into how NDE experiences alter the human brain.
The Effects of Near-Death Experiences on the Brain
When people recall near-death experiences, their brains "display greater activity in multiple regions," including memory, vision, hearing, and emotion, according to Greyson.
The temporal lobe, which is responsible for processing sounds and storing memories, is particularly important in near-death experiences and memory, according to Dr. David San Filippo, associate professor at National Louis University and a researcher in the field of near-death experiences.
"Some individuals feel that near-death experiences are merely biological, chemical reactions to brain death," San Filippo explained.
According to a mouse research, the extremely happy sensation humans report during near-death experiences may be connected to an increase in serotonin generated by the brain. According to St. Jude, this might be the brain's method of progressively preparing the body for death by creating sensations of pleasure and pain alleviation.
Animal studies can give information, but they are not analogous to what happens in people, therefore further study is required, according to Greyson.
Some academics feel that near-death experiences are spiritual as well as physiologic.
Stories of near-death experiences, according to San Felipe, are surprisingly similar across age groups and cultures, particularly when it comes to encountering a spiritual divinity or feeling a part of something greater than life on Earth.
"We keep hearing the same narrative. It may differ depending on cultural or spiritual beliefs, but it is fundamentally the same "According to San Felipe. "We think that a near-death experience is a transpersonal event that occurs beyond the brain."
What this signifies in terms of future therapies
Although study on near-death experiences is challenging since they are unpredictable, researchers may create novel cures and treatments for the terminally sick and their loved ones if they could better comprehend these occurrences.
People who have had a near-death experience and recall feeling calm and tranquil throughout it, for example, no longer fear death, according to St. Philip.
"We may build an effective therapy for agitated or troubled people if we understand more about what generates a happy, pleasant, and calm near-death experience," Rasouli added.
Rasouli went on to say that this may make death and dying "less mysterious and hence less terrifying" for everyone.
"I believe that individuals benefit from near-death experiences and take consolation in the thought that death is a process and that grief has an end," St. Philip stated.