BRAIN AT DEATH

The American Chemistry Society has been recently quoted that the brain has a surge of activity, like consciousness, after one dies.

Even after clinical death, your brain probably keeps ticking on for a while. According to recent studies, the brain appears to undergo a final surge — in a way that would normally be associated with consciousness, says a story in The Independent (UK).

It may be that the surge might be responsible for near death experiences. Studies have supported that hypothesis — though scientists are still entirely unsure why the surge happens, or what it signifies.

Then comes biological death. And it’s not clear what happens next.

There’s little way of knowing what happens after all that is over, because people tend not to come back.

In some near death experiences, patients have various recollections of what happened to them.

“"Pure, perfect, uninterrupted sleep, no dreams,” wrote one.

But others described more vivid experiences that apparently hinted at an afterlife.

"I was standing in front of a giant wall of light,” wrote another. “It stretched up, down, left and right as far as I could see. Kind of like putting your eyes 6" from a fluorescent light bulb.

“The next memory I have is waking up in the hospital."

Every culture has its origin stories and its view of a human life cycle. Many believe that the human body is merely a vessel which contains a hidden soul, a non-organic, invisible component that makes life possible. One could speculate that the final brain activity is the soul launching itself from the human body into the next level of existence.

It is a mystery why the brain would have a final surge after the moment of death. Logically, one could understand a brain and person having one last gasp for life before death. But the human body has many redundant systems that we do not fully understand. For example, the human heart beat is both controlled by electro-nerve stimulation and chemical stimulation. If a person's heart nerves are severed (such as in a heart transplant), the new heart will beat because of the body's chemical signals to it. Perhaps the brain has the same redundancy - - - nerve endings may cease before the chemical reactions that cause neuron stimulation.

But this finding is still another mystery of life which we cannot fully comprehend.