“There’s no science without spirituality and no spirituality without science.” Albert Einstein.
An Electroencephalogram (EEG) is a medical test for diagnosing epilepsy, sleep disorders, brain functions, monitoring activity during surgery and anesthesia, brain tumors, and other abnormalities.
Applying small electrodes on the scalp allows a tech to observe the amplified results to detect the brain’s signals on a computer screen or to print them out in graph form.
Near-death experiences (NDEs) can happen while the patient is in a conscious or semi-conscious state caused by any life-threatening occurrence, such as a cardiac arrest, when the individual begins to die. Sam Parnia and Bruce Greyson have documented post-flatline NDEs that match up chronologically (e.g., the patient described events in the room when the doctors knew them to have flatlined).
NDEs vary from person-to-person because of each person’s different cultural and religious beliefs. The commonly shared results include detaching from the body, seeing a white light, peacefulness, and/or the purest love ever experienced.
There’s a 7-minute theory that is associated with NDEs. This theory stems from a study by the University of Western Ontario in Canada’s findings that the human brain continues to be active for 7 minutes after they’re pronounced dead. The Frontiers in Aging Neuroscience found and recorded “neural oscillations just before and after the heart stopped while studying a dying human brain.”
Brain activity however doesn’t necessarily mean consciousness or awareness.
The pattern of EEG results indicated that accurate memory recall was positively associated with two memory-related frequency bands, i.e., high alpha and gamma are linked with theta bands and brain wave oscillation in a specific band pattern just before and after the heart stops and is a well-known marker of episodic memory.
Several factors may have contributed to the EEGs activity observed, including the lack of oxygen that may have increased cortical excitability after the patient’s injury and the impact of anesthesia on neuronal oscillations.
Nevertheless, the dying human brain experiences varying activity changes during the transition to death. They also explain that an intricate interplay between high and low-frequency brainwaves occur after neuronal activity gradually ceases and persists until all blood flow to the brain discontinues due to cardiac arrest.
