After Death

Brain Activity Has Been Recorded as Much as 10 Minutes After Death

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Doctors in a Canadian intensive care unit stumbled on a very strange case last year – when life support was turned off for four terminal patients, one of them showed persistent brain activity even after they were declared clinically dead.

For more than 10 minutes after doctors confirmed death through a range of observations, including the absence of a pulse and unreactive pupils, the patient appeared to experience the same kind of brain waves (delta wave bursts) we get during deep sleep.

And it’s an entirely different phenomenon to the sudden ‘death wave’ that’s been observed in rats following decapitation.

“In one patient, single delta wave bursts persisted following the cessation of both the cardiac rhythm and arterial blood pressure (ABP),” the team from the University of Western Ontario in Canada reported in March 2017.

They also found that death could be a unique experience for each individual, noting that across the four patients, the frontal electroencephalographic (EEG) recordings of their brain activity displayed few similarities both before and after they were declared dead.

“There was a significant difference in EEG amplitude between the 30-minute period before and the 5-minute period following ABP cessation for the group,” the researchers explained.

Before we get into the actual findings, the researchers are being very cautious about the implications, saying it’s far too early to be talking about what this could mean for our post-death experience, especially considering their sample size is one.

In the absence of any biological explanation for how brain activity could possibly continue several minutes after the heart has stopped beating, the researchers said the scan could be the result of some kind of error at the time of recording.

But they were at a loss to explain what that error could be, as the medical equipment showed no signs of malfunction, meaning the source of the anomaly cannot be confirmed – biologically or otherwise.

“It is difficult to posit a physiological basis for this EEG activity given that it occurs after a prolonged loss of circulation,” the researchers wrote.

“These waveform bursts could, therefore, be artefactual [human error] in nature, although an artefactual source could not be identified.”

You can see the brain scans of the four terminal patients below, showing the moment of clinical death at Time 0, or when the heart had stopped a few minutes after life support had been turned off:

brain-waves-deathsNorton et al. (2017)

The yellow brain activity is what we’re looking for in these scans (view a larger version here), and you can see in three of the four patients, this activity faded away before the heart stopped beating – as much as 10 minutes before clinical death, in the case of patient #2.

But for some reason, patient #4 shows evidence of delta wave bursts for 10 minutes and 38 seconds after their heart had stopped.

The researchers also investigated if a phenomenon known as ‘death waves’ occurred in the patients – in 2011, a separate team observed a burst of brain activity in rat brains about 1 minute after decapitation, suggesting that the brain and the heart have different moments of expiration.

“It seems that the massive wave which can be recorded approximately 1 minute after decapitation reflects the ultimate border between life and death,” researchers from Radboud University in the Netherlands reported at the time.

death-wave

When the Canadian team looked for this phenomenon in their human patients, they came up empty.

“We did not observe a delta wave within 1 minute following cardiac arrest in any of our four patients,” they reported.

If all of this feels frustratingly inconsequential, welcome to the strange and incredibly niche field of necroneuroscience, where no one really knows what’s actually going on.

But what we do know is that very strange things can happen at the moment of death – and afterwards – with a pair of studies from 2016 finding that more than 1,000 genes were still functioning several days after death in human cadavers.

And it wasn’t like they were taking longer than everything else to sputter out – they actually increased their activity following the moment of clinical death.

The big takeaway from studies like these isn’t that we understand more about the post-death experience now than we did before, because the observations remain inconclusive and without biological explanation.

But what they do show is that we’ve got so much to figure out when it comes to the process of death, and how we – and other animals – actually experience it, from our bodies to our brains.

Scientists Caught ‘Undead’ Genes Coming Alive After Death.

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What really happens to us after death? Once a person stops breathing, and their heart ceases to pump blood, they’re what doctors consider “clinically dead.” On a biological level, the eventual decomposition of cells, organs, and brain tissue signal its final and irreversible stages.

But what if that’s not actually the end? Two new studies claim that hundreds of genes actually kept expressing—and, in some cases, become more active—after death occurred. This came as a surprise to the researchers, because forensic pathologists have long suspected that gene activity degrades postmortem, which is why their rate of change is sometimes used to calculate time of death.

According to the lead author of both papers, microbiologist Peter Noble of the University of Washington, the discovery of “undead” genes could help to improve the preservation of organs destined for transplantation. The two studies are currently available on the pre-print server bioRxiv, and it’s important to note that neither have undergone peer review yet.

Noble says his most recent research was inspired by a three-year-old study published in Forensic Science International that discovered a host of genes that remained active in human cadavers for up to 12 hours after death.

In order to investigate the unwinding of the genetic clock, in these latest studies, the team extracted and measured messenger RNA (mRNA) levels in the tissue of recently deceased mice and zebrafish. Since mRNA plays an important role in gene expression, higher levels of this molecule should indicate more genetic activity.

In one of the studies, Noble and his colleagues were able to describe more than 1,000 genes that stayed “alive” postmortem. A total of 515 mice genes continued to operate for up to two days, while 548 zebrafish genes remained functional for an entire four days after death.

“It’s an experiment of curiosity to see what happens when you die,” Noble told Science Magazine.

One of the most surprising findings, however, was that hundreds of genes actually fired up—boosting their activity—within the first 24 hours after the animals had died. Noble suspects that many of them might have been suppressed or shut off by a network of other genes when their host was alive, and only after death were they free to “reawaken.”

The team also found that many of the genes that persisted postmortem are typically active during embryonic development, which led them to theorize that, on a cellular level, newly developing lifeforms might share a lot in common with degenerating corpses.

Other genes they identified were associated with promoting the growth of cancerous cells. These researchers believe the activation of cancer-related genes postmortem could partly explain why many transplant recipients are at higher risk of developing cancer after receiving a new organ, although this has long been attributed to the immunosuppressive drugs they’re typically prescribed. A lot more research still needs to be done.

“Since our results show that the system has not reached equilibrium yet,” one of the studies broadly speculates, “it would be interesting to address the following question: what would happen if we arrested the process of dying by providing nutrients and oxygen to tissues? It might be possible for cells to revert back to life or take some interesting path to differentiating into something new or lose differentiation altogether, such as in cancer.”

In addition to offering potentially valuable new insights into the expiration of vital transplant organs, the researchers hope their findings can also be used by forensic scientists to more accurately pinpoint time of death, which is apparently harder than it sounds.

“The headline of this study is that we can probably get a lot of information about life by studying death,” said Noble.

 

Quantum Theory Proves Consciousness Moves To Another Universe After Death

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A book titled “Biocentrism: How Life and Consciousness Are the Keys to Understanding the Nature of the Universe” has stirred up the Internet, because it contained a notion that life does not end when the body dies, and it can last forever. The author of this publication, scientist Dr. Robert Lanza who was voted the 3rd most important scientist alive by the NY Times, has no doubts that this is possible.

1. BEYOND TIME AND SPACE

Lanza is an expert in regenerative medicine and scientific director of Advanced Cell Technology Company. Before he has been known for his extensive research which dealt with stem cells, he was also famous for several successful experiments on cloning endangered animal species.

But not so long ago, the scientist became involved with physics, quantum mechanics and astrophysics. This explosive mixture has given birth to the new theory of biocentrism, which the professor has been preaching ever since. Biocentrism teaches that life and consciousness are fundamental to the universe. It is consciousness that creates the material universe, not the other way around.

Lanza points to the structure of the universe itself, and that the laws, forces, and constants of the universe appear to be fine-tuned for life, implying intelligence existed prior to matter. He also claims that space and time are not objects or things, but rather tools of our animal understanding. Lanza says that we carry space and time around with us “like turtles with shells.” meaning that when the shell comes off (space and time), we still exist.

The theory implies that death of consciousness simply does not exist. It only exists as a thought because people identify themselves with their body. They believe that the body is going to perish, sooner or later, thinking their consciousness will disappear too. If the body generates consciousness, then consciousness dies when the body dies. But if the body receives consciousness in the same way that a cable box receives satellite signals, then of course consciousness does not end at the death of the physical vehicle. In fact, consciousness exists outside of constraints of time and space. It is able to be anywhere: in the human body and outside of it. In other words, it is non-local in the same sense that quantum objects are non-local.

Lanza also believes that multiple universes can exist simultaneously. In one universe, the body can be dead. And in another it continues to exist, absorbing consciousness which migrated into this universe. This means that a dead person while traveling through the same tunnel ends up not in hell or in heaven, but in a similar world he or she once inhabited, but this time alive. And so on, infinitely. It’s almost like a cosmic Russian doll afterlife effect.

2. MULTIPLE WORLDS

This hope-instilling, but extremely controversial theory by Lanza has many unwitting supporters, not just mere mortals who want to live forever, but also some well-known scientists. These are the physicists and astrophysicists who tend to agree with existence of parallel worlds and who suggest the possibility of multiple universes. Multiverse (multi-universe) is a so-called scientific concept, which they defend. They believe that no physical laws exist which would prohibit the existence of parallel worlds.

The first one was a science fiction writer H.G. Wells who proclaimed in 1895 in his story “The Door in the Wall”. And after 62 years, this idea was developed by Dr. Hugh Everett in his graduate thesis at the Princeton University. It basically posits that at any given moment the universe divides into countless similar instances. And the next moment, these “newborn” universes split in a similar fashion. In some of these worlds you may be present: reading this article in one universe, or watching TV in another.

The triggering factor for these multiplyingworlds is our actions, explained Everett. If we make some choices, instantly one universe splits into two with different versions of outcomes.

In the 1980s, Andrei Linde, scientist from the Lebedev’s Institute of physics, developed the theory of multiple universes. He is now a professor at Stanford University. Linde explained: Space consists of many inflating spheres, which give rise to similar spheres, and those, in turn, produce spheres in even greater numbers, and so on to infinity. In the universe, they are spaced apart. They are not aware of each other’s existence. But they represent parts of the same physical universe.

The fact that our universe is not alone is supported by data received from the Planck space telescope. Using the data, scientists have created the most accurate map of the microwave background, the so-called cosmic relic background radiation, which has remained since the inception of our universe. They also found that the universe has a lot of dark recesses represented by some holes and extensive gaps.

Theoretical physicist Laura Mersini-Houghton from the North Carolina University with her colleagues argue: the anomalies of the microwave background exist due to the fact that our universe is influenced by other universes existing nearby. And holes and gaps are a direct result of attacks on us by neighboring universes.

3. SOUL

So, there is abundance of places or other universes where our soul could migrate after death, according to the theory of neo-biocentrism. But does the soul exist? Is there any scientific theory of consciousness that could accommodate such a claim? According to Dr. Stuart Hameroff, a near-death experience happens when the quantum information that inhabits the nervous system leaves the body and dissipates into the universe. Contrary to materialistic accounts of consciousness, Dr. Hameroff offers an alternative explanation of consciousness that can perhaps appeal to both the rational scientific mind and personal intuitions.

See also: Russian Scientist Photographs Soul Leaving Body And Quantifies Chakras. You Must See This!

Consciousness resides, according to Stuart and British physicist Sir Roger Penrose, in the microtubules of the brain cells, which are the primary sites of quantum processing. Upon death, this information is released from your body, meaning that your consciousness goes with it. They have argued that our experience of consciousness is the result of quantum gravity effects in these microtubules, a theory which they dubbed orchestrated objective reduction (Orch-OR).

Consciousness, or at least proto-consciousness is theorized by them to be a fundamental property of the universe, present even at the first moment of the universe during the Big Bang. “In one such scheme proto-conscious experience is a basic property of physical reality accessible to a quantum process associated with brain activity.”

Our souls are in fact constructed from the very fabric of the universe – and may have existed since the beginning of time. Our brains are just receivers and amplifiers for the proto-consciousness that is intrinsic to the fabric of space-time. So is there really a part of your consciousness that is non-material and will live on after the death of your physical body?

Dr Hameroff told the Science Channel’s Through the Wormhole documentary: “Let’s say the heart stops beating, the blood stops flowing, the microtubules lose their quantum state. The quantum information within the microtubules is not destroyed, it can’t be destroyed, it just distributes and dissipates to the universe at large”. Robert Lanza would add here that not only does it exist in the universe, it exists perhaps in another universe. If the patient is resuscitated, revived, this quantum information can go back into the microtubules and the patient says “I had a near death experience”

He adds: “If they’re not revived, and the patient dies, it’s possible that this quantum information can exist outside the body, perhaps indefinitely, as a soul.”

This account of quantum consciousness explains things like near-death experiences, astral projection, out of body experiences, and even reincarnation without needing to appeal to religious ideology. The energy of your consciousness potentially gets recycled back into a different body at some point, and in the mean time it exists outside of the physical body on some other level of reality, and possibly in another universe.

ROBERT LANZA ON BIOCENTRISM: