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Study suggests that the brain is still aware for a period after the heart stops

B

Biske

Member
I would have to imagine at that point there is some pretty heavy shock and fuckery going on and it's some kind of hazy consciousness rather some clear presence of mind.

Like being half awake or something as you fade away.

Specially depending on how you die, if you just had some massive heart attack, pretty sure you aren't calmly thinking "oh wow I just died look at this"

More like "oh fuck oh no!!!!what's going on? Huh? Ah god the pain!!!!" Or whatever



In any case it's only however long until you are actually dead and then forget it all and stop existing anyways, so it's not really scary to me.
 
R

Rockandrollclown

lookwhatyou'vedone
Garmonbozia said:
bfaD9H7.gif
Click to expand...

Six to twelve minutes!!!!
 
P

Prodigal Son

Member
Not actually that surprising when you get into the meat of it. This isn't an afterlife. Its just saying your brain doesn't really die immediately when your heart stops beating. How long could your brain go on for though? That's the juicy bit
 
T

Tadaima

Member
Biske said:
Specially depending on how you die, if you just had some massive heart attack, pretty sure you aren't calmly thinking "oh wow I just died look at this"
Click to expand...

Heart attacks aren't over in a flash though, are they? I guess in that instance, the shock is instant (while still "alive"), continuing slightly beyond "death"?
 
O

ogbg

Member
It must depend on how quickly the brain is starved of blood. I mean people go unconscious from lack of oxygen to the brain even with their heads still on. I think the guillotine is probably a special case because the arteries are cut clean cross-wise which allows them to contract and keep the blood in there. If they were to be cut lengthwise it might be a different story.
 
RoadHazard

RoadHazard

Gold Member
Randam said:
Title is misleading.

They don't say the mind stays conscious for ever.
Click to expand...

Yeah, it's gonna be like 30 seconds or something. I think that's about how long people who get decapitated have been shown to remain conscious.

Also, "people are aware they’re dead" is such sensationalist bullcrap. That's not what's going on here, what's actually happening is that the person doesn't actually die until the brain stops working. Your heart stopping does not mean you're instantly dead. "People die a bit later than they appear to" would be more accurate.
 
Auto_aim1

Auto_aim1

MeisaMcCaffrey
Razorback PT said:
Heart-stopping ≠ death.

You're dead when your brain dies.
Click to expand...
Heart-stopping is death.

Brain dies your body is still alive. That's how organ donations are possible in the first place.


When the heart stops, it takes some time for the brain to completely be devoid of oxygen. You have like 5 to 10 minutes to revive the heart before serious brain damage occurs. I guess maybe it's possible to hear stuff in that time or whatever.
 
D

Dr.Guru of Peru

played the long game
We already know that cardiac death is not brain death, so it's not surprising that patients who were being actively resuscitated and maintained adequate brain perfusion to have a good neurological outcome were able to recall some details of their resuscitation. The study is a quite limited in its generalizability: most people who die aren't successfully resuscitated.
 
A

Air

Banned
While this is something I personally believe, I think we should be very, very cautious about the scientific claims of the article
 
R

Roubjon

Member
What if that burst of energy when you die slows down your perception of time so it feels like it lasts forever? Like when time feels like it's slowing down when something scary or dangerous happens.

Being trapped in your death forever.
 
C

CDX

Member
Well, to me at least, it doesn't seem crazy to think the brain could still be active for a short period of time after your heart stops.
 
phisheep

phisheep

NeoGAF's Chief Barrister
Roubjon said:
What if that burst of energy when you die slows down your perception of time so it feels like it lasts forever? Like when time feels like it's slowing down when something scary or dangerous happens.

Being trapped in your death forever.
Click to expand...

For an upbeat take on this, read Jorge Luis Borges short story The Secret Miracle.
 
B

boiled goose

good with gravy
Ingeniero said:
But does it stop short after?
Or is your consciousness trapped inside your coffin for ever?
Holyshit.
Click to expand...

...

How can you be conscious when your brain completely dies? Come on son.

All this is saying is you're not completely dead when your heart stops. Not being conscious after death. Then you weren't really dead yet!
 
B

boiled goose

good with gravy
Auto_aim1 said:
Not really. It's basically like a state of coma. If the heart is working the brain has a chance of coming back.

Heart failure = death.
Click to expand...

No.

Heart failure will likely lead to death. But "you" is in the brain. Not the heart. You could artificially pump blood to brain.
 
F

Finale Fireworker

Member
FiggyCal said:
Near death experiences are really interesting.
Click to expand...

I knew somebody who had a near-death experience when she was a late-teenager. Her and her friend were speeding and drove straight off the road when they missed a turn and hit a particularly menacing tree. The car was totaled and they both very nearly died.

The person I knew was the passenger. She said she wasn't even aware they were speeding. They were listening to the Riot album by Paramore. She was really into it and singing along and the impact of the accident was extremely sudden to her. She had zero awareness it was about to happen until they actually crashed.

She described having her entire life pass before her eyes - just like the cliche - and even though it was instantaneous it was a "deep instant." She felt like that single second reached deeper beneath a different axis of time and she was able to fully re-experience her entire existence in the moment that flashed after the impact. Then she lost consciousness.

In the wake of the accident and during her recovery, she started to realize she now had two memories of everything that ever happened. There was the original memory from when she first experienced them and the second memory from when she experienced them again during the accident. She felt like she lived her entire life twice, in equal proportion, and had double memories of everything that happened before the crash.

So every time she remembered something from her life before her accident, she would have this sickening deja vu feeling. She described it as a 3D image improperly aligned. There's an image underneath in blue and the same image on top in red, but they don't line up right. They're askew. So the blue memory is all the normal feelings and emotions she felt when the memory originally happened, but the red memory only conjured up feelings of extreme terror. She said it was like looking at old photographs and noticing the grim reaper in every photo. And as you flip through the photo album and see yourself as a baby, and as a little kid, and graduating high school, there is a cloaked figure you never noticed before that seems to be as much the subject of the photo as you are.

But worst of all, she remembered her death.

Her double memories end abruptly at the accident. Everything after the accident she remembers normally. So, to her, this termination point feels like her death. So she remembers a timeline of her life where she was killed at 19. When she thinks about herself, there is a prevailing and nagging thought that she was killed in the accident.

And she remembers that girl. She knows that girl. That girl was her. That girl is dead.

She can't listen to Paramore anymore because it brings up too many memories. Twice as many as they should and some that abruptly end. She doesn't like to revisit the moment she went askew.

EDIT: I added this a little later in the thread. I'm including it here for cohesiveness since people seem really chilled by her experience.
Finale Fireworker said:
When she originally told me the story, I asked her what she meant by "remembering her death." She had a hard time describing it. She had to compare it to other things, using similes and metaphors, to help put what it felt like into words.

She started by saying that she knows she lost consciousness. She remembers being pinned inside the car. She remembers being sideways. She remembers her vision going black - which she described as her POV being quickly burned from the center outward. Like her field of vision was a piece of paper that swiftly disintegrated to reveal nothing but blackness behind it. She says this feeling is scary, but she knows that this was her losing consciousness and not her being killed. She knows this wasn't her death because she was consciously fading out, and even after her vision went black. She remembers being disoriented. She remembers being shocked. She remembers thinking to herself "what's happening?"

This is her "blue memory."

Her "red memory" plays out differently. She remembers being pinned inside the car. She remembers being sideways. But her vision doesn't go black. It stays completely clear, crisp, and vivid. But there is no consciousness. No background thought. There is no disorientation, there is no shock, and there is no train of thought. To her, this final image is not the field of view of a living thing. It's like the recording of a video camera that was knocked over. But there's no director. There's nobody behind it. It just lays there recording until it runs out of tape. Then it stops.

That's how she remembers dying.
Click to expand...
Click to expand...
 
H

HylianTom

Banned
Blue Submarine No. 6 said:
My mother, an RN for more than 40 years with extensive Emergency and IC experience, has maintained this as long as I remember... She says that experiences she's had suggest to her that a person or animal may be "aware" for as many as two minutes after "death"... and she thinks that hearing is the last thing to go... I've been with her when she had to put down a couple of her pets, and she talks softly to the dog "good girl, it's alright, mommy loves you" etc. for a couple minutes after the pulse stops in case they linger...
Click to expand...
When we put down our last dog, we sang to him his favorite song during his last few moments, and after he was gone. Now I’m glad that we did this.

😭
 
M

mjc

Member
Finale Fireworker said:
I knew somebody who had a near-death experience when she was a late-teenager. Her and her friend were speeding and drove straight off the road when they missed a turn and hit a particularly menacing tree. The car was totaled and they both very nearly died.

The person I knew was the passenger. She said she wasn't even aware they were speeding. They were listening to the Riot Album by Paramore. She was really into it and singing along and the impact of the accident was extremely sudden to her. She had zero awareness it was about to happen until they actually crashed.

She described having her entire life pass before her eyes - just like the cliche - and even though it was instantaneous it was a "deep instant." She felt like that single second in time reached deeper beneath a different axis of time and she was able to fully re-experience her entire existence in the moment that flashed after the impact. Then she lost consciousness.

In the wake of the accident and during her recovery, she started to realize she now had two memories of everything that ever happened. There was the original memory from when she first experienced them and the second memory from when she experienced them again during the accident. She felt like she lived her entire life twice, in equal proportion, and had double memories of everything that happened before the crash.

So every time she remembered something from her life before her accident, she would have this sickening deja vu feeling. She described it as a 3D image improperly aligned. There's an image underneath in blue and the same image on top in red, but they don't line up right. They're askew. So the blue memory is all the normal feelings and emotions she felt when the memory originally happened, but the red memory only conjured up feelings of extreme terror. She said it was like looking at old photographs and noticing the grim reaper in every photo. And as you flip through the photo album and see yourself as a baby, and as a little kid, and graduating high school, there is a cloaked figure you never noticed before that seems to be as much the subject of the photo as you are.

But worst of all, she remembered her death.

Her double memories end abruptly at the accident. Everything after the accident she remembers normally. So, to her, this termination points feels like her death. So she remembers a timeline of her life where she was killed at 19. When she thinks about herself, there is a prevailing and nagging thought that she was killed in the accident.

And she remembers that girl. She knows that girl. That girl was her. That girl is dead.
Click to expand...

Whoa...whoa.

I know what she's describing about time slowing, it felt like that when I spun out once on ice. Somehow my car and I avoided any damage but there was a feeling during like I was just on a ride and I had a bit of time to accept that. Freaky stuff.
 
Liljagare

Liljagare

Member
We perceive events passing because of time passing, at some point in time, your brain will cease to know that time passes. That has to be one helluva ride for your consciousness, and, you probarly never really experience your own final death "moment".

Going to be a cool experience I reckon, better think happy thoughts.. :)
 
N

Neverender

Member
I know this is really “I’m 14 and this is deep” but I always have this thought about the final moments before death and how you can’t really experience them because you’ll be dead in a few seconds and therefore not able to recall that experience.

Edit: as I type this out I realise how stupid it sounds.
 
O

oti

Banned
Finale Fireworker said:
I knew somebody who had a near-death experience when she was a late-teenager. Her and her friend were speeding and drove straight off the road when they missed a turn and hit a particularly menacing tree. The car was totaled and they both very nearly died.

The person I knew was the passenger. She said she wasn't even aware they were speeding. They were listening to the Riot Album by Paramore. She was really into it and singing along and the impact of the accident was extremely sudden to her. She had zero awareness it was about to happen until they actually crashed.

She described having her entire life pass before her eyes - just like the cliche - and even though it was instantaneous it was a "deep instant." She felt like that single second in time reached deeper beneath a different axis of time and she was able to fully re-experience her entire existence in the moment that flashed after the impact. Then she lost consciousness.

In the wake of the accident and during her recovery, she started to realize she now had two memories of everything that ever happened. There was the original memory from when she first experienced them and the second memory from when she experienced them again during the accident. She felt like she lived her entire life twice, in equal proportion, and had double memories of everything that happened before the crash.

So every time she remembered something from her life before her accident, she would have this sickening deja vu feeling. She described it as a 3D image improperly aligned. There's an image underneath in blue and the same image on top in red, but they don't line up right. They're askew. So the blue memory is all the normal feelings and emotions she felt when the memory originally happened, but the red memory only conjured up feelings of extreme terror. She said it was like looking at old photographs and noticing the grim reaper in every photo. And as you flip through the photo album and see yourself as a baby, and as a little kid, and graduating high school, there is a cloaked figure you never noticed before that seems to be as much the subject of the photo as you are.

But worst of all, she remembered her death.

Her double memories end abruptly at the accident. Everything after the accident she remembers normally. So, to her, this termination points feels like her death. So she remembers a timeline of her life where she was killed at 19. When she thinks about herself, there is a prevailing and nagging thought that she was killed in the accident.

And she remembers that girl. She knows that girl. That girl was her. That girl is dead.

She can't listen to Paramore anymore because it brings up too many memories. Twice as many as they should, and some that abruptly end. She doesn't like to revisit the moment she went askew.
Click to expand...

...dude
 
F

FyreWulff

Member
this is one of the reasons why i want to be cremated

on the off chance that there's some sort of weird fucking awareness for a while after death, i'd rather hit fast forward
 
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