Near-death experience explained!

A remarkable research in the neuroscience has provided some scientific basis for our long held beliefs about the near-death experiences.

 Many survivors narrate near-death experience as going through a tunnel in the extraterrestrial land adorned with flower valley, intense white light, meeting with long deceased loved ones, talking to them, appearance of angels and much more. 

Near death survivors narrate passing through a tunnel
Image courtsey: iStock.com

The scientists have wondered if brain activity in a near-death state can explain the near-death experience? What actually happens in the brain immediately after the death?

The general belief is that during a cardiac arrest the brain activity goes down or stops, so there seems no connection between near-death experience and brain activity.

Different brain waves associated with the brain activity in different states

Image courtesy: Art and Science of Meditation

But this belief challenges our understanding of brain and so far there is no clear scientific evidence of the neuro-physiological activity in brain during near-death state after a cardiac arrest, until now.

In a first of its kind study the neuroscientist at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor performed a systematic study of the neurophysiology of the dying brain after a cardiac arrest in rats.  

The scientists found that all the animals studied invariably displayed a short-lived but highly synchronized and heightened brain activity in the first 30 seconds of cardiac arrest. This suggests that “the mammalian brain can, albeit paradoxically, generate neural correlates of heightened conscious processing at near-death”.

The study has been published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, USA. The original article can be accessed here http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2013/08/08/1308285110.abstract

So how does this finding relate with the near-death experience? The researchers reasoned that near-death experience is nothing but increased brain activity and conscious processing, which could possibly be the source of highly vivid and lucid conscious experiences during clinical death after the blood stops flowing to the brain.

In the state of cardiac arrest there is progressive decrease of oxygen as well as of glucose, the main ingredients required for brain to survive and function, which induces characteristic conscious processing in brain resulting in heightened brain activity. It could be equated with the survival instinct of a dying brain.

Although more detailed studies are needed to fully understand this phenomenon, the study does provide “a scientific framework to explain the highly lucid and realer-than-real mental experiences reported by near-death survivors”.

Why do people commit suicide?

Human beings are definitely highest evolved animal species on the planet earth. The advantage that we get over our nearest ancestors is because we have well developed brain, which helped us become intelligent and civilized unlike other species.

Our brain has given us all the modern technologies and objects that makes our lives easy and comfortable. Brain has developed the concepts of modern science such as laws of physics and chemistry and biology, it helps run such a big and vast group of people that we call humanity on this planet despite many internal and external threats that we face on daily basis, with the potential to wipe out our existence.

The same brain also becomes a liability for some of our species members. If not controlled, the brain devises all kind of tactics to control the body and propel it to perform many functions which are averse to the very concept of a civilized world. Although individual’s body performs anti-social activities such as crimes like murder, rape, dacoity and burglary but the actor who plans and executes these acts is actually his brain. So much so that brain directly or indirectly sometimes causes the destruction of the very body in which it resides and we blame the individual that he has committed suicide.

According to an article published in 2012 in the International journal of environmental research and public health nearly 800,000 to a million people commit suicide every year and die. Suicide is the 10th leading cause of death worldwide. The rate of suicide is higher in men than in women, with ratio of 3- to 4-times more.

Why do people commit suicide? It is the question which everybody asks after such incidents are reported. There may be enumerable reasons and perspective when one tries to answer that question. The perspective of an expert such as psychiatrist and medical counselor will be far removed from an ordinary person on the street. One will find problem in how the person could not bear the pain of pervasive suffering that a depression creates, to as simple as that ‘he wanted to escape from all his problems that he thought were impossible for solve’.

There are other reasons such as psychotic, impulsive, philosophical yearning to depart, sense of guilt, and some mental illness such as schizophrenia. Nevertheless, in all these conditions eventually it is the person’s brain which is to be blamed.

The experts who study brain and suicide have been trying to understand this emotional negativity that brain creates. Out of many chemicals in the brain, experts associate this tendency with the serotonin. It is a neurotransmitter that helps transmit the neural signals and also sooths the mind. Studies indicate a link between suicide and the low level of serotonin in the brain. In some suicide victims, the brain has been found to retain this neurotransmitter by not allowing its absorption by the neural synapses. This results in calming effect and that is how the anti-depressant works. It is know that greater dose of anti-depressant propel suicidal thoughts. However, serotonin levels alone cannot lead someone to suicide.

However, experts believe that it is the brain which creates an alternative world in the mind of a suicidal person. In that alternative world that particular person is the most miserable, inferior and unwanted. He sees no use or meaning of his life, what so ever. There is no future for which he can live, no people whom they can count as their own friend or accomplish. The life for him becomes meaningless, and not worth living even for a second. It’s the whirlwind of robust negative emotion that paints the whole world dark on the canvas of his brain. It becomes an intense painful situation where the pain of harming own body becomes minimal, in fact that pain becomes a pleasurable event, a toll to escape all pervasive suffering. In that fit of negative emotion a person decides to end his life that his brain pictures as miserable, and unwanted by others around him.

For the other normal people, or brains for that matter, who are not in that state of whirlwind thinking, the act to commit suicide is illogical, irrational and cowardice. They would think how one can’t see the good things in life, future possibilities, happiness and instinct to live. However, many who would think in positive way have also gone through that negativity at times which creates the thought of suicide or even have successfully committed it.

The experts believe that suicide does not solve any problem rather it creates many other problems. It devastates the families and people close to the victim, fills with pain and intense felling of guild, anger and regrets that haunts them for many years. The patients who suffer from illness of brain should be constantly treated, monitored and counseled so that the web of negativity that their brain creates can be busted and their precious lives can be saved. Many lives have been saved by practicing these routines.