People who experience near-death events often tell stories of out-of-body encounters: a burst of white light, entire lives flashing from beneath eyelids and various otherworldly emotions.
Now, scientists think they have pinpointed the reason behind this intense cranial activity, in a new study that shows a rush of mental electricity occurs in people who are on the precipice of death.
According to the BBC, scientists at the University of Michigan looked at rats that were just about to die, and found that the animals experienced a noted spike in consciousness immediately before taking their last breath.
Lead author for the study Dr. Kimo Borjigin reported that these new findings run counter to the age-old notion that people who are near-death go mentally blank.
"A lot of people thought that the brain after clinical death was inactive or hypoactive, with less activity than the waking state," he told the BBC, "and we show that is definitely not the case. If anything, it is much more active during the dying process than even the waking state."
Scientists watched nine sickly rats right before they died, and reported that during the 30-second time frame following the end of a heartbeat, there was an increase in gamma waves-vibrations within the brain that run on a high frequency.
Dr. Borjigin told the BBC that humans could encounter a similar occurrence, and that this spike in brainwave oscillation might be the reason behind chronicles of white light or lifetime visions.
"This can give us a framework to begin to explain these," he said. "The fact they see light perhaps indicates the visual cortex in the brain is highly activated-and we have evidence to suggest this might be the case, because we have seen increased gamma in area of the brain that is right on top of the visual cortex."
Dr. Jason Braithwaite, a scientist at the University of Birmingham, described this cranial episode as the mind's "last hurrah."
"This is a very neat demonstration of an idea that's been around for a long time: that under certain unfamiliar and confusing circumstances-like near-death-the brain becomes overstimulated and hyper-excited," he stated.
