14 DAY TRIAL // A study published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences argues that, contrary to popular belief, the visions some people claim to have had when they came close to dying may not be merely the product of these individuals' imagination.
Researchers at the University of Michigan have found that, shortly after the heart stops working, the brain goes into overdrive, even if it no longer receives blood.
They theorize that this surge in brain activity is what must be held accountable for so-called near-death experiences and for the supposed paranormal visions some people come face to face with.
According to The Telegraph, scientists base their claims on data collected while carrying out a series of experiments on rats.
Thus, researchers first anesthetized nine rodents and then made them undergo cardiac arrest. While the rats were busy dying, they closely monitored their brains.
It was discovered that, for a period of time of roughly 30 seconds after the cardiac arrest had been induced, the rodents all experienced a noteworthy increase in brain activity.
Oddly enough, this brain activity was not sporadic, as some might expect, but highly synchronized, the same source informs us.
This suggests that, during these 30 seconds, the rats' brains were not just aroused, but also conscious.
Later on, scientists carried out another series of experiments which boiled down to subjecting rats to asphyxiation and keeping a close eye on their patterns of brain activity.
The results they got were not all that different from the ones obtained when making the animals suffer cardiac arrest.
“This study tells us that reduction of oxygen or both oxygen and glucose during cardiac arrest can stimulate brain activity that is characteristic of conscious processing,” study author Jimo Borjigin, Ph.D explains.
“At near-death, many known electrical signatures of consciousness exceeded levels found in the waking state, suggesting that the brain is capable of well-organized electrical activity during the early stage of clinical death,” specialist George Mashour further details.