A 24-year-old pregnant woman taken off life support in 2014 has become a subject of groundbreaking research into what happens in the brain at the moment of death. After her heart stopped, she was resuscitated but remained unresponsive with severe brain swelling. Three days later, her family decided to end life support, and as her oxygen was turned off, doctors monitored her brain activity.
Professor Jimo Borjigin of the University of Michigan, who has long been intrigued by near-death experiences, analysed the data from this patient. She had previously discovered that rats' brains undergo a surge of neurotransmitters such as serotonin and dopamine after cardiac arrest. She wondered whether similar activity could explain the vivid experiences reported by some cardiac arrest survivors.
Borjigin found that the scientific literature on the dying brain was remarkably sparse. 'To die is such an essential part of life, but we knew almost nothing about the dying brain,' she said. Her research into Patient One, along with other cases, aims to fill that gap.
Near-death experiences are reported by about 10 to 20 per cent of people revived after cardiac arrest, with some claiming to have out-of-body experiences. International surveys suggest one in ten people has had such an experience. While some scientists have taken these accounts as evidence of an afterlife, Borjigin believes they stem from real physiological processes in the brain.
