The five minutes following a death are not a calm river. Death holds many surprises and even if the brain is “off”, some parts of the body still work. Here’s why.
- In addition to everything described here, one in five people who survive cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR) can describe lucid experiences while near death.
- It’s called a near-death experience, which is characterized by an altered state of consciousness that occurs upon loss of consciousness due to a threat to life, a phenomenon that intrigues scientists.
What is after death? This is a childish question, which is very difficult to answer. One would think that not much is happening and that death consists of a slow extinction of the brain. On the contrary, what happens is actually quite lively. Neurologist Eelco Wijdicks, former chairman of the Critical Care Neurology Division at Mayo Clinic and author of the book Brain Deathquestioned by Discover Magazine, tried to shed some light. Let’s look at it step by step.
Even if the brain dies, the heart can keep beating
During the first minutes post-mortem, brain cells can survive. The heart can continue to beat without its blood supply. The liver, if healthy, can even continue to break down alcohol. And if a doctor hits your leg above the kneecap, you’d probably be able to kick it reflex. In summary, the signs of life persist in you, but without you.
But how is this possible, what continues to function without the brain, without the heart and the lungs, or without all three?
Without your brain, breathing stops, as does blood pressure regulation. But the heart and gastrointestinal system have their own independent pacemakers that continue to work for some time. These keep the liver and kidneys running for a brief period before the organs are starved of blood.
However, even at the point of zero blood pressure – that is, no circulation – the electrical function persists. “You can do an electrocardiogram, says Eelco Wijdicks. The EKG will show there’s still something going on.”
What happens in the brain when we die?
On the level of the brain on the other hand, it is more complicated. Brain function after heart or lung failure is much more uncertain. Residual blood pressure and lung function can mean that individual neurons in the brainstem continue to fire.
Very quickly, however, inside the tight box of your skull, the brain cells that made up your thoughts and memories begin to swell without access to their blood supply. When pressure above or below ruptures and destroys the brainstem, all possible activity ceases.
The good news is that no one witnesses the onset of their own brain damage. “When your blood pressure drops precipitously, you become unconscious, explains the neurologist. You don’t notice anything.”
Yet even after removing a bloodless person from a ventilator, transplant surgeons wait up to five minutes before operating. Pausing is their way of ensuring that all the last brain functions are over, and will never resume, Wijdicks points out.
Involuntary movements of the dead can surprise even doctors
According to him, the most surprising signs of life after death are the involuntary movements mediated by the spinal cord. These include lifting of the arms, flexing of the fingers, and short, slow movements of the upper limbs elicited by external stimuli or a change in oxygenation.
Brain-dead patients awaiting a transplant can show a physiological motor response more than 24 hours after death, which sometimes surprises and frightens even doctors. The rarest and most famous of these responses is the “Lazarus sign,” when someone’s arms briefly rise and then cross over their chest.
Unfortunately for those who would like to have eternal life, even though the heart, brain, gastrointestinal system, spine, and other sources of our life signs are semi-autonomous, their interconnections and interdependence prevail. above all. Without artificial support, when one leaves, the others quickly follow and one dies definitively.