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giantg2

Has there really never been anyone who died while hooked up to an EEG? That seems unlikely to me.

Edit: liars liars pants on fire. It has been done before.

https://www.sciencealert.com/brain-activity-recorded-as-much...

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Unsure, but dead Atlantic salmon brains have been rigorously studied

Not exactly connected to the discussion, but still worth noting that brain activity sensing can be difficult! (And it also makes me smile, thinking about a fishmonger's prized frozen fish undergoing a brain scan).

https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/scicurious-brain/ignobe...

That was also my response: how, on Earth in complete history of modern medicine (or since invention of EEG), not a single death has been recorded?

I mean if I'm dying I'd like people to take an EEG recording of me to shine some light to science and neurology. It seemed super off to me in many ways... thanks for showing that it really is.

The 1980s movie Brainstorm had that plot. Only instead of a primitive EEG, it was helmet that recorded replayable brain experiences. It hypothesized near-death and early-post death.

Ironically the movie's star Natalie Wood (of West Side Story and Miracle on 34th Street) dies toward the end of the filming (drowning). The movie was a little choppy because they released it without a few intended scenes.

People not uncommonly pass away while having brain activity recorded via EEG (source: I read EEGs in the US). I’m not sure why this article was published.

Read before comment:

> When an 87-year-old patient developed epilepsy, Dr Raul Vicente of the University of Tartu, Estonia and colleagues used continuous electroencephalography (EEG) to detect the seizures and treat the patient. During these recordings, the patient had a heart attack and passed away. This unexpected event allowed the scientists to record the activity of a dying human brain for the first time ever.

Don't be snarky. It's a real question. And apparently the article has incorrect information.

https://www.sciencealert.com/brain-activity-recorded-as-much...

The article I quoted is correct and doesn’t have incorrect information:

> Neuroscientists have recorded the activity of a dying human brain and discovered rhythmic brain wave patterns around the time of death that are similar to those occurring during dreaming, memory recall, and meditation.

>NOW, a study published to Frontiers brings new insight into a possible organizational role of the brain during death and suggests an explanation for vivid life recall in near-death experiences.

The record has already been done, but now the scientists have found what the -already recorded- data could tell/show.

> a new study published to Frontiers in Aging Neuroscience suggests that your brain may remain active and coordinated during and even after the transition to death, and be programmed to orchestrate the whole ordeal.

There's a difference between 'after' and 'during'.

Yes, and you can see in the graphs in my link that they were measures before, during, and after. The "0" in the x axis is the time of death.

Read the article.

I did. I find this unbelievable and was asking if this is really true, or if this is just the first time someone wanted to publish it.

"This unexpected event allowed the scientists to record the activity of a dying human brain for the first time ever."

EEG is not easy to get right, any muscle movement from the neck up scrambles the signal. It's unlikely you'd be able to get a usable recording without planning - usually you'd be trying to save the dying person by any means and you'd do that without any regards to EEG signal quality.

Here we go. Seems like the person writing this article didn't research very well since the link below shows that it has been planned/done before.

https://www.sciencealert.com/brain-activity-recorded-as-much...

> usually you'd be trying to save the dying person by any means

I expect that in the majority of deaths, nobody is making any effort whatsoever to save the dying person.

Why do you expect this?

consider all the people who die in hospice.

Most people die from natural causes, and doctors do not perform heroic measures to try and give them a few more minutes before they succumb.

We're talking about people lying on hospital bed tied to EEG. There are usually going to be people saving that person.

Unless they are lying in bed preparing to die. In which case we could opt to hook them up to an EEG and record it, for the science. It would not be the least bit difficult to get any number of willing volunteers, it would not require some kind of accident. OP was wondering how it could be possible that nobody ever thought to do exactly that.

This has been done, and in fact I believe the article was posted here on HN a couple of years ago.

Unless they want to be terribly pedantic about the fact that these were EEGs, there have been several studies of brain electrical activity during human death. Jens. Drier has done several. Search for “spreading terminal depolarization” or “anoxic depolarization”. They’ve reported a “point of no return” where enough neurons are unable to maintain their transmembrane electrical gradients that the brain can no longer function.

Here’s a link to one of the Drier et al. papers.

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/322479687_Terminal_...

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