I stumbled across this paper:
and it got me thinking about the difference between memory
and reality. Can we really say there is one?
The paper showed that there was limited brain activity after
the threshold of what is considered “living” had been crossed in cats. After
all bodily functions have ceased and the brain is considered dead, there is
still a small amount of time where brain activity occurs. This activity occurred
primarily in regions of the brain associated with memory. Other papers have
shown that up to six minutes of brain activity is present after all bodily
functions have ceased. In my experience, dreams that span only a minute of
waking time can feel like hours or even days in the dream. So how much could we
remember in those six minutes of brain activity after “death”? What if
everything I have experienced in my life so far is just memories of what
already happened and I have actually been dead for two minutes? Is it then
possible to truly live in the past, and be alive only in memory?
There is something enticing in the idea of 6 minutes of brain activity after death. Death is commonly something that humans fear, as it is something that we do not understand and have a difficult time studying. Even dreams are arduous to understand. Is the brain activity during these 6 minutes that of a dream state? Or is it reduced brain activity, similar to the activity of 'brain dead' state?
ReplyDeleteThe great thing is, no one knows. I am so much more intrigued by studies of the brain because at the end of the day, most scientists admit that they truly know nothing of the brain; it is the most integral part of our existence, and yet we have barely scraped the surface in our journey of understanding it.
But these 6 minutes, which to the person experiencing them could seem like months, could be the most interior moment a human has with his or her self. Six minutes before you stop existing, six minutes of uninterrupted thought and memory.