What Happens to the Human Brain 30 Seconds Before Death?

Unfortunately, death is a part of the human life cycle, and every one of us at least once wondered, what could be going through the heads of the people who are about to die. Some say that life will flash before your eyes, but is it really true?

Even though that the topic of death is not very pleasant and some people intentionally avoid it, it is something that will eventually happen to everyone. There are so many questions surrounding death and leaving this world. That is why people from the magazine Vice decided to research this topic. Australian neurologist Cameron Shaw dissected the human brain for this experiment in order to find out, what happens inside it during the last seconds before death.

The brain which was used for this scientific experiment belonged to a woman who, needless to say, agreed to donate it. During the post-mortem, doctor Shaw described its structure in detail and explained, how the composition of the brain influences the process of death.

brain Zdroj: Shutterstock.com According to Shaw, the human brain dies in a few stages – because blood gets to the brain from below, it dies from the top. In the first ten to twenty seconds, we lose the part which is responsible for our character and humanity. After that dies the part which controls our memory and communication, the last to go is the core. Simply speaking, we can say that our personality and character dies just a few seconds before death, but the basic instincts fight till the end. 

Despite the fact that this research didn't answer the question of what exactly is a dying person thinking about, it is very impressive and informative. However, in this time of studies and scientific advances, we can definitely expect to learn much more fascinating and fundamental information about death and the human brain.