Scientific work highlights new brain mechanisms.
The last image that we perceive before the brain keeps working is an open scientific question. No individual can describe it with certainty. However, research in neuroscience and cognitive psychology, in particular those relating to so -called imminent death experiences (EMI), give some avenues to understand what is happening in brain activity when approaching end of life. Is it a striking memory, the face of a loved one, or a simple neurobiological phenomenon?
Science shows that what is happening in the brain in the last moments is complex and very subjective. According to the available scientific sources, it is impossible to give a single and final answer to this question. “”The available testimonies often evoke the “body outing”, the “unfolding of his own existence at accelerated speed” as a “film of his life or an overview of memories” and/or the feeling of a “feeling of infinite love, peace and union“” describes Dr. Sam Parnia, resuscitation specialist in his AWARE study on experiences lived by patients in a state of clinical death.
The most frequently reported image in imminent death experiences is the “vision of a tunnel” or bursts of light, a phenomenon that could be linked to the decrease in blood flow to the retina and the visual cortex of the brain, which would concentrate vision at the center, like a tunnel, explains the neurologist Steven Laureys in a conference broadcast on Youtube. While brain oxygenation is reduced, peripheral vision is the first to be affected, a bit like a television whose screen would stretch starting with the edges to end at a point in the center.
If one cannot say with certainty that everyone sees this last image just before the end, the work of the specialists suggest that the last moment is a deeply personal experience, marked by the complexity of the brain. Faced with the unknown, these discoveries reassure us: far from being a nothingness, the end could be a final light experience, filled with peace and memories.
