People who have experienced clinical death often talk about special experiences, the vision of light at the end of the tunnel along which they are walking, about leaving the body, and other difficult to explain phenomena.
First description of clinical death
The first description of clinical death can be considered the Platonic "myth of the Era", told by the philosopher in the tenth book of the "States". According to the plot of the myth, Er, wounded in the war, spent ten days on the battlefield among the dead and woke up only on a funeral pyre, after which he spoke about his near-death experiences. Era's story largely coincides with the stories of our contemporaries who survived clinical death. There is also a posthumous journey through the crevasses (now the most common vision is considered to be a tunnel), and the realization of the need to return back to the body.
Brain work
For a long time, it was believed that during clinical death the brain ceases to function, however, research conducted at the University of Michigan by a group of scientists led by Jimo Borjigi. They conducted their experiments on rats. The researchers found that after the cessation of circulation, the rodent brain not only continued to show signs of activity, but it also worked with greater activity and consistency than during wakefulness and anesthesia. According to Jimo Borjigi, it is the activity of the brain after cardiac arrest that can explain the posthumous visions experienced by almost all people who have experienced a state of clinical death.
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Quantum theory
Another interesting theory about what happens to the brain during clinical death was proposed by the director of the Center for Consciousness Research at the University of Arizona, Dr. Stuart Hameroff, who devoted a lot of time to studying this problem. He and his British colleague physicist Roger Penrose came to the conclusion that what is called the soul is a kind of quantum compounds and is located and functions in the microtubules of brain cells.
According to the researchers, when experiencing clinical death, microtubules lose their quantum state, but the information inside them is not destroyed. She just leaves the body. If the patient is resuscitated, the quantum information is returned to the microtubules
The seemingly far-fetched theory of this theory finds partial confirmation in the study of such phenomena as bird navigation and photosynthesis. A deeper study showed that these processes, in addition to the usual and understandable biochemistry, are also accompanied by inexplicable quantum processes.
Near-death experiences
For the first time the terms "near-death experiences" and "clinical death" were used by the American psychologist Raymond Moody, who wrote the book "Life After Life" in 1975. After the release of the book, which immediately became a bestseller, the number of memories of experiencing a special near-death experience increased dramatically. Many people began to write about their visions, about the tunnel and about the light at its end.
I must say that the scientific community is quite skeptical about such stories. For each of the described processes, doctors have their own explanation.
Visions after the onset of clinical death are considered by many scientists to be hallucinations caused by cerebral hypoxia. Within the framework of this theory, it is believed that people experience near-death experiences not in a state of clinical death, but during the early stages of dying of the brain, during the patient's pre-agony or agony.
During hypoxia experienced by the brain and suppression of the cerebral cortex, the so-called tunnel vision occurs, explaining the vision in front of a light spot.
When a person stops receiving information from the visual analyzer, the foci of excitation of the cerebral cortex maintain a continuous illumination pattern, which can explain the approach to light seen by many.
Scientists explain the feeling of flying or falling by a malfunction of the vestibular analyzer.
All life rushes by
Another common "vision" of people who have experienced clinical death is the feeling that a person sees his whole life rushing before his eyes.
Scientists explain these sensations by the fact that the processes of extinction of the functions of the central nervous system most often begin with younger brain structures. Restoration occurs in the reverse order: the oldest functions begin to work first, and then the functions of the central nervous system that are younger in phylogenetic relation. This may explain why the most emotional and persistent events in life first come to mind in a recovering patient.