Local field potential changes during euthanasia may parallel with near death experience.

During euthanasia, rats that were freely moving showed a brief surge in brain activity across five frequency bands in four brain regions about three minutes after carbon dioxide began, followed by a general decline. Anesthetized rats showed only a steady decline with little rebound. The rebound surge in the freely-moving group may help explain the vivid experiences reported in human near-death experiences, suggesting such phenomena could emerge from the brain's final bursts of activity.

Study at a glance

Abstract

A global experience that every human life meets is death. For several decades, individuals have reported their unique encounters with near-death experience (NDE), which has raised many unanswered questions. In the present experiment, we utilize continuous local field potential (LFP) during the euthanasia process to show the dynamic changes of frequency band power in four distinct regions of the rat brain from intracranially implanted electrodes: the right anterior cingulate cortex (ACC), right thalamus (Po), left trigeminal ganglion (TG), and the right primary visual cortex (V1M). At the end of a separate migraine study, two groups of rats underwent the euthanasia process: freely-moving and anesthetized. The findings from the current study indicate that (1) in the freely-moving group, a rebound spike in LFP was observed in all five frequency bands 3-minutes after CO2 initiation, followed by a general decrease of power; (2) in the anesthetized group, a general decrease of power in all five frequency bands was observed during the CO2 euthanasia, with less rebound activities; (3) high correlation among these five frequency band powers from the four designated brain regions were observed. The rebound surge observed in the freely-moving group may help us understand the NDE phenomenon. Perhaps the profound experiences reported at the end of life emerge during the brain's final surges of activity.