Scientific knowledge brought to public knowledge the understanding that when a person is in a coma, they are unaware of what is happening around them, that is, they are totally unconscious.
Nonetheless, a study recently conducted by the University of Michigan, in the United States, tracked brain activity that indicated consciousness in people who were in a coma minutes before their deaths. With this, it is possible to say that, technically, these individuals “woke up to die”.
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"We saw potential neurosignatures of consciousness," said neuroscientist Jimo Borjigin, who led the study. “Being able to emerge from a dysfunctional brain during the process of dying is a neuroscientific paradox,” said the scholar.
To carry out the study, Borjigin's team started to monitor, with the authorization of their relatives, four patients hospitalized in a coma at the University hospital. Monitoring was done using EEG (Electroencephalogram), a type of test that observes spontaneous neural activity.
The four people were totally unconscious, but at the moment they died, the devices captured the signatures of brain activity, which shocked the scientists who followed the process.
It is worth mentioning that, according to the University of Michigan and Professor Jimo Borjigin, the four people observed in the study had their life support withdrawn, also with the authorization of their family members. As a result, all four suffered cardiorespiratory arrests and died.
The study report points out that after the removal of the support equipment there was an increase in the frequency heart rate of patients and an increase in the frequency of gamma waves, which are brain synapses associated with conscience.
In addition, the captured activity was related to the so-called “hot area” of the brain, located at the back of the organ and which is responsible for dreams, hallucinations and other phenomena. With this, Jimo Borjigin points out that it is as if the patients had “internally awakened” at the time of their deaths.
Finally, Jimo Borjigin stated that there is no way of knowing what kind of specific phenomenon the brain of people in a coma was producing at the time of death.
“It could have been the activation of the inner secret consciousness, bringing back memories of the past, it could have been a brain survival mechanism, anyway, we don't know”, he said.
Graduated in History and Human Resources Technology. Passionate about writing, today he lives the dream of acting professionally as a Content Writer for the Web, writing articles in different niches and different formats.