[bsmitty5000]

> “Something we may learn from this research is: although our loved ones have their eyes closed and are ready to leave us to rest, their brains may be replaying some of the nicest moments they experienced in their lives.”

Note to self: die in a way that keeps my brain intact for a few seconds after death.

[giantg2]

They're just theorizing here. Generally that would be something to say to console someone, just like "They're in a better place". It could be just as likely that if the person had strong memories of traumatic experiences, they could be remembering them.

[awb]

Yeah, it sounds like the researcher is looking at this data through the lens of consoling surviving family members.

> “As a neurosurgeon, I deal with loss at times. It is indescribably difficult to deliver the news of death to distraught family members,” he said.

[xwdv]

It seems likely to me it depends on the person dying.

If you always saw yourself as a victim, if you wallowed in the trauma and abuse that life gave you, then your final moments are likely spent remembering all that trauma and how shitty and unfair your life was, and convincing yourself you’re better off dead and gone far away from this world. A crude way to die.

[wing-_-nuts]

Whatever the truth, this is a pretty unempathetic view of trauma. People don't wallow in it, some simply don't escape it.

[dkural]

One my fears is that as I am dying my brain will get stuck in a subjective time loop, in essence, the last 30 seconds will subjectively stretch out to a thousand years... but with only a handful of repeating feelings and sensations. What if due to other physical discomfort, your memories replayed are those of regret or other unpleasant sensations? (similar to a "bad trip").

[Andrew_nenakhov]

Not too likely. Did you ever experience a moment subjectivity stretched a thousand years? If no, why do you think there is a special mechanics for the event of system shutdown?

If anything, any sensation or thought requires energy. Experiencing 1000x or 100000x more sensations in the same space of time takes 1000x/100000x amount of energy, and it's not like your dying organism has hidden last reservoir of energy to power your brain activity.

Did I comfort you?

[benibela]

That reminds me of a old comment on Reddit.

The poster wrote that he got assaulted by a football player, fell on the ground, and somehow hurt his head.

Then he met a girl, they got married after two years and then had a child. Another two years later they had another child. He also had a great job, and bought a house, where he lived with his wife and family for like 10 years.

One day he was sitting on the couch, looked at a lamp, and noticed that the lamp did not look right. The perspective was off. He stared at the lamp for three days. Then he realized that is not a real lamp. Nothing was real.

Then he woke up, still laying on the ground where he had hurt his head 15 minutes ago.

[bumby]

I think the distinction is the subjective perception that time has stretched out a thousand years. It's not that time has literally dilated, just that our "normal" perception of time has changed. Perceived time dilation occurs under certain drugs (to include those endogenous to the human body) and the OP thought has been something that has occurred to me (and others) as well. IIRC, the movie American Beauty suggests it in the last scenes.

[Andrew_nenakhov]

Subjective perception still requires energy to percept. Thus, to perceive time dilation your brain needs more energy to process it, but there is no a source of such energy.

[bumby]

Fair enough, I see what you're getting at. But I think there is an important distinction: it's not the claim that actual perception goes on forever, but the subjective experience dilates to seem like it. It's quite a bit like the other discussion between the "easy" and "hard" problem of consciousness. You're speaking to the "easy" problem (how neurology correlates to subjective experience), where the "hard" problem is the measurement of how the actual experience feels to the observer.

There is still energy at the moment of death (e.g., your ATP doesn't instantaneously disappear), meaning for a few brief instances, there is still energy to perceive and during these instances, the subjective experience of time may differ from normal day-to-day experience. It's not to say perception actually goes on forever, but the subjective experience of time feels like it does (or, at least changes our normal perception of time).

[kingkawn]

Don’t worry, even if there is a period of bad trip it will be dwarfed by the subjectively infinite relaxation into oblivion

[konart]

Except you will never know because you are not the observer of this oblivion unlike that of a bad trip.

[kingkawn]

You are until you aren’t

[datavirtue]

I have always wondered if our last DMT moments were perceived as timeless. People imagine darkness but seem to forget that our minds reconstruct all of reality in real time. So you could conceivably live another life in your last moments.

[hatchnyc]

I am afraid that the last few minutes of life will be like a confusing and disoriented nightmare. That has always seemed to me to be the most likely scenario as your brain is shutting down.

[tayo42]

If its like psychedelics I don't think it would be. Which i think the initial parts could be similar since they decrease blood flow to the brain, seems the same as dieing? IME there is nothing to fear, fear (emotions in general) is a higher level concept and those seem to be the first thing fall apart. Thoughts about thoughts, self identity, are made up to make living and thinking easier.

my guess is you slowly transition to simple machine with sense inputs and outputs until it all shuts down.

[awb]

Have you ever been knocked out or disoriented? It's mostly confusing.

Death could be like that too. A flood of signals you're unfamiliar with and a lack of signals you're used to having.

It probably depends on how much warning you have and your willingness / readiness to pass as well.

Kind of like if you're really tired and can't wait to fall asleep vs. scared and trying to keep yourself awake.

[goldenkey]

Reading your comment gives me such an unsettling feeling. You nailed it. I think death is the ultimate form of discomfort. Our bodies refuse to let us die peacefully under most circumstances. They fight with every last breath and every last heartbeat, to keep going. And all the usual signals of comfort are gone, with one just left bare before the universe. Think motion sickness + nausea + all the other terrible feelings combined, and you cannot just give in, you just have to endure until you're gone.

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hGuXaFyU5lY

[anotherman554]

Interestingly there are two David Lynch movies (Lost Highway and Mulholland Drive) that can be interpreted as just that: someone's disorienting nightmare as they are dying.

[Wiseacre]

You can probably add Dune to his list of disorienting nightmares.

[awb]

> discovered rhythmic brain wave patterns around the time of death that are similar to those occurring during dreaming, memory recall, and meditation

There are other possibilities besides memory recall. It sounds a little bit like falling asleep, where there might be some thoughts, some stillness (meditation) and some dreaming.

[wrycoder]

> nicest moments

Some people are optimists.