首次记录到濒死人类大脑活动，其脑电波与记忆闪回相似

# First-ever recording of a dying human brain shows waves similar to memory flashbacks
# 首次记录到濒死人类大脑活动，其脑电波与记忆闪回相似

> What happens in our brain as we die?
> 在我们死亡时，大脑中会发生什么？

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<img src="https://louisville.edu/medicine/news/first-ever-recording-of-a-dying-human-brain-shows-waves-similar-to-memory-flashbacks/image_mini" alt="Dr. Ajmal Zemmar" width="142">
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Dr. Ajmal Zemmar
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阿杰马尔·泽马尔博士
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Imagine reliving your entire life in the space of seconds. Like a flash of lightning, you are outside of your body, watching memorable moments you lived through. This process, known as “life recall,” can be similar to what it is like to have a near-death experience.
想象一下，在几秒钟内重温你的一生。如同一道闪电，你脱离了自己的身体，回顾着经历过的难忘时刻。这个过程被称为“生命回溯”，可能与濒死体验相似。

What happens inside your brain during these experiences and after death are questions that have puzzled neuroscientists for centuries.
在这些经历中以及死亡后，你的大脑内部发生了什么，这些问题已经困扰了神经科学家数个世纪。

However, a new study from Dr. Ajmal Zemmar of the University of Louisville and colleagues throughout the world, “Enhanced Interplay of Neuronal Coherence and Coupling in the Dying Human Brain,” published in *Frontiers in Aging Neuroscience*, suggests that your brain may remain active and coordinated during and even after the transition to death, and be programmed to orchestrate the whole ordeal.
然而，由路易斯维尔大学的阿杰马尔·泽马尔博士及其全球同事在《衰老神经科学前沿》上发表的一项新研究——《濒死人类大脑中神经元相干性与耦合的增强交互》表明，你的大脑在向死亡过渡期间甚至之后可能保持活跃和协调，并被设定好来编排整个过程。

When an 87-year-old patient developed epilepsy, Dr. Raul Vicente of the University of Tartu, Estonia, and colleagues used continuous electroencephalography to detect the seizures and treat the patient. During these recordings, the patient had a heart attack and passed away.
当一名87岁的患者患上癫痫病时，爱沙尼亚塔尔图大学的劳尔·维森特博士及其同事使用连续脑电图来检测癫痫发作并治疗该患者。在这些记录过程中，病人突发心脏病去世。

This unexpected event allowed the scientists to record the activity of a dying human brain for the first time ever.
这一意外事件使得科学家们有史以来第一次记录到了一个濒死人类大脑的活动。

### What did they find?
### 他们发现了什么？

"We measured 900 seconds of brain activity around the time of death and set a specific focus to investigate what happened in the 30 seconds before and after the heart stopped beating,” said Zemmar, a neurosurgeon at the University of Louisville, who organized the study.
“我们测量了死亡前后900秒的大脑活动，并特别关注了心脏停止跳动前后30秒内发生的情况，”组织这项研究的路易斯维尔大学神经外科医生泽马尔说。

“Just before and after the heart stopped working, we saw changes in a specific band of neural oscillations, so-called gamma oscillations, but also in others such as delta, theta, alpha and beta oscillations.”
“就在心脏停止工作前后，我们观察到特定频段的神经振荡发生了变化，即所谓的伽马振荡，同时也观察到了德尔塔、西塔、阿尔法和贝塔等其他振荡。”

Brain oscillations are more commonly known as brain waves. They are patterns of rhythmic brain activity normally present in living human brains. The different types of oscillations, including gamma, are involved in high-cognitive functions, such as concentrating, dreaming, meditation, memory retrieval, information processing and conscious perception, just like those associated with memory flashbacks.
大脑振荡通常被称为脑电波，是活体人脑中正常存在的节律性大脑活动模式。不同类型的振荡，包括伽马波，参与了诸如专注、做梦、冥想、记忆提取、信息处理和有意识感知等高级认知功能，就像那些与记忆闪回相关的功能一样。

“Through generating brain oscillations involved in memory retrieval, the brain may be playing a last recall of important life events just before we die, similar to the ones reported in near-death experiences,” Zemmar speculated.
“通过产生与记忆提取有关的大脑振荡，大脑可能在我们临终前对重要的人生事件进行最后一次回溯，这与濒死体验中报告的情况相似，”泽马尔推测道。

### The findings question what we believe we know about the moment of death.
### 这些发现挑战了我们对死亡时刻的认知。

“These findings challenge our understanding of when exactly life ends and generate important subsequent questions, such as those related to the timing of organ donation,” Zemmar said.
“这些发现挑战了我们对生命究竟何时结束的理解，并引出了一些重要的后续问题，例如与器官捐献时机相关的问题，”泽马尔说。

“Every human alive has at some point an encounter when they lose a loved one and every one of us someday will go death themselves, so the interest obviously has been there. I've lost my grandfather. I've lost my grandmother with whom I was very, very close,” Zemmar said.
“每个活着的人都曾在某个时刻失去过亲人，我们每个人也终将有一天会面临死亡，所以人们对此显然很感兴趣。我失去了我的祖父。我失去了与我非常、非常亲近的祖母，”泽马尔说。

“And you ask yourself, what does the brain do? As a Ph.D. in neuroscience and a neurosurgeon, you think about these things.”
“你会问自己，大脑在做什么？作为一名神经科学博士和神经外科医生，你会思考这些事情。”

### What do the findings tell us?
### 这些发现告诉了我们什么？

“You could probably categorize it in in three different categories to say what can we take from this,” Zemmar said. “One is scientific, one is metaphysical and philosophical and one is spiritual.
“你或许可以将其分为三个不同的类别来看待我们能从中得到什么，”泽马尔说。“一个是科学层面，一个是形而上学和哲学层面，还有一个是精神层面。”

“Scientifically, it's very difficult to interpret the data because the brain had suffered bleeding, seizures, swelling – and then it's just one case. So we can't make very big assumptions and claims based on this case.
“从科学上讲，解读这些数据非常困难，因为这个大脑遭受了出血、癫痫和肿胀——而且这只是一个孤例。因此，我们不能基于这个案例做出非常宏大的假设和论断。”

“On the metaphysical side, if you have these things, it is intriguing to speculate to say that these mechanisms – these brain activity patterns that occur when we have memory recall and dreaming and meditative states – they recall just before we go to die. So maybe they're letting us have a replay of life in the last seconds when we die.
“在形而上学方面，如果你有这些经历，那么推测这些机制——即在我们进行记忆回溯、做梦和冥想状态时出现的大脑活动模式——在我们临终前被重新激活，这是非常引人入胜的。所以，也许它们让我们在生命的最后几秒钟里重温了一生。”

“On the spiritual side, I think it is somewhat calming. I face this at times when you have patients that pass away and you talk their families; you have to be the bearer of bad news. Right now, we don't know anything about what happens to their loved one’s brain when they're dying. I think if we know that there is something happening in their brain, that they are remembering nice moments, we can tell these families and it builds a feeling of warmth that in that moment when they are falling, this can help a little bit to catch them.
“在精神层面，我认为这在某种程度上是令人慰藉的。我有时会面临这样的情况：当病人去世时，你必须和他们的家人交谈，成为坏消息的传递者。目前，我们对他们亲人在临终时大脑里发生了什么一无所知。我想，如果我们知道他们的大脑中正在发生一些事情，他们正在回忆美好的时刻，我们可以告诉这些家庭，这会带来一种温暖的感觉，在他们悲痛欲绝的时刻，这能给他们一些支撑。”

“It opens an interesting question to me on when you define death. That plays a big role for questions such as, when do you go ahead with organ donation? When are we dead? When the heart stops beating because the brain keeps going. Should we record EEG activity in addition to EKG to declare death? This is a very, very interesting question for me. When is exactly the time when we die? We may have tapped the door open now to start a discussion about that exact time onset.”
“这对我来说开启了一个关于如何定义死亡的有趣问题。这对诸如‘何时进行器官捐献？’等问题起着重要作用。我们何时才算死亡？当心脏停止跳动时，大脑却仍在活动。我们是否应该在心电图之外记录脑电图活动来宣布死亡？这对我来说是一个非常、非常有趣的问题。我们死亡的确切时间点是什么时候？我们现在可能已经为开启关于这个确切时间点的讨论打开了一扇门。”