The human brain can continue to function by having electrical activity for at least ten minutes after death, according to a new Canadian scientific study.
Although death remains a great mystery, scientists generally believe that brain activity stops around the moment the heart stops beating.
But last year 's scientific research showed that genes continue to be active - in some cases even more active than when man lived - even days after his death.
Researchers led by L. Norton of the University of Western Ontario, who published in the Canadian Journal of Neurological Studies, according to Indepedent and the Telegraph, reported the case of a person who was diagnosed as clinically dead (without heartbeat and no reactions in the pupils of his eyes), but nevertheless his brain continued to function.
Its electrical brain activity bore great resemblance to the delta brain waves observed in the deep sleep phase. Doctors said they were unaware of how brain function could last for several minutes after clinical death. Although they are only one person, they said they were sure that they or their organs had not made a mistake.
The new study again raises ethical dilemmas regarding, among other things, when it is right for donors to have organs transplanted after their clinical death.
The researchers examined a total of four people with electroencephalograms, only one of whom had brain activity after his clinical death. In the others, the brain had stopped working before the heart stopped beating. But the brains of all four behaved slightly differently in the minutes leading up to their clinical death - another mystery of what happens after death.
News: newsbeast.gr