Study: Brain Activity Remains After Clinically Being Pronounced Dead

The internet was abuzz recently with reports that brain activity can persist 10 minutes after the declaration of death. My initial thoughts were: might this be a naturalistic explanation for so called near death experiences?

According to the reports, 4 terminally ill patients were recorded with electroencephalographic (EEG) and showed delta wave bursts for up to ten minutes after being declared dead. This was recently thought impossible.

Also thought impossible, is brain activity by people without a heart beat and who were declared dead who were then revived (only to tell glorious tales of heaven). These near death experiences are "proof" some say, that consciousness is not dependent on the brain functioning. But these new results show that brain functioning may persist for considerably longer than previously thought after the declaration of death. And this might explain near death experiences in a perfectly natural way. Near death experiences can simply be just brain activity that was previously thought to not exist.

Read the paper here: Electroencephalographic Recordings During Withdrawal of Life-Sustaining Therapy Until 30 Minutes After Declaration of Death