Borjigin's latest rat study and another period of hyperconnectivity within 1h of CA

Borjigin's done it again... :-)

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/30625009

Interestingly, CCoh in SHRSP rats exhibited a dramatic surge (hyperconnectivity) within one hour of cardiac arrest, indicating that the brain is internally super-activated at near-death. The neurophysiological mechanisms underlying the marked surge of the functional coupling within the brain after ischemia is still unknown. Nevertheless, the large increase of brain functional synchronization after forebrain ischemia until sudden death is consistent with our earlier findings  in both potassium chloride injection and asphyxia-induced cardiac arrest models, in which a dramatic increase of both functional and effective connectivity was identified within the brain before sudden death (Li et al. 2015). The identification of dramatic surge of CCoh exclusively in rats that suffered from focal ischemic stroke provides further experimental support for our central hypothesis that the brain plays an active role in the dying process

Sorry, Max but Borjigin isn't the first author. The study is interesting but as it carried out on rodents (again) it unfortunately tells us nothing about NDE's. I don't remember a rat reporting one.

Please bear in mind that working scientists have to provide some "product" if they are going to continue to receive funding, so naturally they will dress it (their research) up as much as they think they can get away with, without being called out, so they can continue to get a living. Sorry, that might seem a bit cynical, but the real NDE research proportionally has received so little, by comparison.

I don't see how a study on rats should explain NDEs in humans. And, also, we know that consciousness needs some form of partial EEG present and detectable by normal medical EEG monitors (at least as far asa materialism goes). So, if the medical EEG doesn't detect anything the NDEs remain unexplained.

I don't see how a study on rats should explain NDEs in humans. And, also, we know that consciousness needs some form of partial EEG present and detectable by normal medical EEG monitors (at least as far asa materialism goes). So, if the medical EEG doesn't detect anything the NDEs remain unexplained.

The NDE’s remain unexplained anyway, this study is not an explanation, it’s not attempting to be one. It’s a tiny piece of the puzzle, and it’s an observation that using research quality iEEG equipment, rather than medical EEG, one of the things they are seeing is an enormous amount of coherent & synchronised electrical network activity during the rodent dying process, which confirms similar measurements made in their previous studies.