Life may actually flash before your eyes on death by Holly Honderich

I don't know if you caught this recent little news item (it probably got buried because of the start of WW III)...it has fascinating implications.

Life may actually flash before your eyes on death - new study
By Holly Honderich
BBC News, Washington

New data from a scientific "accident" has suggested that life may actually flash before our eyes as we die.

A team of scientists set out to measure the brainwaves of an 87-year-old patient who had developed epilepsy. But during the neurological recording, he suffered a fatal heart attack - offering an unexpected recording of a dying brain.

It revealed that in the 30 seconds before and after, the man's brainwaves followed the same patterns as dreaming or recalling memories.

Brain activity of this sort could suggest that a final "recall of life" may occur in a person's last moments, the team wrote in their study, published in Frontiers in Aging Neuroscience on Tuesday.

Dr Ajmal Zemmar, a co-author of the study, said that what the team, then based in Vancouver, Canada, accidentally got, was the first-ever recording of a dying brain.

He told the BBC: "This was actually totally by chance, we did not plan to do this experiment or record these signals."

So will we get a glimpse back at time with loved ones and other happy memories? Dr Zemmar said it was impossible to tell.

"If I were to jump to the philosophical realm, I would speculate that if the brain did a flashback, it would probably like to remind you of good things, rather than the bad things," he said.

"But what's memorable would be different for every person."

Dr Zemmar, now a neurosurgeon at the University of Louisville, said in the 30 seconds before the patient's heart stopped supplying blood to the brain, his brainwaves followed the same patterns as when we carry out high-cognitive demanding tasks, like concentrating, dreaming or recalling memories.

It continued 30 seconds after the patient's heart stopped beating - the point at which a patient is typically declared dead.

"This could possibly be a last recall of memories that we've experienced in life, and they replay through our brain in the last seconds before we die."

The study also raises questions about when, exactly, life ends - when the heart stops beating, or the brain stops functioning.

Dr Zemmar and his team have cautioned that broad conclusions can't be drawn from a study of one. The fact that the patient was epileptic, with a bleeding and swollen brain, complicates things further.

"I never felt comfortable to report one case," Dr Zemmar said. And for years after the initial recording in 2016, he looked for similar cases to help strengthen the analysis but was unsuccessful.

But a 2013 study - carried out on healthy rats - may offer a clue.

In that analysis, US researchers reported high levels of brainwaves at the point of the death until 30 seconds after the rats' hearts stopped beating - just like the findings found in Dr Zemmar's epileptic patient.

The similarities between studies are "astonishing", Dr Zemmar said.

They now hope the publication of this one human case may open the door to other studies on the final moments of life.

"I think there's something mystical and spiritual about this whole near-death experience," Dr Zemmar said. "And findings like this - it's a moment that scientists lives for."

Link to original article:
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-60495730

A Casual Reminder...

...that they are vicious monsters.

And he cancelled the Open Enrollment period, at a time when millions of people have lost their jobs and their employer-tied health insurance. CANCELLED. DENIED PEOPLE ACCESS TO HEALTHCARE. AS IN: NO, YOU CANNOT HAVE HEALTH INSURANCE. Virtually guaranteeing that even more people will die from COVID-19. Not only cruel, but intentionally malicious. Way to go, Republicans.

New Study Suggests Connections Between Homophobia And Mental Disorders

Just can't resist posting this article about an Italian study on homophobia. I couldn't agree with it more. We have always known this to be true, but it is nice to now have scientific proof to back it up.


New Study Suggests Connections Between Homophobia And Mental Disorders
BY ZACK FORD SEP 11, 2015 3:17PM

Homosexuality was long derided as a mental disorder — and being transgender often still is — but a new study suggests that it might be more likely that it’s actually homophobia that is a sign of mental disorder.

Researchers working with the Italian Society of Andrology and Sexual Medicine evaluated the mental health of 560 Italian University students to see what connections could be found between their psychological traits and their propensity for homophobia. Indeed, they found that aspects of psychoticism and immature defense mechanisms were significant predictors for homophobic attitudes.

“We found that psychoticism represented an important risk factor for homophobia, demonstrating that pathologic personality traits are involved in homophobic attitudes,” the study explains. Psychoticism embodies various characteristics, but above all, “severe psychopathologic conditions, such as delusion, isolation, and interpersonal alienation, but also hostility and anger.” Homophobia could be partially linked by “pathologic trait of personality,” meaning that various disorders of relationship and thought could be predictive of homophobia.

Immature defense mechanisms similarly predicted homophobic attitudes. These are coping mechanisms activated during states of distress and anxiety and include behaviors like projection, acting out, isolation, denial, passive aggressiveness, and displacement. “Our data revealed that immature defense mechanisms predict homophobia, highlighting that a negative attitude toward homosexuals is influenced once again by dysfunctional aspects of personality.”

While these aggressive personality traits were linked with homophobia, depression had the opposite effect. “Subjects with depression have a lower risk to develop homophobic behavior,” in part because it seems they were less likely to “perceive external reality as a threat and project their anger.”

The study also found that gender was a significant predictor of homophobia. “Men are more homophobic than women,” and in particular, they demonstrated a tendency toward more negative attitudes and “a major risk of aggressive behavior or acting out toward homosexuals.”

Speaking to Medical Daily, lead researcher Dr. Emmanuele A. Jannini suggested, “After discussing for centuries if homosexuality is to be considered a disease, for the first time we demonstrated that the real disease to be cured is homophobia, associated with potentially severe psychopathologies.”

Homophobic attitudes have previously been linked to unacknowledged same-sex attractions and dying younger.


Link to original article on Think Progress:
http://thinkprogress.org/lgbt/2015/09/11/3700857/homophobia-mental-disorder/