When one thinks about a person’s brain operations and his phenomenological experiences, one tends to assume that his brain is healthy and functional. But in a person’s last moments before his brain shuts off, one can only imagine that all perception must be greatly altered.
Before we can talk about what happens to the brain when it dies or as it’s dying, we must first set the parameters of death. First there is clinical death, when a person’s heart stops beating. At this point, the person can still be revived or resuscitated. But in this stage, no air is circulating around the body, and the brain, which cannot hold any oxygen by itself starts to suffocate, which shortly leads to biological death—that is, when the brain and it’s functions are damaged irreversibly.
The duration of time between clinical death and biological death is around six minutes, and it is in those six minutes where the dying brain experiences a multitude of things for a multitude of reasons. There is a category of phenomena called “near death experiences.” Precisely as it sounds, a person experiences this when they are about to die. People who have been declared clinically dead and have been revived often describe feelings of calmness and seeing bright lights filling the space. Sometimes they feel as though they have left their body and can see their own physical form from this “spirit form.” Some doctors have had patients come back from being unconscious and recount everything that has happened. On the scientific side, explanations tend to attribute all the psychological effects on physiological reactions—that the brain, deprived of oxygen and flooded with chemicals, starts to hallucinate. Nothing, be it esoteric or scientific, has been conclusive so far.
Philip.
References:
http://www.time.com/time/health/article/0,8599,1842627,00.html
http://www.ninds.nih.gov/disorders/anoxia/anoxia.htm
http://www.horizonresearch.org/main_page.php?cat_id=82
http://www.dana.org/news/brainwork/detail.aspx?id=6494
http://health.howstuffworks.com/diseases-conditions/death-dying/dying.htm
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