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Researchers’ attempts to ine laboratory rats at the University of Michigan may have led the
capture rats’ brain activity
at the onset of death have N way to a better understanding of NDEs. In 2013, these rats weren’t
garnered mixed reactions
from scientists and animal scurrying around the laboratory looking for food. Instead, they were facing
rights activists.
a death sentence in the name of science. Scientists planted electrodes in the
rats’ brains and then gave them deadly injections. Using the electrodes, the
scientists measured the rats’ brain activity at the point of death. The scien-
tists were astonished. The rats’ brain activity actually increased briefly after

their hearts stopped.
The experiment was part of an emerging field of science studying
the brain during and after death known as necroneuroscience. The term

combines “necro,” meaning death, and “neuro,” referring to the nerves or
nervous system. One scientific journal described it as a field “where no one
really knows what’s actually going on.” That was a lighthearted way of say-

ing it holds the possibility of new discoveries.
The rat researchers thought it might be possible that humans also see

a brief increase in brain activity after they die. That might yield a scientific
explanation for NDEs. It could show that NDEs are produced by enhanced
brain function after the moment of death. Those lucky enough to be re-

suscitated, or to escape death some other way, might remember NDEs as a
series of events in which they had somehow participated. However, NDEs

might be the result only of a burst of chemicals in the brain, similar to what
the rats showed. “It may mean that the brain goes into a final,
hyperactive spasm when its oxygen supply is cut as

it tries to figure out what is happening,” wrote
journalist Gideon Lichfield in a 2015 article in
the Atlantic. “If so, that heightened activity might