Skip to main page content
U.S. flag

An official website of the United States government

Dot gov

The .gov means it’s official.
Federal government websites often end in .gov or .mil. Before sharing sensitive information, make sure you’re on a federal government site.

Https

The site is secure.
The https:// ensures that you are connecting to the official website and that any information you provide is encrypted and transmitted securely.

Access keys NCBI Homepage MyNCBI Homepage Main Content Main Navigation
Comment
. 2023 May 30;120(22):e2305985120.
doi: 10.1073/pnas.2305985120. Epub 2023 May 22.

Do not go gently into that good night: The dying brain and its paradoxically heightened electrical activity

Christof Koch  1   2
Affiliations
Comment

Do not go gently into that good night: The dying brain and its paradoxically heightened electrical activity

Christof Koch. Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A. .
No abstract available

PubMed Disclaimer

Conflict of interest statement

The author declares no competing interest.

Figures

Fig. 1.
Fig. 1.
Select EEG channels from a 24-y-old comatose woman with cardiac arrest–induced anoxic injury on life support (S1 or baseline). The ventilator was removed at the start of S2, at which point high-frequency and high-amplitude activity develops. S2 ends with EEG suppression. The patient’s final heartbeat occurs at the end of S11, on the right. The location of the eight EEG electrodes, out of 19, is illustrated in the schematic on the right. The duration of heartbeat intervals (RRI) is shown on the bottom on a short (blue, on the left; 0 to 1 s) and long (brown, on the right; 0 to 15 s) timescales. Modified from figure S1A in Xu et al. (1).
See this image and copyright information in PMC

Comment on

References

    1. Xu G., et al. , Surge of neurophysiological coupling and connectivity of gamma oscillations in the dying human brain. Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A. (2023), in press. - PMC - PubMed
    1. Seifi A., Incidence of brain death in the United States. Clin. Neurol. Neurosurg. 195, 105885 (2020). - PubMed
    1. Chawla L. S., et al. , Characterization of end-of-life electroencephalographic surges in critically ill patients. Death Studies 41, 385–392 (2017). - PubMed
    1. Borjigin J., et al. , Surge of neurophysiological coherence and connectivity in the dying brain. Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A. 110, 14432–14437 (2013). - PMC - PubMed
    1. Crick F. C., Koch C., Towards a neurobiological theory of consciousness. Semin. Neurosci. 2, 263–275 (1990).

LinkOut - more resources