Science, Art, Litt, Science based Art & Science Communication

How heroic science is death defying

Q: What is the most mind-bending scientific discovery you've encountered, and why does it fascinate you?

Krishna: I read some very interesting research papers and articles based on them on death. They really fascinate me.

Discovering what happens at the molecular level during death and comprehending the process is mind blowing.

Death itself is a mystery. Modern science is trying to understand it. What happens in your final moments is really intriguing.

And how about reversing the brain death process using science?

For years, scientists have researched what happens to your brain when you die, but despite everything we've found out, progress has been stymied by an inability to easily monitor human death – since physicians are conventionally obliged to prevent death if they can, not monitor it as it takes hold. What this means is most of our understanding of the processes involved in brain death come from animal experiments, strengthened with what we can glean from the accounts of resuscitated patients disclosing their near-death experiences.

But in 2018, an international team of scientists made a breakthrough. In animals, within 20 to 40 seconds of oxygen deprivation, the brain enters an 'energy-saving mode' where it becomes electrically inactive and neurons cease communicating with one another. After a few minutes, the brain begins to break down as ion gradients in cells dissipate, and a wave of electrochemical energy – called a spreading depolarisation (or 'brain tsunami') spreads throughout the cortex and other brain regions, ultimately causing irreversible brain damage.

A team of neurologists – who monitored these processes taking place in nine patients with devastating brain injuries (under Do Not Resuscitate – Comfort Care orders) – say the tsunami of brain death may actually be capable of being stopped.

After circulatory arrest, spreading depolarisation marks the loss of stored electrochemical energy in brain cells and the onset of toxic processes that eventually lead to death. But it is reversible – up to a point – when the circulation is restored.

Using neuro-monitoring technology called subdural electrode strips and intraparenchymal electrode arrays, the researchers monitored spreading depolarisation in the patients' brains, and they suggest it's not a one-way wave – as long as circulation (and thus oxygen supply) can be resumed to the brain.

"Anoxia-triggered [spreading depolarisation] is fully reversible without any signs of cellular damage, if the oxidative substrate supply is re-established before the so-called commitment point, defined as the time when neurons start dying under persistent depolarisation. For patients at risk of brain damage or death incurred through cerebral ischemia or other kinds of stroke, the findings could one day be a life-saver, although the researchers explain a lot more work is needed before physicians will be able to take advantage of these discoveries. (1)

Then how about Recording the activity of a dying human brain to gain insights?

Neuroscientists have recorded the activity of a dying human brain and discovered rhythmic brain wave patterns around the time of death that are similar to those occurring during dreaming, memory recall and meditation. A study on these findings published in Frontiers in Aging Neuroscience brings new insight into a possible organizational role of the brain during death and suggests an explanation for vivid life recall in near-death experiences. (2)

Then explanations for near death experiences (3): What happens in the brain during death? why people see and feel things they say they did and scientific explanations to them. Why Dying People Often Experience a Burst of Lucidity?

Image source: Vox

Mysterious Surge of Activity Detected in The Brains of Dying People .

Scientists record for the first time, in gripping detail, the brain waves of a dying person. (5)

Why Our Moment of Death Is So Peaceful?

This article describing death at cellular and molecular level is really fascianting: Glowing, Glowing, Gone: Cell Fluorescence Casts Light on How Death Spreads Throughout Body

Researchers have identified a key molecular pathway for animal death that may provide clues for better managing traumatic injury and disease in humans.

Watching worms die may not sound particularly exciting, but what if when they kicked the bucket they started glowing blue? That’s what a team of biologists has observed in the roundworm Caenorhabditis elegans. A blue “death wave” ripples down the worms’ bodies for up to six hours as the life drains out of them—a phenomenon that is yielding insights into how death spreads throughout an organism.

“Death actually propagates,” say researchers. “The presence of a dead cell triggers destruction in a neighboring cell.”

The cascade of cell death in C. elegans rides a wave of calcium ions that travels through the worm from front to back. The influx of calcium into a cell triggers processes that dismantle cellular structures. Lysosomes—the waste-processing centers of cells—burst and “that’s when all hell breaks loose.

The lysosome eruptions cause the cell to digest itself. The calcium ions then jump to a neighboring cell and the death wave continues.

The blue fluorescence, seen only when the worms are under ultraviolet light, comes from anthranilic acid, an organic compound produced inside little granules that line the worm’s intestine. As the death wave propagates, the granules burst, releasing the acid into a lower pH environment. The drop in pH amplifies the anthranilic acid’s natural fluorescence, generating a blue flash that follows the calcium wave. The flash “is a marker of death”. (6)

And this is the really interesting part: By knocking out proteins called innexins that are essential to transferring calcium from one cell to the next, the researchers were able to stop the spread of death in the worm—but only in the case of injury.

The Physics of Death and What Happens to Your Energy When You Die (4).

Death is the result of a very fundamental physical role which governs the entire universe, and that is entropy.

Entropy is a concept from physics and thermodynamics that quantifies the degree of disorder or randomness in a system.

The laws of thermodynamics dictate that entropy tends to increase over time. What is suggested by this is that any system naturally moves towards a state of disorder, leading to the eventual but inevitable breakdown of organised structure.

I read several of these research papers and articles based on death with immense interest. By understanding these death processes, who knows scientists one final day might announce: “We have conquered death, finally”!

We may not be alive to hear this but some other living beings have that chance!

Heroic Science ( Art work by Dr. Krishna Kumari Challa)

I painted this picture “ Heroic Science” sometime back. I showed how science is standing in between death, diseases and all harmful things and living beings protecting them nonstop.

That is what science really is! Heroic science is truly death defying!

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