One of the most excruciating, heartbreaking, and traumatic things you can go through in life is to be at the bedside of a dying loved one. It’s also one of the most important things you’ll do, and one of the most profound ways of showing love, too. None of us wants to leave this world alone, and we don’t want that for the ones we love, either.
As a new study out of the University of British Columbia shows, those last precious moments mean even more than we might have realized.
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One of the instincts we have in those final moments is to keep talking, whispering, saying anything and everything comforting that pops into our minds.
It’s also one of the things that British organization Dying Matters recommends to those remaining at the side of their loved ones. “Hearing is thought to be the last sense to go in the dying process, so never assume the person is unable to hear you,” they advise. “Talk as if they can hear you, even if they appear to be unconscious or restless.”
In fact, whether hearing is the last sense to go or not was the question the UBC study was looking to answer. The study “lends some credence to the advice that loved ones should keep talking to a dying relative as long as possible.”
To this point, the biggest indicator that hearing was the last sense to go came from near-death experiences.
Those who have survived a brush with death and been brought back by CPR or other life-saving measures often retain little memory of the experience.
About 10% of survivors do remember the sensation of dying, however, and have reported an awareness of their surroundings up to and including the pronouncement of their deaths.
For the UBC study, the researchers coordinated with participants at a Vancouver-area hospice over two years.
The researchers fitted the terminally ill participants, in their last days, with EEG caps to measure brain activity. They were played a series of tone patterns while wearing the caps and asked to note any that seemed out of place.
The sound test was performed twice – once upon entering the hospice, and a second time when the participants were considered “actively dying,” which they defined as “the hours to days preceding imminent death during which time the patient’s physiologic functions wane.”
Comparing the EEG data from the first test to the second test, as well as a control group’s test, showed that the dying brain was still functioning.
Which means that, in all likelihood, they were still able to hear and understand what loved ones were saying around them.
“Either when severely damaged or even when near death, some brains can evidence functioning in some systems,” the study concluded.
There is one important caveat to consider, however.
For the study, the sample size was quite small. All participants gave express, written consent to be monitored even after becoming unresponsive, but some died before they could be tested, and some actually got better after entering the “actively dying” state. In the end, just four participants were able to provide data for both the intake test and the second, unresponsive test.
Despite the small sample size, the study does reinforce other research on death and dying that has also found brain activity and awareness well after what was thought possible.
h/t: The Capital
