November 22, 2024

Death’s Riddle: Scientists Decipher the Brain’s Final Signals

Researchers from the “Dynamics of Epileptic Networks and Neuronal Excitability” team at the Paris Brain Institute have shown in a prior research study that after a long duration of oxygen deprivation– called anoxia– brain activity goes through a waterfall of succeeding modifications that can now be described precisely.When the brain stops getting oxygen, its shops of ATP, the cells fuel, are quickly diminished. Like a swan song, it is the real marker of shift towards the cessation of all brain activity,” Antoine Carton-Leclercq, PhD trainee and first author of the study, adds.Until now, scientists did not know where the wave of death is started in the cortex or whether it propagates homogeneously across all cortical layers. “We still had to understand in which areas of the brain the death wave is likely to do the most harm to preserve brain function as much as possible. The wave of death appeared in the pyramidal neurons found in layer 5 of the neocortex and propagated in two directions: upwards, i.e. the surface of the brain, and downwards, i.e. the white matter,” Séverine Mahon describes.” This new research study advances our understanding of the neural mechanisms underlying modifications in brain activity as death techniques.

Researchers from the “Dynamics of Epileptic Networks and Neuronal Excitability” team at the Paris Brain Institute have actually demonstrated in a prior research study that after a long period of oxygen deprivation– called anoxia– brain activity undergoes a waterfall of successive modifications that can now be described precisely.When the brain stops receiving oxygen, its shops of ATP, the cells fuel, are quickly depleted. Like a swan song, it is the true marker of shift towards the cessation of all brain activity,” Antoine Carton-Leclercq, PhD trainee and very first author of the study, adds.Until now, scientists did not understand where the wave of death is started in the cortex or whether it propagates homogeneously across all cortical layers. “We still had to understand in which areas of the brain the death wave is likely to do the most harm to protect brain function as much as possible.