> the brain undergoes a series of changes, including a massive release of glutamate and a surge in gamma and beta waves, potentially linked to near-death experiences.
Speculating: does the above correlate with what we’d expect to see if the brain dumps an amount of endogenous n,n-DMT during death?
> Consistent with previous DMT study findings (32, 39), static analyses revealed widespread decreases in alpha power under DMT (P < 0.01, cluster corrected), and increases in both delta (P < 0.05, cluster corrected) and gamma bands (P < 0.01, cluster corrected).
DMT and otherpsychedelics are also influenced by glutamate:
> Following a double-blind, placebo-controlled, parallel group design, we utilized an ultra-high field multimodal brain imaging approach and demonstrated that psilocybin (0.17 mg/kg) induced region-dependent alterations in glutamate, which predicted distortions in the subjective experience of one’s self (ego dissolution). Whereas higher levels of medial prefrontal cortical glutamate were associated with negatively experienced ego dissolution, lower levels in hippocampal glutamate were associated with positively experienced ego dissolution.
Other forces seem at play as well. When I almost drowned I definitely experienced positive ego dissolution -- you feel at peace with the idea you might die. So it can't be that simple.
This is correct. For obvious reasons, selection pressures on terminal physiological processes are non-existent (or at least very small). Also, the press release makes it sound as this "wave of death" is something these people discovered or even characterized. It is a well known phenomenon that anybody doing any sort invasive brain imaging observes at some point. As they state in the abstract of the paper:
> While the molecular signature of anoxic depolarization (AD) is well documented, ...
The molecular mechanism is also pretty straightforward: dying cells rupture and release ATP. ATP is not only the ultimate energy source but also a potent messenger molecule. In the brain, it excites other neurons, resulting in activation and hence depolarisation of other neurons. Furthermore, in large concentrations, it also induces apoptosis in nearby cells (not just neurons). The result is a chain reaction were the death of some neurons induces death in other neurons, and so on, and this "wave of death" is preceded by a faster moving wave of electrical activation.
Would it be possible to preemptively inject any substance that neutralized these effects directly in the neocortex in patients to give one last chance of treating them before cerebral death or the damage of the initial rupture of neurons is already too great to allow a person to make a recovery?
Due to the blood-brain barrier, it is quite difficult to get substances injected into the blood into the brain (though some obviously do, otherwise there would be no psychoactive substances). Injecting into brain tissue directly is possible but probably not useful in an emergency: if you want to inject into cortex directly, you have to inject at ulta-low (yet positive) pressures (otherwise you destroy a lot of tissue just by injecting), and diffusion from the site of injection would be slow. In other words, you would have to drill a thousand holes into someones skull, and inject tiny volumes over the course of minutes each time. You could inject into the ventricles. That can be done quicker and with larger volumes without incurring too much damage, but again, lymphatic flow is very slow, so getting the drug into the tissue would take a long time (hours). So from first principles, you are fighting an uphill battle, and the incline is very steep.
The findings in the paper are interesting in the latter scenario, as they identify the deep cortical layers as the likely drivers of the wave of death (not a surprising finding for various reasons so quite likely true). Deep cortical layers are closer to the ventricles, so access would be a bit better than to the cortex in general.
A1 has a genetic trait that makes old age a terribly painful experience, and the moment of death a horrifying ordeal. Far worse than what most experience.
A2 becomes scared of death. As A2 gets older, they behave chaotically because of the trauma from watching A1 die painfully and the fear that they’ll experience the same fate.
A2 does not take good care of A3.
I hope this example (unscientifically) shows that there are likely some strong trends toward genetic traits that support a peaceful end of life period.
I suspect there are also multigenerational trends toward older members dying before they become a drain on a tribe’s resources. An obvious historically-useful benefit, that now leaves us worried sick about our aging parents (that they’ll slip and fall, and activate the “end of life” phase, where they’d have passed away if it weren’t for medical intervention).
Indeed, it's the classical Weismann's fallacy. From Nick Lane's 'Life Ascending':
> The most popular idea, dating back to Weismann in the 1880s, is wrong, as he himself was quick to recognise. Weismann originally proposed that ageing and death rid populations of old worn-out individuals, replacing them with racy new models replete with a new set of genes remixed by sex. The idea invests death with some sort of nobility and symmetry, in service of a greater cause, even if it can hardly aspire to the grandeur of a religious purpose. In this view the death of an individual benefits the species, just as the death of some cells benefits the organism. But the argument is circular, as Weismann’s critics pointed out: old individuals are only ‘worn out’ if they age in the first place, so Weismann presupposed exactly what he was trying to explain. The question remained, what makes individuals ‘wear out’ with age, even if death does benefit populations?
I think it’s likely that the brain’s internal behavior at death doesn’t have a significant evolutionary effect, and instead is just a side-effect of how the brain works in general, which in turn is of evolutionary importance, of course.
Nobody knows for sure, but there's lots of work on neural mechanisms purportedly mediated by synchronous oscillations. For example, look up the "communication through coherence" hypothesis by Pascal Fries; or Grossberg's "adaptive resonance theory".
Someday, possibly quite soon, someone (probably a large number of several someones) in an ER might be saved from death or brain damage due to a better understanding of how brain tissue acts under a lack of oxygen and blood supply.
If we were living in a world where we don't eat or we constitute our food from raw materials directly then we could be questioning the morality if this, but we live in a world where we eat corndogs and fried chicken.
We can't yet live without killing something to eat (and plants are more alive than most give credit).
I'd say in our current context this kind of research, done as humanely as possible, should be allowed.
Deathrow prisoners are a non starter for a lot of practical reasons (not to mention a lot of clear cut moral and social ones).
For me, deathrow itself is a non starter. I get your point about ... well, I remember New Scientist used to have a back page cartoon called "Albert the experimental rat". I'm still a subscriber but Albert was consigned to the history books a few years back.
I note your point about plants being "more alive" but I think that plants are perhaps more complicated, rather than more alive. The interplay between fungi and trees is quite well documented now and getting more interesting.
We might like to do some more basic studies first, before involving torture on non humans. For example:
When the covid-19 pandemic really kicked off, critical care wards fairly quickly discovered that lying intubated patients on their side instead of back sometimes helped. How on earth did that become a thing? Ask anyone with, say: a history of breathlessness due to long term smoking - "do you have a preferred side to sleep on, or your back?"
How about sciatica? I have largely cured mine. I am now 53. I used to have episodes lasting from a few days to a few months of crippling pain. I suffered from it starting around age 30ish.
I used to keep my wallet in my back pocket. I put 2+2 together aged around 48 and around five years later, I don't have sciatica any more. Just to ram the point home: I kept a leather wallet in my right back pocket. It was a hard surface under my bum and must have caused occasional damage to one of my sciatic nerves.
Top tip: sit on your arse and nothing else!
I'm an IT bod and I have to occasionally pick up SANs weighing something like 50Kg - for the last few years, that's not a problem: My back is fine now.
Yeah this is something I've also tried to grapple with.
I think you have a point with the rats - they're clearly very intelligent creatures, which is unfortunately also makes them so valuable for this kind of research. So it comes down to a trade off between improving human lives at the cost of another less intelligent but nonetheless very much aware creature.
While norms will likely shift over time, I don't think it's really possible to establish consensus view on this sort of thing - everyone will have the own level of comfort, just like eating meat.
Making absolute statements about the sanctity of life I think I'm a little more comfortable making a concrete statement on. If you embrace an absolutely view sanctity of life, just existing basically becomes impossible - how do you deal with the insects you accidentally kill when you walk on grass? What about the bacteria that your body kills during an infection? It's just not workable.
As for experimenting on people on death row, my gut is that to the extent that Capital Punishment Exists (something I'm against for what it's worth), it cannot have any external utility derived from the process. Rather it needs to exist purely as part of the justice system.
If there's an exogenous utility being derived from Capital Punishment, I think there's an unacceptably high risk that the motivations for capital punishment will become twisted. To put forward a hypothetical, but not infeasible scenario:
- We allow scientific experimentation on death row inmates
- Then, a lobby group points out that we could save even more innocent lives by using the inmate's organs for donation rather than experimentation. It's the same fundamental thing, just a different use.
- Then, there's a small but meaningful pressure on the justice system to find more people guilty in order to keep the flow of life saving organs strong. (We already know what the justice system is susceptible to this sort of pressure, see forced labour)
As a flow on effect, this makes it much harder to roll back capital punishment in the future if a society decide it's harmful, because there's a flow on effect of loss aversion towards that exogenous utility. I've seen this happen in my own state (Victoria, Australia) when it comes to gambling - we broadly acknowledge slot machines are extremely harmful, but the government struggles to curtail their use even slightly, because the tax revenue generated from them is used to fund important services. The harm is greater than the gain, but the loss aversion of those services is too powerful.
Your illustrative scenario is the background to several of the early Known Space stories by Larry Niven, who explores some of the consequences, including the disruptive effects of improving medical technology (artificial organs)
I am looking forward to the day when AI surpasses us in intelligence and arrives at the same easy-gooing conclusion as you do. All it has to do is copy our behaviour.
𒄈: Hey 𒋚, have you had your pet humans spayed and neutered yet?
𒋚: Nah, I think that's cruel. Look how happy they are!
𒄈: They may look cute now, but you don't want them breeding out of control. Look at 𒁑 — built an entire Dyson swarm to make more room for them, and by the end the humans were so out of control that the neighbours had to call in the exterminators to blow up the star with a Trih Xeem. Nobody will even lend 𒁑 a simple VN probe these days in case they do it again.
All this kind of experiments and how humanity still deal with othes species to get meat, is something strait of a science fiction depicting an evil alien race... where the evil alien race is the human race, in our current reality.
Firstly, ethical reasons. Secondly, the act of experimenting in a model organism is a perfectly acceptable way of generating science. Rats have helped humans develop cancer drugs, HIV antiretrovirals, and even the yearly flu vaccine.
Speculating: does the above correlate with what we’d expect to see if the brain dumps an amount of endogenous n,n-DMT during death?