IN 1907, physician Duncan MacDougall . He placed dying people on scales and weighed them as they passed away. The people supposedly lost an average of 21 grams, which MacDougall – glossing over the uncertainties in his measurements – took to be the soul leaving the body.
Even today people still seek transcendental truths in the scientific study of death. When researchers detected a wave of electrical activity in patients’ brains after their hearts had stopped, the spiritualist Deepak Chopra , arguing that they were evidence that consciousness can endure without the brain: “a sign of the soul”, as he put it.
This week we report that rats show a similar wave of electrical activity (see “Death rattle of a decapitated brain”). This research undermines the argument put forward by Chopra – unless, that is, you believe rodents have souls.
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In reality, the findings offer a glimpse of what happens to brain cells as they succumb to oxygen deprivation. If we can understand that process, we might be able to protect something more real than the soul: the mind.