NYRB: "Monitoring EEG tracings along with intracranial blood levels during CPR [during episodes of in-hospital cardiac arrest] showed that organized electrical activity persisted despite the brain being starved of oxygen, a paradox difficult to square with basic neurobiology. Materialist attempts to explain these patterns are plausible but complicated--maybe an amplified signal circulates through a depleted network of surviving brain regions just before the whole system collapses. Dualists [...], by contract, read these patterns as evidence of the distinction between consciousness and the body"
similarly: "[i]n critically ill patients whose life support is actively withdrawn, EEG tracings have repeatedly revealed surges of organized electrical activity that resemble conscious mental states. Comparable signals have been seen in rats dying by suffocation, lethal injection, and terminal sedation, which some see as hinting at the decoupling of mind and brain."
However, "[w]hile this pattern is notable, such signals are also relibaly extinguished before the final heartbeat, lending support to the opposing interpretation that conscious experience arises from the body it inhabits. A Canadian study from 2022 recorded the brain waves of eight patients, for example, none of whom demonstrated EEG activity after circulatory arrest. Other investigators have noted that these end-of-life electrical phenomena may be more common in pateints with epilepsy and thus tantamount to seizures, which activate parts of the brain similar to those activated by conscious experience."