The dementia phenomenon gets serious and fair treatment in press.
The New York Times Magazine published a lengthy article July 14 on sudden lucidity in patients with severe neurological impairment, such as Alzheimer’s. The Times deserves credit for tackling the under-reported subject in such depth. The magazine is the paper’s showcase of long-form journalism. Billy Brennan, the writer, said he worked on the piece over the past five years.
Terminal lucidity is a phrase, coined by German biologist and consciousness researcher Michael Nahm in 2009, that refers to temporary recovery in clear thinking that often happens before death. It has gained practical acceptance in clinical settings, yet requires more scientific study. It remains unexplained by orthodox neuroscience, which believes the brain produces consciousness.
One researcher in the article, University of Michigan anesthesiologist and neuroscientist George Mashhourour, likened the brain in late-stage Alzheimer’s to a “pothole-ridden highway system on the verge of collapse.” During episodes of terminal lucidity, neurological traffic suddenly, inexplicably, moves freely again, even though the damaged brain remains unchanged, the article states. Researchers see a possible connection between this end-of-life lucidity and phenomena such as Near-Death Experiences (NDEs) in which clinically dead individuals have vivid experiences.
American psychiatry professor Bruce Greyson, who also is a pre-eminent NDE researcher, told Brennan such anomalous experiences challenge the traditional materialist understanding of consciousness.
“If you believe that everything we see and hear and feel and think and decide comes solely from the brain, then you have to propose a mechanism for how the brain does that when it’s been deteriorating for years and years and not been able to do those things. How does it suddenly recover those abilities?” Greyson was quoted in the article.
Research into terminal lucidity picked up momentum about a decade ago when it piqued the interest of Basil Eldadah, a former program officer at the National Institute on Aging (NIA). In 2019 Eldadah secured $10 million in NIA funding to study “paradoxical lucidity” in patients with late-stage dementia. Grants went to six research groups, including the Mayo Clinic, the University of Wisconsin-Madison (UW), New York University (NYU), and University of Pennsylvania.
The UW group developed a technique for filming the episodes and gathering data, a significant development. NYU researchers, led by NDE expert Sam Parnia, are exploring “disinhibition” as a possible explanation. Our brains actually block some neural pathways to maintain ordinary, balanced awareness. In anomalous experience this order may break down, allowing a flood of information.
“We are at the cusp of the exploration of a new frontier in science,” Brennan quoted from Parnia’s 2024 book, Lucid Dying. Parnia wrote in the book, he was “quite optimistic that the nature of human consciousness – our very selfhood – will be discovered to be a flux of energy like electromagnetic waves that interacts with the brain and body but is not produced by them.”
Written by Tom Zolper
Edited by Anders Bolling and Liza Horan
