Although many people believe that no one knows exactly how it feels like to die, most people who have been pronounced clinically dead and then "came back to life" have their experiences as some sort of scientific proof.
And because it's that time of the year again when slasher movies and horror flicks are right around the corner, a group of scientists from the American Chemical Society have created a video that explains what really goes on inside the brain of a horror movie victim before death.
Experts say that viewers' emotions and reactions while watching horror films are actually not that different from the phases that these slasher film victims go through.
Phase 1: Fear
When the movie character is being hunted down by an axe murderer, the natural response of the person is to be completely terrified. Chemists explained that fear is a cognitive and sensory response which warns us when danger is near.
When a person perceives any form of danger in his/her surroundings, the sensory information acquired is sent into the person's thalamus, the part of the brain which acts like a switchboard. The information is transformed into neurotransmitters called glutamates which are then transferred into the amygdala, the part of the brain that controls emotional behavior.
Afterwards, the glutamates then go to two different parts of the brain called the periaqueductal gray which triggers the person's state of hyper-alertness and makes the person feel startled, and the hypothalamus which triggers the person's "fight or flight" response. The hypothalamus will send a signal to the brain's adrenal glands to pump out adrenaline, as well as to the liver to release enough glucose for energy. The adrenal glands produce cortisol to increase the person's uptake of glucose and lessen the effects of insulin.
Phase 2: Scream
As the axe murderer keeps on chasing the character, and there seems to be no plausible way to get out, the person, of course, screams his/her lungs out.
Chemists say that screaming is purely a primordial reaction of the body. Screams go straight through the listener's amygdala, and not in the part that processes speech and languages. Because of these screams, a similar response is triggered to the brain of the listener.
"It's almost like the screamer is trying to share with you the state of their brain chemistry," the video says. This enables the people in the movie to also run as fast as they can away from the murderer.
Phase 3: Pain
Unfortunately, despite the character's powerful and blood-curdling screaming, the murderer has caught up to him/her and has unleashed what the character has feared all throughout the movie.
Chemists explained that when a person is injured, sensory neurons in the body known as nociceptors send a signal through the spinal cord that will reach the thalamus, the part of the brain that also recognizes pain. The thalamus tells the body that whatever it was that just happened shouldn't ever happen again.
Phase 4: Clinical Death
The character is sprawled on the floor, covered in his/her blood, and the end has come — but not yet, chemists say. Assuming no massive brain damage had occurred, the person's heart and breathing completely stops, but the brain is still working.
Chemists explained that previous research showed that the brain somehow enters a hyper-state of neural activity, although other scientists do not believe so.
Phase 5: Biological Death
When the person's brain completely shuts down, it is what neuroscientists consider as the final phase. No one has traveled back into this world after this phase, of course, and perhaps, that is something we can all think about as we gather our bucket of popcorn and watch another round of gory horror movies.
Watch the video here:
