Terminal lucidity is the subject of an interesting article in
Scientific American. The term refers to "
The (re-)emergence of normal or unusually enhanced mental abilities
in dull, unconscious, or mentally ill patients shortly before death,
including considerable elevation of mood and spiritual affectation, or
the ability to speak in a previously unusual spiritualized and elated
manner." For example " A 92-year-old woman with advanced Alzheimer’s disease... hadn’t recognized her family for years, but the day
before her death, she had a pleasantly bright conversation with them,
recalling everyone’s name." At one of the links in the article a
reasonable postulate is that when the brain is dying, an inhibitory hemisphere or locus dies first, releasing normal function by memory cells that had previously been suppressed.
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