We may not know what happens after we die, but science has at least given us a clue as to what happens to our brains. In a landmark study published in Frontiers in Aging Neuroscience in 2022, researchers revealed that the human brain may, in fact, remain active during—and even after—the transition from life to death. In other words, the popular saying that our lives “flash before our eyes” as we approach death may actually be true.
Remarkably, the study’s authors arrived at this conclusion purely by chance, during a routine test in 2016. The Vancouver-based team had originally intended to measure the brainwaves of an 87-year-old patient with epilepsy, but during his neurological recording, he suffered a fatal heart attack. In so doing, the man inadvertently provided the researchers with a recording of a dying human brain for the first time in history.
“This was actually totally by chance,” Dr. Ajmal Zemmar, a co-author of the study and a neurosurgeon at the University of Louisville, told the BBC. “We did not plan to do this experiment or record these signals.”
In total, the researchers managed to record about 900 seconds of brain activity leading up to and immediately after the patient’s death. In the 30 seconds before and after his heart stopped, the man’s brainwaves followed the same patterns as dreaming, recalling memories, or meditating.
“Just before and after the heart stopped working, we saw changes in a specific band of neural oscillations, [known as] gamma oscillations, but also in others such as delta, theta, alpha, and beta oscillations,” Zemmar remarked in a statement. Compared to these other oscillations, which are more commonly known as brain waves, gamma oscillations clock in at the highest frequency, measuring between 30 and 100 hertz. Notably, they’re widely observed in the brain when people access their memory center, located in the hippocampus region, while dreaming.
“Through generating brain oscillations involved in memory retrieval, the brain may be playing a last recall of important life events just before we die, similar to the ones reported in near-death experiences,” Zemmar added. “These findings challenge our understanding of when exactly life ends.”
Still, the study must be taken with a grain of salt. As Zemmar and his team have previously cautioned, the patient was both elderly and epileptic, a condition that has been shown to alter gamma wave activity. It’s also impossible to conclude whether the man was indeed seeing memories from his life, or if he was experiencing a dream-like state caused by his failing nervous system.
“I never felt comfortable reporting one case,” Zemmar continued. He and his team tried to locate additional cases, but their efforts were ultimately in vain. That said, a 2013 study involving healthy rats in the U.S. demonstrated that rodents experience similar levels of gamma oscillations around the time of death. More specifically, the researchers reported high levels of brainwaves at the point of death until 30 seconds after the rats’ hearts stopped beating—identical to the data compiled by Zemmar and his team.
“I think there’s something mystical and spiritual about this whole near-death experience,” Zemmar concluded. “And findings like this—it’s a moment that scientists live for.”
A scientific study published in 2022 offered compelling evidence that we do indeed see our “lives flash before our eyes” in the moments leading up to death.
Sources: Life may actually flash before your eyes on death – new study; First-ever recording of a dying human brain shows waves similar to memory flashbacks; First-ever scan of a dying human brain reveals life may actually ‘flash before your eyes’
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