Study explaining what happens immediately after death is taking the world by a storm

Death remains one of the greatest mysteries of life. People have explored it through stories and speculation, but no one can truly describe what happens during the experience itself. After all, no one returns to tell the tale. Now, for the first time, scientists may have uncovered some solid evidence about what occurs as the body transitions out of the physical realm. In a recently published study, researchers performed an EEG test on a dying man, revealing that his brain activity continued for 15 minutes after his body stopped functioning. This remarkable finding offers a new clue about what might happen to humans during the final moments of life.

 According to the NHS, an EEG is a test that uses sensors attached to a person's scalp to record brain activity. This test is commonly used to diagnose neurological conditions like epilepsy, helping doctors determine the type of epilepsy and develop a treatment plan. In their quest to understand what happens during death, researchers decided to perform an EEG on a dying person to observe the brain's activity as life comes to an end. Finding a "subject" for this test was challenging, but they eventually identified an 87-year-old man with epilepsy who fit the criteria.

The man died from a heart attack and the EEG test recorded his brain activity for 15 minutes after his death. They noted that there was an increase in brain activity, a phenomenon known as "gamma oscillations." WebMD shares that gamma oscillations are connected to high levels of thought and focus. Researchers believe that such a high level of activity during those 15 minutes suggests that a person's life flashes before their eyes in that span.

“We measured 900 seconds of brain activity around the time of death and set a specific focus to investigate what happened in the 30 seconds before and after the heart stopped beating,” said Dr. Ajmal Zemmar, a neurosurgeon at the University of Louisville, US, who organized the study published in the journal Frontiers in Ageing Neuroscience. “Just before and after the heart stopped working, we saw changes in a specific band of neural oscillations, so-called gamma oscillations, but also in others such as delta, theta, alpha, and beta oscillations.” 

"Through generating 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," Dr. Ajmal Zemmar, explained. “These findings challenge our understanding of when exactly life ends and generate important subsequent questions, such as those related to the timing of organ donation.” Ethically organ donation should occur only when a person is fully dead. This research raises queries about the process put in place to declare someone dead. 

This pattern has not been noted for the first time in living beings. The same brain activity has been found in rats in their last moments. This implies that there is a conventional response that the brain executes during those times. The next step is to conduct this test with more subjects to analyze the validity of the result as shared by Zemmar with CBS News. Zemmar's objective regarding the research is, “Something we may learn from this research is: although our loved ones have their eyes closed and are ready to leave us to rest, their brains may be replaying some of the nicest moments they experienced in their lives.”

Editor's note: This article was originally published on January 9, 2024. It has since been updated.