Death happens to us all, so it’s only natural to want to know what you experience the moment your heart stops beating.
Will you see a bright light or dead loved ones? Will you be confronted with everything you wish you’d done differently?
There’s a saying that your life flashes before your eyes, it’s a phenomena dubbed ‘life recall’.
You’ll often hear people who’ve had a brush with death say their whole life replayed in their mind, well, it turns out that scientists have proved something like this could very well happen when you die.
Neuroscientists have actually recorded the brain activity of someone as they died, and found that their brain waves at the time of death were similar to those that happen when we dream, recall memories and meditate.
Is it just us, or is that oddly comforting? If we’ve peaked your morbid curiosity, then read on to learn more about what happens when you die.
How does life recall work?
The study, published in the Frontiers in Aging Neuroscience in 2023, found that our brain could remain active and coordinated during and even after the ‘transition to death’, responding to the change with a ‘programmed’ ending.
This finding came after an 87-year-old patient developed epilepsy and an EEG was being used to detect the seizures so they could treat the patient.
While they were recording the brain activity, the patient had a heart attack and died, meaning the activity of a dying brain was recorded for the first time ever.
Dr Ajmal Zemmar, a neurosurgeon at the University of Louisville, US, who led the study, explained to Frontiers they investigated the 30 seconds before and after the heart stopped beating and saw neurological differences.
‘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,’ he said.
Oscillations is a fancy term for brain waves and all the aforementioned types of brain waves, bar delta, are associated with dreaming, memories and information processing – which amount to flashbacks.
Delta brain waves are associated with deep sleep are certain states of consciousness.
“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 Zemmar speculated.
‘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.’
It’s important to remember though, that this study only had a single patient who had also suffered seizures and swelling but Zemmar is hopeful that this knowledge comforts those who have lost or are losing loved ones.
‘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,’ he said.
Visioning
But it’s not just at the point of death that we see things, we also experience visioning as part of the dying process.
It’s one of the six deathbed phenomena described by hospice nurse Julie McFadden, 41, who’s based in LA and spends her time administering palliative care.
‘Visioning is wild,’ Julie says. It’s not about hallucinations and psychosis, or seeing things due to mental illness. ‘It happens to many people, it’s always comforting and the person is almost always alert and oriented,’ she explains.
‘People always say “oh it’s the medication or the lack of oxygen” or “they’re just confused”, but… most people who have visioning are none of those things.
‘It usually happens a few weeks before death, they can be up and having a normal conversation with their family and saying they’re seeing their dead father in the corner who is smiling and telling them he’s coming to get them soon and not to worry.’
The best thing to do as a family member witnessing your loved one experiencing visioning is to ‘just go with it’, according to the nurse.
She says that people typically experience visioning about a month away from death.
The death reach
Sometimes visioning goes hand-in-hand with what is called ‘the death reach’.
What happens to your body after you die, according to an embalmer
Lianna Champ, 59, the UK’s first female undertaker and embalmer, has made dead bodies her life ever since seeing her first one at the age of 15. We enlisted her to walk us through everything that happens, between the time of death and the funeral.
‘Once the heart stops beating the energy of the body stops,’ she tells Metro. ‘It’s our energy and blood flow that keeps us warm, so the body will start to cool and it’ll go through a period of processes and changes, which is what we know as decomposition.
‘Rigor mortis sets in a few hours after death. It’s a chemical reaction that is caused by a lack of oxygen and biochemical changes in the body after someone has died. This causes the muscles to stiffen and contract.’
Lianna says that people mistakenly believe that if you attempt to move limbs or fingers during rigor mortis you will break the bones, but this is not true.
She says: ‘If somebody’s hand went stiff and you were to gently bend their fingers you would be breaking down the rigor mortis because it doesn’t last, it breaks down itself naturally after about 48 hours.’
‘This is when a person is lying in bed and they reach up in the air, almost like they’re seeing someone or reaching for someone to hug them or to shake their hand,’ Julie explains.
This can be for a prolonged period of time too. Again healthcare professionals don’t necessarily know why this is happening but it’s normal.
While nothing is fully understood yet, it’s clear that our brains work in mysterious ways when our time comes to pass on. At least now, you have a little bit of an idea as to what you can expect.
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