There's a pretty common theory that hasn’t been proven about what happens in the moments before we die.
What do we think, feel and hear?
A lot of people think there will be a warm, fuzzy light before floating off to the afterlife, and others think there’s just nothing.
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However, what has always been a theory is that your life flashes before your eyes.
We see it in TV shows and movies where a character is on the brink of death and suddenly gets mentally transported to their past memories, reliving important moments that will them to live.
But how true is this?
Well, according to a new study it might actually be true.
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Neuroscientists recently analysed recordings of the brain of an 87-year-old man moments before he died, which led to an incredible discovery.
The team found that the man had a burst of brain activity during the time before death and an increase and change in the man’s alpha and gamma brain waves.
These brain waves are generally involved in the functions of memory recall cognitive processes, which suggests that he had a ‘recall of life’ before dying.
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The research was published in the Frontiers and went on to explain that the man had suffered from a bleed on his brain after a fall which led to him being admitted to hospital.
It was there that he was hooked up to an EEG (electroencephalography) as he died during treatment which captured the data.
During the 30 seconds recorded of before and after his death, they found that even after the man’s heart stopped beating, his brain actually had an increase in activity which led them to theorise that brains continue to work after blood stops following to it.
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The team explained in the study: “Given that cross-coupling between alpha and gamma activity is involved in cognitive processes and memory recall in healthy subjects, it is intriguing to speculate that such activity could support a last ‘recall of life’ that may take place in the near-death state.”
However, as they were only able to analyse one person, they have urged people to note that more work needs to be done to prove the theory comprehensively.
One of the study’s co-authors and a neurosurgeon at the University of Louisville, Dr Ajmal Zemmar, said: “These findings challenge our understanding of when exactly life ends and generate important subsequent questions.”
That’s pretty cool, right?
Britt Jones