What Science says about what we feel at the moment of death

In the last stage of life, when death approaches, people often become numb. For this reason, we often think of the experience as a sleepy, unconscious disappearance from life.

But some experiments show a very different story.

In 2013, scientists at the University of Michigan in the United States measured the brain activity of dying mice in the laboratory. And something interesting happened.

After the mice suffered cardiac arrest — without a heartbeat or breathing — their brains showed an increase in overall activity, with levels of low gamma waves that were more synchronized throughout the brain than in normal waking states.

And, incredibly, this particular type of brain activity has been linked to people’s conscious awareness in previous studies.

The experiment challenges the notion that the brain is inactive during death. In other words, the mice may have had some sort of experience while they were between clinical death and complete brain death.

It is possible that before ultimate unconsciousness there is a period of heightened awareness. Scientists wondered: what did the mice experience as they died? Could the same be true for people?

Humans have larger and more complex brains than mice, but a very interesting experiment carried out at Imperial College London in the UK in 2018 shed light on what death can be like in humans.

Scientists wanted to investigate the similarities between two very different phenomena.

One is near-death experiences (NDEs)—the hallucinations experienced by about 20% of people who have been resuscitated after clinical death.

The other is hallucinations caused by DMT, a psychedelic drug that reliably generates a wide spectrum of subjective effects on human brain functions, including perception, affect and cognition.

Study participants were given doses of DMT and, after coming back to reality, were asked to describe their experiences using the checklist commonly used to assess near-death experiences. Scientists were surprised to see an incredible amount of common ground.

Both NDE and DMT experiences included sensations such as “transcendence of time and space” and “oneness with close objects and people.”

The near-death experience turned out to be surprisingly similar to that of a powerful hallucinogen.

When we consider death, we think of it as a dark process of incorporation. But Science asks: what if this process is psychedelic?

We asked Chris Timmermann, who led the research at Imperial College London, what this experiment tells us about death.

“I think the main lesson from the research is that we can find death in life and in life experiences,” he said.

“What we know now is that there appears to be an increase in electrical activity [cerebral]. These gamma waves appear to be very pronounced and could be responsible for near-death experiences.”

“There are also specific regions in the brain, such as what we call the temporal lobes — areas that deal with memory, sleep and even learning — that could also be related to these experiences. In a way, our brains are simulating a form of reality.”

About 20% of people who were declared clinically dead and later survived report NDEs. Does everyone experience them and few remember them or are these experiences rare?

“There is a high possibility that there is a lack of memory due to different reasons. In our experience with psychedelic DMT, we saw that when we give high doses, there is a part of the experience that is also forgotten”, explained Timmermann.

“What I think happens is that the experience is so new that it’s hard to describe. When an experience transcends the ability to describe it with language, we have a hard time remembering it. try it.”

What other research might help our understanding of death?

“It’s very interesting what’s going on these days with brain scans and how we can find out what’s going on in the brain,” he says.

“To that end, it’s possible that at some point, our brain imaging techniques will become so advanced that we can read people’s minds to get closer to understanding what the brain mechanisms are that underpin these extraordinary and unusual experiences.”

The Science of Death still produces a very murky landscape—but what we already know gives reason for optimism.

For example, we know that people who have had near-death experiences often report feelings of calm and serenity, with reduced stress associated with death.

We also know that NDEs are predominantly described as painless, which means that the heightened awareness we can experience after death can also be painless.

Research also shows that people tend to lose their senses in a specific order. First hunger and thirst, then speech and vision.

Hearing and touching seem to last longer, which means many people can hear and feel loved ones in their final moments, even when they seem unconscious.

And a recent brain scan of a dying epilepsy patient showed activity related to memory and dreams, leading to speculation that there may even be some truth to the phrase “you see life flash before your eyes”.

Finally, we know from these experiments that the experience of death can involve heightened, possibly hallucinatory, consciousness. One last psychedelic trip before the ultimate nothingness.

“In a society like ours, where we tend to deny death and try to sweep it under the rug, I think this is one of the great lessons that psychedelic research can give us: how to incorporate it into our lives,” he concluded. Timmermann.

Ultimately, we are all going to die. But these experiments have shown that the transition between life and death can be much more emotional and even psychedelic than we might have expected.

We are programmed like animals to fear our death, but understanding death more deeply helps us relax a little.

These last moments may not be scary. They are just part of an inevitable journey to an unknown, likely painless and potentially psychedelic destination.

*This report is based on a BBC Reel video. To watch it, in English, Click here.

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