Near-Death Experience Study Suggests Awareness Continues After Brain Shuts Down
BuzzFeed - Latest 2014-10-08
Summary:
Scientists at Southampton University say the evidence suggests people can be aware after clinical death, which was previously not thought possible.
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The Telegraph reports on a study by the University of Southampton, which examined 2,060 people who suffered cardiac arrests at 15 hospitals in the U.K., U.S. and Austria. Of those researched, 330 of them survived and 140 were interviewed for the study – 55 of those interviewed said they had been aware at the moment of resuscitation.
According to the paper:
They found that nearly 40% [55 out of 140] of those who survived described some kind of "awareness" during the time when they were clinically dead before their hearts were restarted.
Acording to the report 2% described awareness with explicit recall of "seeing" and "hearing" actual events related to their resuscitation, and one man even recalled leaving his body and watching his resuscitation from the corner of the room: he apparently described the actions of the doctors in detail.
We know the brain can't function when the heart has stopped beating. But in this case conscious awareness appears to have continued for up to three minutes into the period when the heart wasn't beating, even though the brain typically shuts down within 20-30 seconds after the heart has stopped.
The man described everything that had happened in the room, but importantly, he heard two bleeps from a machine that makes a noise at three-minute intervals.
Some said that they felt time had either slowed down or sped up, while one in five described an "unusual sense of peacefulness". A small proportion felt "separated from their bodies" or having "heigtened senses". The paper also reported that "Some recalled seeing a bright light; a golden flash or the Sun shining. Others recounted feelings of fear or drowning or being dragged through deep water."