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There are many stories of people who have had near-death experiences: you see a white light, you float above your body, you feel absolute calm, or you see memories of your entire life flash before your eyes.

But what is really true? And how can we know?

Brain activity measured at the time of death

A study published earlier this year may provide answers:

In 2016, an elderly man was hospitalized in Canada with head injuries after a fall. The man was treated for a brain haemorrhage and, as he showed signs of having seizures, he was hooked up to an EEG machine which monitored his brain activity.

After a few days, the man died of a heart attack while still connected to the EEG meter. This gave researchers the opportunity to analyze the man’s brain activity just before and just after death – as well as at the time of death itself.

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What they found was quite surprising:

Measurements showed a surge in the type of brain activity associated with memory and recollections, meditation and dreaming both immediately before and for 15 seconds after his heart stopped beating.

Did the man feel that his life had passed the test? At least that’s a close interpretation.

Researcher and neurosurgeon Ajmal Zemmar, who both treated the man and is one of the researchers behind the study, previously told the British magazine Initiated that it is difficult to draw conclusions from this single patient, also because the 87-year-old man had bleeding, seizures and medications that affect brain activity.

– But what we can say is that we have signals just before the moment of death and after the heart stops that are similar to those that occur in healthy people who remember something , dream or meditate, he says.

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Similar study in rats

The researchers waited nearly six years to publish the study, in part because they were waiting for other studies to show similar results. This does not happen. Measuring a person’s brain activity at the time of death isn’t exactly something that’s done every day – in fact, it’s the first and so far only time it’s been done, and it happened by pure chance.

A similar study has already been done on rats, where the researchers caused cardiac arrest as they measured the brain activity of the rats. The study showed that the rats’ brain activity in the first seconds after cardiac arrest was highly coordinated and persisted for up to 30 seconds. The brain activity was of the same type that occurs in us humans when we remember something or dream.

The study is earlier discussed by NRK.