Scientists Discover How the Brain Still Works After You’re Dead

The topic of near-death experiences has been a widely-debated subject, but scientists are claiming to have discovered that a person’s consciousness continues to work after the body has stopped showing signs of life — asserting that people have awareness of their own death.

A team from New York University Langone School of Medicine has conducted a study to investigate the issue. The study, which is the largest of its kind, tried to find out exactly what happens in the afterlife.

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Study author Dr. Sam Parnia told Live Science that they interviewed people who have suffered cardiac arrest and “come back” to life to learn more about what happens to the brain and body after death.

“They’ll describe watching doctors and nurses working and they’ll describe having awareness of full conversations, of visual things that were going on, that would otherwise not be known to them,” Parnia said.

He explained that these recollections were verified by medical and nursing staff who reported their patients were technically dead. The patients that “came back to life” could remember details of what the staff was saying even though they were technically dead.

Doctors define death based on the moment when the heart no longer beats and the brain is cut off from the blood supply.

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“Technically, that’s how you get the time of death — it’s all based on the moment when the heart stops,” Parnia said. “Once that happens, blood no longer circulates to the brain, which means brain function halts almost instantaneously. You lose all your brain stem reflexes – your gag reflex, your pupil reflex, all that is gone.”

Parnia explains that the brain’s cerebral cortex, which is responsible for thinking and processing information, instantly flatlines when a person dies. This means that within two to 20 seconds, there are no brainwaves that will be detected by an electric monitor.

This ignites a chain reaction of cellular processes that result in the death of brain cells which can go on for hours after the heart stops.