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Flirting with death may sound terrifying, but people who have had a near-death experience often say they felt very calm and peaceful.
Maybe it’s your brain’s way of dealing with your mortality, but maybe it’s much more complex.
Scientists have several theories to explain the surprising sensations during a near-death experience, including psychological changes in the brain in the death of brain cells.
Yet many issues surrounding near-death experiences remain a mystery. That’s partly because it’s virtually impossible to investigate when it happens, says professor of psychiatry and neurobehavioral sciences Bruce Greyson from the University of Virginia and co-founder of The International Association of Near-Death Studies.
Researchers must draw on anecdotes, memories and animal research to understand how brains change after a near-death experience and what that means for future treatments.
What does a near-death experience feel like?
There are two sides to the description of a near-death experience: what happens to your body and what you experience on a psychological level.
Physically, near-death experiences are associated with extremely painful events, such as head injuries, a heart attack, or respiratory arrest.
But psychologically, the brain shuts down to feelings of pain, or at least the memory of it. For example, former CEO, leadership expert and business consultant Julia Nicholson says she vividly saw the faces of loved ones flash by one after the other during a near-fatal car accident in 1980.
“I don’t remember feeling any kind of pain until I got to the hospital,” said she recently told the American magazine Newsweek.
Other people describe more bodily sensations, such as the feeling of leaving their body, to hover above it, to be physically in a tunnel with light at the end of it or spiritual encounters having to do with a supreme being, aliens or deceased loved ones.
And during all these otherworldly experiences, people rarely report experiencing fear or pain: it is usually an overwhelming sense of peace and love.
Some phenomena cannot be scientifically explained. But last year, near-death experience researchers got to see something they’d never seen before: the brain scan of a dying man. This revealed some secrets that scientists could previously only speculate about.
The brain scan of a dying man
In 2016, an 87-year-old man was undergoing an EEG, a brain scan, when he unexpectedly suffered a heart attack and died. Researchers later published the results of the scan in Frontiers of Aging Neuroscience.
An EEG measures electrical signals that the brain produces in order to diagnose or conduct research into neurological problems, such as memory loss and cerebral infarctions.
Doctors were examining the man for a series of recent strokes when his heart suddenly stopped.
The researchers report in their report that the EEG scan shows high-frequency brain waves called gamma oscillations during the 15 seconds prior to the heart attack. They play a role in it creating and retrieving memories.
“It is very difficult to draw conclusions from one case … but we can say that just before death and just after the heart has stopped, we have seen signals similar to what we see when we dream, meditate or reminisce” , said lead researcher Ajmal Zemmar told Insider last year.
Of course, this is a scan of a man moments before his death and not of someone with a near-death experience who survives. Still, the observed brain activity may help to explain the memories and faces that people with a near-death experience see, says Professor Greyson.
In addition, EEG scans of people trying to remember their near-death experience may also provide more clues to the effects of a near-death experience on the human brain.
What a near-death experience does to the brain
When people remember their near-death experience, the brain “shows increased activity in several places, such as the parts associated with memory, vision, listening, and emotions,” says Greyson.
In particular, the temporal lobe, responsible for processing sound and memories, may play a role in the out-of-body sensation and flashbacks during a near-death experience, says researcher David San Filippo van The National Louis University.
“That’s why some people think that a near-death experience is nothing more than a biological, chemical response to the dying brain,” says San Filippo.
That statement is supported by study in rats. This shows that the positive feelings people report after a near-death experience may be due to a huge amount of serotonin being released in the brain. That could be the brain’s step-by-step preparation for death, inducing feelings of euphoria and suppressing pain, says San Filippo.
Although research in animals can provide clues, they cannot simply be translated to what happens in humans. That’s why more research is needed, according to Greyson.
Some researchers think that near-death experiences are just as spiritual as they are biological. The descriptions of near-death experiences are strikingly similar among different age groups and among people in different countries, especially in terms of encounters with a spiritual deity or a sense of belonging to something bigger than just life on Earth, San Filippo says.
“We hear the same story. It may differ a bit because of cultural or spiritual backgrounds, but it’s basically the same,” says San Filippo. “That’s why we think a near-death experience is a transpersonal experience that takes place outside the brain.”
What does this mean for future treatments?
Although research into near-death experiences is very complicated because they are difficult to predict, researchers are beginning to understand the phenomenon better. And with that knowledge, new therapies and treatments can be developed for people with a terminal illness and their loved ones.
For example, people tell San Filippo that during a near-death experience they felt calm and had no fear of dying.
“If we can learn more about where those positive feelings come from in a near-death experience, we may be able to develop an effective therapy for people who are struggling and struggling,” says Jonathan Rasouli. He is a physician in the Department of Neurological Surgery at Staten Island University Hospital.
According to Rasouli, more research could make the idea of death and dying “less mysterious” and therefore “less terrifying” for all of us.
“I think people benefit from hearing stories about near-death experiences and are comfortable with the idea that death is a process where the pain ceases,” says San Filippo.
