How scientists showed that life passes even as a movie before death

New data from a scientific “accident” suggests that life may actually pass before our eyes as we die.

A team of scientists set out to measure the brain waves of an 87-year-old patient who had developed epilepsy. However, during neurological monitoring, he suffered a fatal heart attack — and this provided the unexpected record of a dying brain.

Monitoring revealed that in the 30 seconds before and after the patient’s brain waves followed the same patterns of dreaming or recalling memories.

Such brain activity may suggest that a “end-of-life memory” may occur in someone’s last moments, the team wrote in their study, published in the journal Frontiers in Aging Neuroscience on Tuesday.

Ajmal Zemmar, co-author of the study, said what the team, then based in Vancouver, Canada, accidentally obtained was the first record of a brain at the time of death.

“This was completely by chance, we didn’t plan to do this experiment or record these signals,” he told the BBC.

So will we see a flashback of moments with loved ones and other happy memories? Zemmar claims it’s impossible to say.

“If I were to move into the philosophical realm, I would speculate that if the brain were to look back, it would probably want to remind it of good things rather than bad things,” he says.

“But what is memorable would be different for each person.”

Zemmar, now a neurosurgeon at the University of Louisville in the US, said that in the 30 seconds before the patient’s heart stopped supplying blood to the brain, their brain waves followed the same patterns as when we performed high cognitively demanding tasks, such as when we concentrated, we dream or evoke memories.

And it continued 30 seconds after the patient’s heart stopped beating — at which point a patient is normally declared dead.

“This could be a last reminder of memories we have in life, and they are replayed in our brain in the last few seconds before we die.”

The study also raises questions about when exactly life ends — when the heart stops beating or the brain stops working.

Zemmar and his team cautioned that broad conclusions cannot be drawn from a one-person study. The fact that the patient is epileptic, with the brain bleeding and swollen, complicates matters further.

“I’ve never felt comfortable reporting a single case,” says Zemmar.

And for years after the initial filing in 2016, he sought out similar cases to help strengthen the analysis, but was unsuccessful.

But a 2013 study — carried out on healthy mice — may offer a clue.

In this analysis, US researchers recorded high levels of brain waves at the time of death up to 30 seconds after the rats’ hearts stopped beating — just as Zemmar’s epileptic patient did.

The similarities between the studies are “surprising”, according to the expert.

They now hope that the publication of this single human case may open the door to further studies of life’s final moments.

“I think there’s something mystical and spiritual about this whole near-death experience,” says Zemmar.

“And discoveries like this — it’s a moment scientists live for.”