Scientists are studying dying patients' brain activity in the final moments of life

Brain activity sometimes goes into overdrive around the point of death according to researchers' recent analysis of patients' brains before and after they were taken off their ventilators.

What happens in a dying brain?

Near-death experiences usually happen during death or on the border of life and death when a person isn't understood to be conscious. This article details the science of what's going on with the brain during NDEs.

Medical advances that manage to resuscitate people from comas and cardiac arrests have enabled new research into the brain activity of people experiencing near-death experiences and a new (contested) explanation about why they occur.

A radiation oncologist has studied near-death experience reports for over 25 years and compiled around 4,000 accounts in the hopes of finding more patterns that would reveal insights about consciousness and humans' final moments before or around death.

The body's response to cardiac arrest has been linked to near-death experiences.

Research advances suggest death takes much longer than we realized

Recent research indicates that organs, including the brain, are better at handling a lack of oxygen after the heart stops beating than previously known. Such findings may open up possibilities that include someday reversing certain death processes and expanding the availability of organs available for organ donations. (Some users may experience a paywall.)

Watch this 2021 video demonstrating a full brain death examination

This video and accompanying article in the peer-reviewed New England Journal of Medicine show the then-standard steps of a full brain death examination—demonstrating the process on a medical dummy to search for pain, blinking, eye movement, cough, gagging, or other forms of responsiveness. (May need to sign up for a free account to view.)

Four in 10 CPR patients report consciousness not captured by standard measures.

Brain death is a top source of organ donation

Brain death is a significant source of organ donations because patients declared brain dead and hooked up to intensive care unit machines will still have oxygen flowing to organs like the heart, lungs, and kidneys—preserving those organs.

Pig brain cellular activity was restarted hours after death in study published in 2019

Yale University scientists restored basic cellular activity and circulatory function in pig brains about four hours after death with a synthetic cocktail of preservatives and nutrients. This work— which didn't restart electricity activity in the brain or consciousness—could help advance future human stroke and brain injury treatments.

Brain death is a uniquely modern problem stemming from modern ventilators.

Some scientists argue NDEs are constructed by the brain, not actually experienced

Despite the powerful memories associated with NDEs, scientists question the idea that the experiences prove consciousness endures after death, opting instead to find physiological explanations for common reports of out-of-body experiences, euphoric and lucid thinking, and more.

Brain death is a top source of organ donation

Brain death is a significant source of organ donations—approximately 40% of organs in the US and the UK are recovered from people who experience brain death. Patients declared brain dead and hooked up to intensive care unit machines will still have oxygen flowing to organs like the heart, lungs, and kidneys—preserving those organs.

Accounts of near-death experiences share similarities with hallucinogens, with reports of mystical-like states of consciousness across both contexts.

Studies of psychedelic use may help shed light on the nature of consciousness

The nature of consciousness—what it is, where it comes from, and how it manifests as moment-to-moment experience—remains under debate by scientists. Recent studies show psychedelics were found to boost low-frequency brain signals known as delta waves, a behavior also seen during dream states.

A brain scientist's experience with a stroke

What happens when a leading brain scientist has a stroke of her own? Dr. Jill Bolte Taylor recounts moment by moment watching her brain function slow and then cease, followed by a prolonged recovery. Through this experience, she details what she learned about the phenomenon of stroke and how it has impacted her research ever since.

Brain death is very rare—only 2% of hospital patients have brain death in the US

A peer-reviewed analysis examining US hospital billing code data from 2012 to 2016 concluded that the incidence of brain death is about 2% in the country. There was no available information indicating what proportion of those patients underwent organ donation.

Brain death is a medical diagnosis without any wiggle room

Seeking to resolve long-standing variations between hospitals and state procedures, in 2023 several expert groups published comprehensive step-by-step guidance for clinicians to follow when determining brain death in kids and adults. Among other guidelines, it stated that doctors don't need to get family consent to do the tests needed to make this determination.

Observant Catholics can donate organs because the official Catholic stance is brain death is death—enabling organ donation

The Vatican states that brain death, when properly diagnosed, means that a person is dead even though machines can keep them alive. That official stance from Catholic leadership and echoed by most Catholic doctors and ethicists enables the families of observant Catholics to proceed with organ donation.

Terminal lucidity is the phenomenon of sudden, heightened mental clarity when on the verge of death

The "Let's Talk Near Death" podcast explores phenomena around the end of life, inviting guests to recount their own experiences. This episode focuses on the phenomenon known as "terminal lucidity," where patients experience clarity, vivid memory recall, and more, typically following a heart attack, stroke, or other trauma.

Thanatology is the study of death and dying.

Near-death experiences can be reminiscent of religious visions, yet people across different faiths as well as those with no declared religion have reported them.

The study of dreams, formally called oneirology, has evolved over the centuries, from anecdotal interpretations to advanced brain imaging.

A 'paranormal activity' unit at the University of Virginia studies challenges to mainstream scientific ideas about human consciousness.

'Donation after circulatory death' is on the rise

This occurs when a patient in a coma is on life support and family members agree to donate the organs. Watch this video about a 2025 New York Times investigation that identified 12 instances across nine states of bungled or premature attempts to retrieve organs from people whose families had authorized withdrawal of life support.

A leading expert on near-death experiences, psychiatrist Dr. Bruce Greyson, says that during his decades of research on this topic, this area of research has become far more mainstream and accepted as a rigorous area of inquiry.

In 1968, a Harvard Medical School committee issued the first neurological definition of death

The definition set a legal and medical precedent for how we define death, important for issues including organ donation. This 2020 video podcast discusses the history of brain death controversies and the variability in how death has been determined, including discussions in the late 1960s about when patients are considered dead in the context of organ donations.

When is someone actually dead?

Death is a process, not a sudden flip of a switch. Technology can now interrupt this process at various stages, begging the question of when exactly death happens in the dying process. This 33-minute podcast episode explores this question and the...

The neuroscience of heartbreak

An analysis of functional MRIs revealed a difficult fact: the active brain areas of people experiencing heartbreak were very similar to those actively in love. This is a major reason why people in the middle of rejection can't accept the reality of their loss. This article breaks down the various changes in neurotransmitters and neural pathways for those enduring that universal experience, heartbreak.

How do brain scans work?

There's only one thing in our solar system sophisticated enough to study itself: the human brain. But this self-investigation is challenging because a living brain is shielded by skull, swaddled in tissue, and made up of billions of tiny cells. How do we study living brains without harming their owners? Two experts explain how the various techniques like EEGs, fMRIs, and PETs work in this TedEd talk.

Meet the Dutch cardiologist who believes consciousness can exist outside the body

Dutch cardiologist Dr. Pim van Lommel conducted one of the largest studies of near-death experiences following cardiac arrest, publishing the results in the prestigous journel The Lancet. He later went on to argue (to significant criticism from peers) that his findings suggest consciousness can exist outside the body.

Schizophrenia is being studied with pea-sized 'mini-brains'

Brain organoid research is enabling researchers to study distinct electrical firing patterns associated with schizophrenia. These "mini-brains" that are constructed in the lab from patients' cells could lead to better diagnosis approaches and drug development.

Sleep is no longer considered a binary state—scientists are seeking to map a variety of liminal states between sleep and waking, including the hypnagogic state associated with boosts of creativity.

The main criticism of a recent neurophysiological explanation for near-death experiences is that these events are too complex to be explained as a neurochemical response to an oxygen-deprived brain.

Your brain appears to age in five distinct stages, with the pattern of connections inside your brain shifting, on average, around ages 9, 32, 66, and 83.

The University of Virginia has the nation's most established near-death studies division, but institutions including the University of Southampton, the University of Connecticut, and the University of North Texas have also explored the field.

The dreaming brain, as understood by scientists

Technology has advanced to where the seemingly separate fields of psychology and neuroscience are asking the same questions about dreams, such as whether they're more closely related to perception or visualization. Some field-intersecting findings include research that shows people with impaired face perception don't dream of faces, those with brain legion-related cognition difficulties deal with similar issues in dreams, and children's dreams change in parallel to their cognitive development.

Dream interpretation has evolved from ancient mystical explanations, to dream reports, to tracking electrical activity in the brain and more.

Animal brain studies show brain activity similar to what we'd expect during dreams, but parsing whether animals are truly dreaming depends on how one defines dreaming and how scientists could prove it.

Visualize the difference between a healthy brain and one with Alzheimer's.

The brain has three main parts—the cerebrum, brain stem, and cerebellum—each combining to control the entirety of the body's operations. Alzheimer's progressively deteriorates the circuitry in these structures, resulting in what we see as the symptoms of the disease.

Neural interfaces offer major medical potential but raise serious ethical concerns

Although brain-computer interfaces can help people recover lost functions and allow direct brain-to-computer communication in the future, surveys have shown little public support for using them to boost abilities like memory or focus in healthy people.

Scientists are learning to guide your dreams using sound and touch.

Physiological changes to the brain on LSD can be captured via MRI

Psychedelics like LSD often take users on novel experiences that can result in lasting shifts in perspective and behavior. See how LSD affects brain activity in this video that details how scientists visually captured the psychedelic's effect for the first time.

How can octopuses and MDMA help scientists understand the human brain?

Research shows that psychedelics may induce something called "critical periods" in the adult brain, which can make our brains more open to learning and changing, like they once were back in early childhood. Psychedelics similarly change how social creatures like octopuses behave, which demonstrates that these animals could help us better understand our own neurobiology.

Several brain regions are involved in lucid dreaming, a state in which a person knows they're dreaming.

Neural rhythms shape how we move, focus, remember, and interact with the world

Millions of neurons in the brain produce rhythmic electrical signals, or brain waves, that guide physical movement and help form and store memories. Researchers also use these rhythms to create brain-computer interfaces, letting people control devices using only their thoughts.

A near-death experience is a phenomenon reported by roughly 5% of the population, typically occurring after a traumatic physical event or a brief clinical death.

Researchers are exploring neural links between Alzheimer's and autism

Recent DNA sequencing and molecular biology studies suggest that similarities in genes, neural circuitry and patterns of disease warrant further exploration to potentially better understand both conditions and how to treat them. (Some users may encounter a paywall.)

Everything scientists could learn by looking at your skull

Our skulls are all unique, but they also share characteristics across groups of people. In the absence of fingerprints, forensic scientists can learn a lot about you just from your skull.

Explore the biology of pain and why the experience of pain may differ widely from one person to another.