Seeing a bright light or having your life flash before your eyes have become cultural tropes used to describe near-death experiences.
But one American expert believes they may actually be true.
According to Dr. Sam Parnia, associate professor of medicine at New York University Langone Medical Center, patients who experience “the early stage of dying” often “begin to relive every moment of their lives.”
However, “what is really remarkable” about this state, he says, is that they are relived not only from their own perspective, but also as if they were looking through other people’s eyes.
These phenomena, which have been a source of fascination for both doctors and the general public for decades, are believed to occur when people are clinically dead, when heart and brain activity stops.
Dr. Parnia has conducted 30 years of research involving millions of people to assess where life ends and death begins.
he said Radio Times: ‘Many millions of people around the world have passed through this early phase of death and have come back to life.
“We’ve studied this in thousands of people using many different scientific methods.
According to Dr. Sam Parnia, an associate professor of medicine at New York University Langone Medical Center, patients often “start to relive every moment of their lives.”
However, “what is really remarkable” about this state, he says, is that they are relived “not only from their own perspective but also from the other person’s experience.”
‘Incredibly, (patients) constantly report that, although from the outside perspective they appear to have no consciousness and are assumed to be dead, internally they go through a new experience.
‘You feel that your own consciousness, your self, suddenly becomes vast and becomes more lucid and sharper.
‘They can gather information about what is happening to them while doctors and nurses try to revive them.
‘They collect this information almost in 360 degrees and come to recognize that “it looks like I’m dead.”‘
He added: “What is truly remarkable is that in this state, they begin to relive every moment of their lives, every interaction they have had with others, not only from their own perspective but also from the experience and perspective of the other.” person”.
‘For example, if they have done something to hurt someone, they relive exactly the same pain that the other person has had.
“If they have done something that has caused happiness in other people, they relive that same happiness.”
The experiences of seeing and hearing things while clinically dead have some scientific basis.
Amber Cavanagh previously told MailOnline she was 43 when she suffered two strokes and entered the ‘meeting point’ of heaven.
Mrs Cavanagh, from Canada, said she could see her husband (pictured above) “crying over” her body.
For years, studies have shown that the human brain still functions normally for a very short period after the heart stops, although it appears to have ceased activity on regular scans.
Research has also revealed that the brain can still experience sporadic bursts of activity even after an hour without oxygen, during resuscitation.
Such discoveries have led some doctors to call for a review of standard practice that states that people should be declared dead after three to five minutes of oxygen deprivation to the brain, since these patients could, in theory, still be resuscitated.
Dr Parnia added: ‘None of this is what we expected it to be. We weren’t supposed to be able to reverse the death.
‘We weren’t supposed to investigate what happens beyond death.
‘You and I can’t remember more than a fraction of our lives now if we were asked.
But still, in death, it is as if everything that is recorded in life comes to the fore like an iceberg that emerges.
While evidence that something happens in the brain after clinical death is still being explored, exactly why so many people have similar experiences remains a topic of controversy among experts.
“Suddenly you’re evaluating your entire life based on a prism of morality and ethics.”
He also said: ‘Of course, many of these people don’t come back.
“But when they do, they are positively transformed because they recognize that there has been a deeper purpose in life and that even the smallest actions and thoughts, no matter how hidden, were not really hidden.”
People have previously told MailOnline about out-of-body experiences, such as seeing bright lights at the end of a tunnel or meeting deceased relatives.
Others, meanwhile, have also recalled seeing a heavenly afterlife.
While evidence that something happens in the brain after clinical death is still being explored, exactly why so many people have similar experiences remains a topic of controversy among experts.
Some theorize that as the brain undergoes these changes, the “brakes” essentially come off the system and this opens our perception to incredibly lucid and vivid experiences of stored memories of our lives.
However, this is just a theory and is disputed by other experts.
Clinical death is also differentiated from brain death.
Brain death occurs when a person connected to an artificial life support machine no longer has any brain function, meaning they will not regain consciousness.
These patients have no chance of recovery because their body cannot survive without artificial life support.
In the UK, this means that a person who has suffered brain death is legally dead.
This can be difficult for families of the deceased to understand, as they can see their loved one’s chest rise and fall with each breath from the ventilator, as well as how their heart continues to beat.
Brain death can be caused by both disease and injury when the blood and/or oxygen supply to the vital organ is cut off.
The condition is different from a vegetative state where the patient’s brain function remains.