After You Die & Your Heart Stops Beating, You're Still Aware Of Your Surroundings Says Research

Humans have always wondered what comes after death. That's one of the reasons why we have religion after all, to seek to explain the unknown after.

Now, scientists believe they may have a little bit of a clue, even if it's incredibly morbid to consider.

heart.org

Researchers made the discovery when studying cardiac arrest cases across Europe and the US. What they learned from chats with patients was that, those that had needed to be resuscitated, could describe what had happened around them, for some time after their heart stopped beating.

They could even recall conversations between doctors and nurses.

"They'll describe watching doctors and nurses working, they'll describe having awareness of full conversations, of visual things that were going on, that would otherwise not be known to them," Dr Sam Parnia, who led the research, explained. "It is all based on the moment when the heart stops. Technically speaking, that's how you get the time of death."

That's what has been the norm until now anyway. After all when the heart stops, blood ceases circulating to the brain and it begins to shut down. However, it seems this slow dimming of the lights could take up to hours to complete, leaving a window during which a person declared legally dead can still perceive their surroundings.

The researchers from New York's Stony Brook University of Medicine behind the study hope their work will help how cardiac arrests are treated in future, to avoid brain damage during resuscitation.

"At the same time, we also study the human mind and consciousness in the context of death, to understand whether consciousness becomes annihilated or whether it continues after you've died for some period of time - and how that relates to what's happening inside the brain in real time," Dr Parnia added.

Unfortunately, that makes you wonder just how creepy it would be to be on the end experiencing that; with people crowded around your bed shaking their heads and saying you're dead, even as you can still hear them and understand what they're saying.