It has recently been shown that about 20% of persons who undergo CPR after a cardiac arrest and survive do so because they had lucid visions of death while they were otherwise unconscious and on the verge of death.
Brain waves consistent with those seen during near-death situations have been detected.
Only around 20% of those who undergo CPR after a cardiac arrest really make it through the ordeal alive, but those who do may recall vivid memories of their final moments before death. This is what the findings of recent studies at the NYU Grossman School of Medicine and others suggest.
These findings were shared at the Resuscitation Science Symposium of the 2022 Scientific Sessions of the American Heart Association.
The study
Between May 2017 and March 2020, 567 men and women in the United States and the United Kingdom were enrolled in the study after their hearts stopped beating when they were hospital and they underwent CPR. Although they were all treated right away, only around 10% of them made a full recovery and were able to leave the hospital.
Those that made it said they had extraordinary lucid experiences, like feeling detached from their bodies and being able to observe painful or distressing events as observers rather than participants. They also said they had a deep understanding of the significance of their actions, goals, and perspectives toward others. Unlike hallucinations, dreams, delusions, illusions, or CPR-induced consciousness, these near-death experiences were deemed to be real by the study’s authors.
The study also included tests designed to detect subconscious mental activity. Spikes in brain activity were found up to an hour into CPR, which was a major finding. Some of these brain waves typically occur when a person is awake and engaged in higher-order mental processes like thinking, memory retrieval, or perceiving consciously.
Findings of detectable electrical signals of lucid and elevated brain activity, in conjunction with similar accounts of recalled deaths, show that the human sense of self-awareness and consciousness may not totally cease around the moment of death, just as other basic bodily processes may continue.
