THIS IS WHAT HAPPENS WHEN YOU DIE

WHAT DOES DYING FEEL LIKE? BY STUDYING PATIENTS WHO'VE SUFFERED NEAR-DEATH EXPERIENCES, SCIENTISTS ARE ONE STEP CLOSER TO FINDING OUT WHAT HAPPENS IN OUR BRAINS DURING OUR LAST MOMENTS

- by NATE SCHARPING Illustrations by SAM CHIVERS

The last words Steve Jobs, the legendary Apple founder, spoke were simple: “Oh wow, oh wow, oh wow.”

Their mystery is enticing — what did Jobs, the digital prophet who brought us the smartphone, see as he neared death? We'll never know. But stories of near-death experiences (NDEs) tantalise the living, and something unique seems to be happening inside our brains as we sense death approaching.

Despite NDE testimonies, the moments surrounding death largely remain a mystery to us, especially when it comes to the actual experience of dying. But scientists have recently begun to explore what happens in the final moment of life by gathering data on brain activity from patients who are dying. Using electroencephalogram (EEG) recordings, researchers are able to watch how patterns of brain activity change in the moments leading up to death.

The results are preliminary so far, but they show distinctive bursts of coordinated neural activity, indicating that something significant is indeed happening as our brains intuit that death may be near. Better understanding this activity could not only demystify the dying process — offering comfort to those who have lost loved ones or are nearing death themselves — but might also help explain some of the puzzles of consciousness as well.

THE BRAIN, WHEN IT DIES

Studying death isn’t easy, especially if you're interested in the brain. People who die don’t return to tell us about the experience, and studying those in the process of dying is difficult, not to mention ethically fraught.

Some researchers have used brain scans, interviews and other medical data to study people who have experienced cardiac arrest and been ‘brought back to life’. This may not represent true death, however — at least as far as the brain is concerned.