Life’s most important moments replay in our heads, according to study

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A groundbreaking new study has uncovered what goes on in the brain in our final moments.

The study, organized by Dr. Ajmal Zemmar, a neurosurgeon at the University of Louisville, found that brain activity similar to meditation, dreaming or memory recall right before death, suggesting there may be a feeling of peace as humans pass — and afterwards.

“We measured 900 seconds of brain activity around the time of death and set a specific focus to investigate what happened in the 30 seconds before and after the heart stopped beating,” Zemmar said in a statement to Frontiers.

“Just before and after the heart stopped working, we saw changes in a specific band of neural oscillations, so-called gamma oscillations, but also in others such as delta, theta, alpha, and beta oscillations.”

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Those oscillations — also known as brain waves — are normal in living humans and can be anything from dreaming, meditation, memory retrieval, concentrating, information processing and memory flashbacks.

“Through generating oscillations involved in memory retrieval, the brain may be playing a last recall of important life events just before we die, similar to the ones reported in near-death experiences,” Zemmar speculated.

“These findings challenge our understanding of when exactly life ends and generate important subsequent questions, such as those related to the timing of organ donation.”

The study, published in the journal Frontiers in Aging Neuroscience, based its accidental findings on the brain of an 87-year-old man at a Vancouver hospital.

The senior was admitted following a fall, and hooked up to an EEG machine so he could be monitored for seizures.

He ended up suffering a heart attack and died, but because he was still connected to the machine, neuroscientists were able to examine what happened to his brain leading up to his death and the moments after he passed.

Granted, the data is based on a single case and stem from the brain of a patient who had suffered an injury, seizures and swelling.

The findings only make Zemmar want to do more investigating, and these results are a sign for him to keep plugging away.

“Something we may learn from this research is, although our loved ones have their eyes closed and are ready to leave us to rest, their brains may be replaying some of the nicest moments they experienced in their lives,” Zemmar said in a statement.