What happens after death is a mystery to all of us. Scientists are too trying to unravel it, but a recent research has revealed something shocking. The researchers claim that a person's consciousness continues to work even after the body stops showing signs of life. This means that when a person dies, he actually knows that he is dead.
The research was done by New York University Langone School of Medicine. They investigated what happens after life through twin studies in Europe and the US of people who suffered from cardiac arrest and 'came back' to life.
According to Daily Mail, there is evidence to suggest that someone who has died may even hear their own death being announced by doctors.
Study author Dr Sam Parnia told Live Science: "They'll describe watching doctors and nurses working and they'll describe having awareness of full conversations, of visual things that were going on, that would otherwise not be known to them."
According to reports, people who were 'technically dead' could remember each and every detail of what the medics said and the recollections were verified the medical and nursing staff of the patients.
Doctors define death after the heart stops beating and it immediately cuts off blood supply to the brain. Dr Sam Parnia explains: "Technically, that's how you get the time of death – it's all based on the moment when the heart stops...Once that happens, blood no longer circulates to the brain, which means brain function halts almost instantaneously."
"You lose all your brain stem reflexes – your gag reflex, your pupil reflex, all that is gone," Dr Parnia added. However, the cellular processes that will result in the death of brain cells can take hours after the heart has stopped, he explained.
Moreover, performing cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR) that has not successfully revived a patient can result in sending some blood to the brain; about 15 percent of what is requires functioning normally. The brain cell death is, however, still happening but at a slightly slower rate, he said.
