When You Die, Does Your Life Actually Flash Before Your Eyes?

It is a common trope in storytelling that when someone dies, or has a near death experience, they see their life flash before their eyes. It seems, however, that this trope has a basis in reality. A woman who nearly drowned and a man in the middle of brain surgery are just two recent cases of people having their lives flash before their eyes. 

Thoughts about death and the afterlife occupy our minds as we get older, including what happens to our consciousness after we die. While belief in the afterlife varies depending on what spirituality someone chooses to follow or not to follow, this phenomenon of your life replaying before death has a scientific backing. Though it is a rare event, there have been cases when the brain activity of someone has been captured before and after they died, and this brain activity is linked to memories. It is certainly not an event easily replicated, so it leaves more questions than answers.

There is not a great understanding of what causes the memories of your life to replay in your mind before death, and whether or not that cause is biological or spiritual. There is also the fact that some people who have had near death experiences also had the same life-flashing event.

An 87-year old man with epilepsy was rushed to the emergency room with bleeding in his skull from a fall. Because of this, the medical staff performed an EEG (electroencephalography) brain scan. During the scan, he passed away. This allowed a unique look at dying brain activity. The medical staff was surprised to find that the 30 seconds before and 30 seconds after he died, he had a surge in brain waves. This particular activity was related to memories, dreaming, and concentration. This event was discussed in depth in the Frontiers in Aging Neuroscience journal.

Another article from the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences detailed a different fascinating case regarding a surge in brain activity after death. Four patients were withdrawn from life support, and two of those patients showed similar brain activity to the 87-year-old man. It fascinated scientists that 50% of those patients experienced such activity, opening up the question of why two did and two did not.

Apparently, you do not have to permanently die to have your life flash before your eyes. A woman nearly drowned while swimming off the coast of North Carolina when she was 21 years old. She had all the memories of her life flash before her at that moment. A man was in the middle of a problematic brain surgery when the entirety of his life flashed before him.

There are a variety of theories about this strange phenomenon. One theory suggests the lack of oxygen triggers chaotic neuron activity that your brain translates into memories. Another theory based in biology suggests that highly emotional memories are linked to the centers of your brain that process emotions, like the amygdala. During high-stress events, such as dying, those sections of your brain will be active and, incidentally, so will those memories.

Another theory turns from the biological to the psychological. Because we expect to see our life flashing before our eyes based on fictional stories, our brain makes that a reality when faced with such a situation. Others suggest a more spiritual approach, and that these types of experiences are confirmation in some kind of afterlife.

Death is often not something we think about until we are older, sick, or facing an otherwise dangerous situation. While some have time to prepare, like people in Florida paying to be buried in an underwater graveyard, other times a life-threatening situation comes upon us in surprise. When such a thing happens, will our own life flash before our eyes? Only time will tell, and perhaps further scientific research into these intriguing incidents.