Advances in stem cell research, neuroscience, and resuscitation science have enabled scientific insights into what happens to the human brain in relation to death. Brain cells are more resilient to anoxia than previously assumed, becoming irreversibly damaged over hours to days postmortem. Resuscitation science has restored life to millions after cardiac arrest, and survivors describe a universal set of recollections related to death. This review examines death, recalled experiences during cardiac arrest, post-intensive care syndrome, and related phenomena, discussing potential mechanisms, ethical implications, and methodological considerations. It also addresses controversies in studying consciousness and recalled experiences of cardiac arrest and death in comatose subjects to standardize future research.
A new scale, the veridical Near-Death Experience Scale (vNDE Scale), was developed to assess how strong the evidence is for perceptions reported during near-death experiences. Thirteen experts used a Delphi method to agree on eight criteria, including timing of investigation, medical conditions, third-party verification, and the number and quality of perceptions, scored on a four-level Likert scale. The scale was then tested on 17 cases of potentially veridical NDEs by 11 human raters and three artificial raters using large language models. In 14 of the 17 cases (82.3%), human and artificial raters agreed at over 75% when considering two adjacent evidence levels, such as moderate plus strong or low plus very low. The scale offers a practical way to evaluate the evidential strength of reported NDE perceptions.