What does science say about near-death experiences?

Science has not been able to prove that the soul exists, or that it doesn’t. Nor has it been able to prove that consciousness resides in the brain, or that it can exist without it.

What is known

People genuinely go through them. They are very similar to one another, they are remembered in great detail, and they change many people’s lives.

What is not known

No one knows what causes them, or exactly when they happen.

The classic theory

The brain produces them when it is in danger. Its proponents include Charlotte Martial and her team, the authors of the NEPTUNE model.

The modern theory

Consciousness can carry on without the brain. Its proponents include the cardiologist Pim van Lommel and the psychiatrist Bruce Greyson.

What would settle it

It would be settled by an experiment set up in advance, with something hidden that can only be seen from above. If people see it during a cardiac arrest, the modern theory would gain weight. If no one sees it over many opportunities, the classic theory would gain weight.

What no one disputes

Before looking at how they differ, here is what both theories agree on:

• People genuinely go through these experiences. They don’t make them up.
• The experiences are very similar to one another, even among people who have never met.
• They are remembered in more detail than many memories of real events. And in a study that repeated the same questionnaire 19 years later, the answers barely changed.
• They often change the life of the person who has one.
• While we are alive, the mind depends heavily on the brain. A blow to the head, a drug, or an illness can change it. What is debated is whether that still holds at death.

The classic theory: the brain produces them

A brain in danger can end up with too little oxygen and too much carbon dioxide, and release a surge of its own chemicals. That could create an experience like this. The most complete model was published in 2025 in the journal Nature Reviews Neurology, under the name NEPTUNE. Its authors are researchers from the University of Liège, in Belgium, and other institutions. It brings several pieces together. They are the gases in the blood, the chemicals the brain releases, a brain area that places the body in space, and a mix of being awake and being asleep.

What supports it

• The brain becomes active at death. In 2013, a study of 9 rats found a burst of brain activity in the first 30 seconds after the heart stopped. In 2023, something similar was seen in 2 of 4 people in a coma, when they were taken off the machine that helped them breathe.
• Some drugs produce something similar. One study compared 625 NDE accounts with about 15,000 accounts of 165 drugs. The drug that came closest was ketamine. Another study gave DMT to 13 volunteers, and every one of them scored above the NDE cutoff. The authors of the first study caution that the resemblance neither confirms nor rules out this theory. We tell both studies step by step in DMT and NDEs.
• They also happen when people are not close to death. In a 2024 study, researchers made 22 healthy volunteers faint briefly. 8 of them had an experience that scored as an NDE.
• They are linked to sleep. People who have had an NDE more often say they wake up unable to move, or see images as they fall asleep. 60 out of 100 people with an NDE say so. Among people who have not had an NDE, 24 out of 100 say so. It is not known which came first. This may have already been happening to them before the NDE, or it may have begun afterward.
• Culture changes what people see. The tunnel appears in 16 out of 100 accounts from before 1975. It appears in 64 out of 100 accounts from afterward, once the tunnel had become famous. In India and Thailand, messengers appear who come to take the person away. This fits both theories. According to the classic theory, the brain would draw on what it already knows. According to the modern theory, each person would explain what they experience outside the body using what they already know.

What it lacks

• No one has yet measured the brain and recorded the account of the same person during a cardiac arrest. No study has, for the same person, both their brain activity during a cardiac arrest and their account, with the time. Rats can’t tell us anything, and none of the people in the 2023 study survived to tell what they went through.
• The NEPTUNE model itself admits it. No signal in the body that marks an NDE has been found yet. And no one knows at what moment an NDE happens.
• A cardiac arrest isn’t needed to have an NDE. In an ICU in Belgium, 19 of 126 patients had an NDE, and only one of them had had a cardiac arrest. A burst of brain activity at death does not explain those cases.
• The drugs come close, but they are not the same. The boundary that cannot be crossed appears much less often with DMT than in an NDE. And in the fainting study, no one met relatives who had died or reached that boundary. In NDEs, both are common.
• NEPTUNE explains too much. A model that fits anything people report is hard to put to the test. So far, NEPTUNE fits the data that already existed, but it has not predicted anything new that has then been confirmed.

The modern theory: consciousness carries on without the brain

According to this theory, consciousness does not end in the brain. During an NDE, part of what people experience would happen outside the body. That is why some people describe things they could not have seen or heard. The cardiologist Pim van Lommel argued for it in The Lancet in 2001, in the study of ten hospitals in the Netherlands. In 2025, the psychiatrist Bruce Greyson and his colleague Pehlivanova published a response to the NEPTUNE model. In it, they set out the data that, in their view, the model does not explain.

What supports it

• Clear experiences while the brain is barely working. In a cardiac arrest, the brain stops receiving blood within seconds. Even so, in the study from the Netherlands, 18 out of 100 survivors described a clear, well-ordered experience. No clear link was found with how long the heart had stopped or with medication.
• People who describe what happened around them, and it is confirmed. The three best-documented cases in our archive are these:
  • Pam Reynolds described the saw used to open her skull and what was said about her groin. Her eyes were covered and her ears were filled with noise.
  • Patient 10, in an ICU in Wales, described the doctor who examined his eye, the nurse who cleaned his mouth, and the physiotherapist peering around the curtain.
  • A man in the AWARE study, in 2014, heard the machine that delivers the shocks and described a doctor he saw the next day. He is the patient in the blue cap.

  In all three cases, the medical report or the witnesses confirm what they described. And they say those moments happened when the person was unconscious.

• The memory is more vivid than imagination. Memories of an NDE have more detail than memories of real events. And it is not because people go over them more. People go over their everyday memories just as often. The classic theory can account for this too. In its view, it would be a very intense memory of something the brain created.
• They change lives more than other experiences do. In the study from the Netherlands, after two years, the people who had an NDE had changed more than the other survivors. After eight years, everyone had changed for the better. But those who had an NDE still had less fear of death and a stronger belief in an afterlife than the others. Here, too, the classic theory has an answer. In its view, an experience this intense could change a life even if the brain creates it.

What it lacks

• No case is complete. We need five things to treat it as proven that someone saw something they had no way of knowing. No case in our archive meets all of them. In every one, an ordinary explanation remains possible. The person may have heard it, caught a glimpse of it, or been told about it afterward. But in none of them has it been shown that this is what happened. If an ordinary explanation is possible, that does not mean it is the explanation.
• No one measured those people’s brains. In none of those cases do we know what state the brain was in at the exact moment.
• No one has ever identified the hidden images. The AWARE study placed images on high shelves that could only be seen from the ceiling. No one saw them. But there were almost no opportunities to see them. Only 22 out of 100 cardiac arrests happened in rooms with a shelf. And the two people who said they had left their bodies were in rooms without a shelf. So the result neither confirms nor rules out anything. In AWARE II they placed a tablet showing an image above the patient. No one remembered that image.
• It doesn’t predict anything specific. The modern theory does not yet say what result it expects from an experiment that the classic theory does not also expect.

What would settle the question

The two theories expect different results from a well-designed experiment:

• A hidden image, chosen at random, in many rooms where a cardiac arrest could happen.
• The person’s account, recorded before anyone tells them anything.
• Judges who don’t know which image was there.
• Brain activity measured from the very first second.
• Everything registered in advance and repeated by another team.

If, over about thirty valid opportunities, people identify the image far more often than chance would predict, the modern theory would gain a great deal of weight. If they don’t, the classic theory would gain weight. That experiment has not yet been done with enough opportunities. So today there is no result either way.

Frequently asked questions

Has science shown that NDEs are false?

No. People genuinely go through them, and no study has shown that they are only an illusion created by the brain.

Has it shown that they are real, that consciousness leaves the body?

No, it hasn’t proven that either. Some cases are hard to explain, but none of them meets everything that would be needed to treat it as proven.

Has it been proven that NDEs are produced by the brain?

No. The classic theory has evidence in its favor. The brain has been measured in volunteers who were made to faint briefly, and some had similar experiences. But no one has yet matched what a person describes with what their brain was doing during a cardiac arrest.

Has it been proven that there is life after death?

No, that hasn’t been proven either. The modern theory also has evidence in its favor, but no experiment has confirmed it.

Does the soul exist?

Today, science can’t say either that it exists or that it doesn’t. It is an open question.

What is the NEPTUNE model?

It is the most complete version of the classic theory. It was published in 2025 by researchers from the University of Liège and other institutions. It brings together several possible causes in the brain. Its own authors acknowledge that no physical signal that marks an NDE has been found yet.

Who argues that consciousness carries on without the brain?

It is defended by researchers such as the cardiologist Pim van Lommel and the psychiatrist Bruce Greyson. Van Lommel led the study in the Netherlands. Greyson is at the University of Virginia. They argue that it is hard to explain such a clear experience through the brain alone, at a time when the brain is working so poorly. They have not been able to prove it with an experiment either.

Is it true that the brain “lights up” at death?

A burst of activity has been seen in rats and in 2 of 4 people in a coma. But in those cases no one could describe what they went through. So it is not known whether that activity has anything to do with an NDE.

Is it true that some people saw things from outside their body?

Some people have described things that happened while they were unconscious. In some cases those things were confirmed. But in no case has it been possible to fully rule out that the person learned about them in an ordinary way. And it has not been possible to show that they did, either.

Has anyone run an experiment?

Yes. The AWARE and AWARE II studies were carried out. They hid images on shelves and, later, on a tablet. No one saw them. But there were so few opportunities that the result can’t settle anything either way.

Is the 7 minutes theory real?

The idea is that the brain stays active for 7 minutes after death and replays your memories. No study has measured that. The figure was already going around online in 2014, with no source behind it. The 2022 study people usually cite recorded just one man, aged 87. Some fast brain waves rose right before his heart stopped. The recording ended 3 minutes later. No one knows whether he relived his life, because he couldn’t tell anyone. What has actually been measured in the dying brain is in the gamma waves study and in “What does dying feel like?”

Are near-death experiences just dreams?

People who have them say no, and their memories hold more detail than memories of real or imagined events. Still, people who have had an NDE more often report sleep-related experiences, such as waking up unable to move. 60 out of 100 people with an NDE report this. Among people who haven’t had one, 24 do. Neither finding tells us what causes an NDE. There is more in “Is it like a dream?”

Are NDEs caused by DMT?

No one knows. In a 2018 study, 13 volunteers took DMT and all of them had an experience that scored as an NDE. But a 2025 study looked at 36 DMT experiences. In none of them did the person reach a boundary or feel they were coming back to life. Many people with an NDE do describe those two things. And no one has measured DMT in a person’s brain during a real NDE. We explain this above, in “The classic theory: the brain produces them.”

Do you know when you are dead?

No one knows, because we can only ask people who recovered. In the study in the Netherlands, half of the 62 people who had an NDE said they felt they were dead. In 2017, some headlines claimed that “you know you’re dead.” But that did not come from a new study. It came from comments by the physician Sam Parnia. There is more in “What does dying feel like?”

Can a dying person still hear?

Possibly, at least sounds. A 2020 study at a hospice in Canada found that 5 patients who no longer responded still reacted to a series of tones, just like healthy people. But the study used tones, not words. It can’t say whether those people understood anything or were aware of it. And they were patients dying slowly, not people whose heart had stopped. There is more in “What does dying feel like?”

Keep reading

• The Murcia MRI studyWhat the brain does when someone recalls their NDE.
• What is a near-death experience?What people go through, how often it happens, and what changes afterward.
• Pam Reynolds’ storyThe most-studied case, step by step, and what could be checked.
• How we check each storyThe five questions we ask to find out what can be shown.

Where these figures come from

• Martial et al. (2025), the NEPTUNE model, Nature Reviews Neurology 21:297-311. View in the journal
• Greyson and Pehlivanova (2025), response to NEPTUNE, Psychology of Consciousness. Read for free
• Borjigin et al. (2013), brain activity in dying rats, PNAS 110(35):14432. Read for free
• Xu et al. (2023), brain activity in dying people, PNAS 120(19):e2216268120. Read for free
• Martial et al. (2019), NDEs and accounts of 165 drugs, Consciousness and Cognition 69:52-69. View in the journal
• Timmermann et al. (2018), DMT and NDEs, Frontiers in Psychology 9:1424. Read for free
• Martial et al. (2024), induced fainting with brain recordings, NeuroImage 298:120759. Read for free
• Nelson et al. (2006), NDEs and REM sleep, Neurology 66:1003-1009.
• Athappilly, Greyson, and Stevenson (2006), accounts from before and after 1975, Journal of Nervous and Mental Disease 194(3):218-222. View in the journal (paywalled)
• Rousseau, Martial, et al. (2023), NDEs in an ICU in Liège, Critical Care 27:76. Read for free
• van Lommel et al. (2001), ten hospitals in the Netherlands, The Lancet 358:2039-2045. View in the journal (free with registration)
• Parnia et al. (2014), the AWARE study, Resuscitation 85:1799-1805. View in the journal (paywalled)
• Parnia et al. (2023), the AWARE II study, Resuscitation 191:109903. Read for free
• Sartori, Badham, and Fenwick (2006), Patient 10, Journal of Near-Death Studies, as cited by Rivas, Dirven, and Smit in El yo no muere, the Spanish edition of The Self Does Not Die. Read for free
• Cassol et al. (2020), NDE memories, Frontiers in Psychology 11:888. Download for free (PDF, CC BY licence)
• Our archive: the assessment of each case against the five criteria, as of October 9, 2026.