BBC Reel｜死亡是一种什么样的体验？

How does it feel to die?

Host: Death, dying — the inevitable demise of our being. But for most people, death isn't completely instantaneous. So what can modern science tell us about the experience of those very final moments? What does it feel like to die?

A very interesting experiment conducted at Imperial College London in 2018 did shed some light on what dying might feel like for human beings. Scientists wanted to investigate similarities between two very different phenomena. On the one hand, near-death experiences or 'NDEs' — the hallucinations experienced by around 20% of people who have been resuscitated following clinical death. On the other, DMT trips — the hallucinations provoked by a pretty hardcore psychedelic drug.

So the scientists administered a dose of DMT to test subjects who found themselves promptly and legally off their faces. Then, once they'd returned to reality, the scientists had them describe their experiences using a checklist commonly used to evaluate near-death experiences, and they were shocked to see an incredible amount of commonalities.

Both NDE and DMT experiences included sensations like 'transcendence of time and space' and 'oneness with nearby objects and people'. The experience of almost dying, as it turned out, was strikingly similar to a powerful hallucinogenic.

When we consider death, we think of it as a grim and boring process. But science asks, 'what if it's psychedelic?' I'm joined by Dr. Chris Timmermann, who led the research at Imperial. Dr. Timmermann, what can this experiment tell us about death?

Dr. Timmermann: I think the main sort of lesson I think of the research is that we can find death actually in life, in life experiences. What we know now is that there appears to be a surge of electrical activity. These gamma waves appear to be quite pronounced, and those may be responsible for these near-death experiences.

There's also specific regions in the brain, like what we call the medial temporal lobes — areas that are in charge of memory, dreaming, and so on, even learning, which might be related also to these experiences. In a way, our brains are somehow simulating a form of reality.

Host: In terms of NDEs, I read it was around 20% of people who have been pronounced clinically dead and come back, report them. Could it be that some people are remembering these and everyone does have an experience like this, or could they actually be quite rare?

Dr. Timmermann: It is a strong possibility that there is a lack of recollection because of different reasons. So we see in our experience with the psychedelic DMT, when we give them high doses, there is a part of the experience that is forgotten as well.

What I think is going on there is that the experience is so novel. It's so what we call 'ineffable' or difficult to put into words. And therefore, when the experience itself transcends this ability to put things into language, we are also having a hard time recalling it.

Host: The science of death is a pretty murky landscape, but what we do know paints a surprisingly optimistic picture. For instance, we know that people who have had near-death experiences often report feelings of peacefulness and serenity and show a long-lasting reduction in the stress associated with death.  

Research also implies that people tend to lose their senses in a specific order. First, hunger and thirst, then speech and vision. Hearing and touch seem to last the longest, meaning that many people may be able to hand-feel their loved ones in their final moments, even when they appear unresponsive.

And one recent brain scan of a dying epilepsy patient showed activity related to memory recall and dreaming, leading to speculation that there might even be some truth to your life 'flashing before your eyes'.

Finally, we know from these experiments that the experience of death could involve heightened, possibly hallucinatory consciousness. One last psychedelic journey before the 'nothing times'.

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