What drives near-death experiences—science or multiple universes?

A new study suggests your brain becomes surprisingly active at the end of life, possibly replaying memories as a final dream. Here’s how it works.

No one thinks they know exactly what happens when you die. But that hasn’t stopped scientists from studying brain activity related to death or near-death experiences and coming up with theories, according to Popular Mechanics. 

One of those theories has to do with how the brain reacts and how people report experiences coming close to exiting Earth. 

What are “Near Death Experiences” (NDEs)?

If it happened to Elizabeth Taylor, it could happen to you. According to Nautilus, Taylor told Oprah on The Oprah Winfrey Show that while filming Cleopatra in the 1960s, she contracted pneumonia, lost consciousness, and was comatose and “dead” at one point. Taylor said she floated above her body and saw her late husband, Mike Todd, who told her it was not yet her time. 

People also commonly talk about white light and feelings of love or peace, or loved ones who died before you.

According to Popular Mechanics, a 2023 study from the University of Michigan analyzed brain and heart activity in patients who were in comas but whose ventilators were being turned off. In essence, once the body starts to die, the brain revs up. It looks like it does when someone is dreaming or asleep, or even awake, per the outlet. 

Jimo Borjigin, PhD, who co-wrote the study, theorized that the brain is traveling into its own memories to find motivating stimuli to continue life, such as a dead relative letting you know you should stick around for a bit. “It’s a kind of twilight consciousness, possibly hidden but active,” she said, per the outlet. 

Another researcher, per the outlet, called this “the brain’s final dream.” The theory was published in Frontiers in Psychology in March 2026. “Traditional interpretations treat these phenomena as evidence of external metaphysical realms,” the authors wrote. “The Dying-Moment Dream Hypothesis proposes an alternative, neurobiologically grounded explanation: that culturally conditioned afterlife experiences may constitute a final, [organic] simulation (‘dream’) generated by the dying brain.” 

They propose that the brain’s temporal experience collapses, and then it fuses cultural ideas around death and NDEs to create a last simulation—one last trip, if you will. 

What is quantum immortality?

Folks who believe that there are alternate or multiple or parallel universes, whether scientific or religious or mystical, may or may not have a point.

But one idea, according to Popular Mechanics—and this is where it gets very theoretical—is that we are quantumly immortal, and even if we die in this universe, we go on living in others. Or maybe our consciousness just hops to the next universe. 

Whether you believe your consciousness or soul splits off, goes to the light, or hops over to the neighboring universe, death remains a mystery, and no one we know here has solved it. 

This post originally appeared at inc.com.

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