Well. This is terrifying.

We're not talking about the afterlife or near-death experiences. No, scientists are now saying that after the doctors have declared you dead, your brain might still be aware enough to hear the doctor say that. And now we can't stop rocking back and forth in horror. Dr. Sam Parnia, director of critical care and resuscitation research at New York’s NYU Langone School of Medicine, and he and his team have published new research, and he broke it down for The Independent as follows: "Technically, that's how you get the time of death – it's all based on the moment when the heart stops. Once that happens, blood no longer circulates to the brain, which means brain function halts almost instantaneously. You lose all your brain stem reflexes – your gag reflex, your pupil reflex, all that is gone." However... It looks like there may be a sudden burst of brain energy as they approach death, which means that it is still very much active for a few moments after the rest of you has, y'know, passed away. The results are being based on the largest studied group of people who had been declared dead, and had then been brought back to life. Some of those in the study said they had awareness of full conversations and seeing things that were going on around them, even after they were pronounced dead, and these accounts were then verified by the medical and nursing staff who were present at the time. So maybe next time, don't be so quick to announce time of death, or at least do it outside of ear-shot?