Scientists Are Studying Near-Death Experiences. What They’re Finding Is Hard to Explain

The patients had been clinically dead — hearts stopped, no oxygen reaching the brain — when something unexpected happened. Not in their bodies, which were being kept alive by machines and the frantic rhythm of CPR. In their minds.They came back describing the same things: a sense of floating above their own body, a panoramic sweep of their life’s memories, a feeling of profound calm that had nothing to do with the chaos happening around them. One in five survivors of cardiac arrest, accord