When You Die Do You Know You're Dead? | Unveiled - video Dailymotion

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00:00 As the old adage says, there are only two things that are certain in this life, death

00:06 and taxes.

00:07 With taxes, you're certainly more aware when they happen due to a sudden and saddening

00:13 drop in available funds.

00:15 But with death, is there any comparable moment of realization?

00:21 This is Unveiled, and today we're answering the extraordinary question, "When you die,

00:27 do you know that you're dead?"

00:31 Do you need the big questions answered?

00:34 Are you constantly curious?

00:36 Then why not subscribe to Unveiled for more clips like this one, and ring the bell for

00:41 more thought-provoking content.

00:44 Until such time as immortality is possible, the creeping specter of death haunts us all.

00:51 But in the 21st century, humankind has grown more and more accustomed to facing it head

00:57 on.

00:58 Although, for hundreds of years beforehand, religion was really the only widespread means

01:04 through which we might try to understand death, in more recent times, science has taken over.

01:12 Where we once only had faith, now we have facts, figures, data, and studies as well.

01:20 And that specter of death has morphed into a whole new beast.

01:26 Although definitions vary around the world, the time of death is generally taken as the

01:31 moment at which your heart stops beating.

01:34 However, as CPR continually shows, you can be brought back from this particular brink.

01:43 Brain death is another crucial stage then, when your cerebral organ essentially gets

01:48 its power cut off.

01:49 However, in between heart and brain death, there certainly is a small period of time,

01:56 from 2 to 20, perhaps 30 seconds, during which scientists believe that you might know that

02:04 you're dead.

02:05 It's usually during this time that near-death experiences form, before the person is resuscitated

02:13 to recount them.

02:14 That said, it's extremely difficult to know exactly how aware any one person can be during

02:22 that particular and brief time window.

02:26 For those who are brought back to life, the near-death experience might make some sense

02:31 in hindsight, but at the time, when your body is going through the ultimate trauma, it's

02:38 not clear how much of it really hits home.

02:42 It's not clear if you truly know you're dead.

02:47 Nevertheless, various studies have captured headlines over the years, with them usually

02:52 billed as "haunting" or "disturbing" experiments to show that perhaps life doesn't end when

02:59 you die.

03:00 Or, at least, not exactly.

03:03 Dr. Sam Parnia, a British scientist and senior figure at the NYU Langone School of Medicine

03:09 in New York City, is one of the most frequently cited expert voices in the field.

03:16 Throughout the 21st century, Parnia has headed numerous studies looking into that mysterious

03:21 space between life and death.

03:25 In 2013, following the publication of his book "Erasing Death", published as "The

03:30 Lazarus Effect" in the UK, he gained attention after suggesting that we should be able to

03:36 resuscitate people even up to 24 hours after they've died.

03:43 For Parnia, what many would rather term "resurrection" is actually possible, if only we applied and

03:51 developed the science properly.

03:54 Whether or not you go along with this 24-hour theory, though, if it's even a little correct,

04:01 then suddenly we could have a lot longer in which to understand that we are dead.

04:08 Parnia is also the director of the Human Consciousness Project, based at the University of Southampton

04:13 in the UK.

04:15 Among other things, it was responsible for the AWARE study, taking a deep dive into the

04:21 near-death experiences of cardiac arrest survivors.

04:25 We took a closer look in another recent video.

04:28 Moving on from his body of work, Parnia has previously campaigned for the term "near-death

04:34 experience" to be changed to "actual death experience" as well.

04:39 So committed is he to the notion that death is never just one moment.

04:44 And finally, Parnia has previously indicated a somewhat radical view on the nature of consciousness

04:51 in general, arguing that it might not be produced by the brain, only hosted by it.

04:59 If true, that would potentially mean that the entire human experience, not just death,

05:06 could actually be linked to forces outside of our physical control.

05:11 The stance taken by Sam Parnia, many of his associates, and many other independent researchers

05:18 certainly asks us to question what, and when, we really think death is.

05:25 The vast majority of research seemingly shows that it might, even will be possible to know

05:31 that you're dead for at least around the first 20 seconds post your last heartbeat.

05:38 But beyond that, analysis of NDEs has been interpreted to hint at something more.

05:46 And if we ever can bring people back to life whole hours after their heart has stopped,

05:52 as Parnia has suggested we should be able to do, then suddenly we could live in a world

05:58 where multiple people within it have spent large portions of time, even whole days, technically

06:05 dead and departed from it.

06:08 Naturally, then, talk of death in these terms can take us to questions of the soul.

06:14 What is it?

06:16 Where is it?

06:17 And does it survive when your body is no more?

06:20 Again, while ideas on the soul have been more traditionally left to theology and philosophy,

06:28 modern science has become increasingly interested in properly defining it.

06:33 For centuries, the soul has proven notoriously difficult to pin down.

06:39 Many have tied it with ideas on the conscience, on morality, and with a species-wide understanding

06:46 of what's right and wrong.

06:49 Others have attempted to definitively explain it not only through the lens of human life,

06:55 but through life in general.

06:58 In the loosest sense, the soul is some kind of seemingly collective essence through which

07:05 the general experience of reality takes shape.

07:09 But that's all just way too ambiguous to satisfy most scientists, and as such, one

07:16 theory argues that the problem might be properly solved via quantum mechanics.

07:23 The theory of orchestrated objective reduction, or ORC-OR, was formulated and published in

07:30 the 1990s by the British physicist Sir Roger Penrose and the American scientist Stuart

07:36 Hameroff.

07:38 The model was then updated in 2014 and has become increasingly prominent ever since.

07:43 At its heart, ORC-OR might reasonably be considered one of the most radical and controversial

07:50 ideas of our time.

07:52 It argues that rather than being the product of neurological connections, consciousness

07:58 is generated via vibrations in microtubules, tiny protein strands inside neurons.

08:07 One of the key takeaways from the ORC-OR theory, though, however, is that it could mean that

08:13 consciousness continues indefinitely after the physical body fails.

08:19 Here, what might be called the soul is merely quantum information.

08:26 Throughout our lives, that information is channeled through our brains and experienced

08:32 through our bodies.

08:33 But when our lives end, the information doesn't disappear.

08:38 Instead, it's more like it gets released.

08:42 The brain no longer hosts it, but it does still exist, somewhere.

08:49 What happens next is still a little sketchy, even within the ORC-OR framework, but advocates

08:55 suggest that there could be a link to broader ideas on the soul and afterlife.

09:02 In terms of our title question, could this then be a mechanism through which you would

09:08 know that you're dead when you are dead?

09:12 Possibly.

09:13 But on the other hand, and as is so often the case with theories surrounding death,

09:18 we perhaps can't know for sure until we've passed away.

09:24 When viewed from an ORC-OR point of view, it could be that near-death experiences are,

09:30 essentially, a fluctuation in the vibrating microtubules that we all have inside us.

09:37 The quantum information they carry very nearly gets released, but ends up re-tethering to

09:44 our physical selves just in time, and we survive.

09:49 Or at least, we survive in our current form.

09:52 But actually, there's still more to come, and so when we do eventually exit our bodies,

09:59 we will, in some sense, know about it.

10:03 Then again, and bringing it all the way back to the more basic macro-level physicality

10:08 of life and death, without our brains to interpret that information, could it ever exist as anything

10:16 like a traditional thought or feeling?

10:20 Perhaps not.

10:21 What do you think about this particular life and death problem?

10:24 Clearly, from a scientific perspective, tracking down the answer is still a work in progress.

10:31 But at the same time, we've arguably never understood what really happens quite as thoroughly

10:38 as we do now.

10:39 For some, contemplating post-death knowledge is comparable to trying to remember our pre-birth

10:46 understanding.

10:48 It matters very little if life is simply bookended by nothingness on either side.

10:54 But for others, this is an ongoing and major philosophical and physical debate.

11:02 What do you think?

11:03 Is there anything we missed?

11:05 Let us know in the comments.

11:06 Check out these other clips from Unveiled, and make sure you subscribe and ring the bell

11:11 for our latest content.

When You Die Do You Know You're Dead? | Unveiled

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