Disturbing new research from the NYU Langone School of Medicine in New York City has just concluded that the brain remains active after the heart stops, and that people may actually be aware of the fact that they are dead.

Dr. Sam Parnia, director of critical care and resuscitation research, was the head of this study that looked into how the brain functions after death. In carrying out the study, Parnia and his team spoke to cardiac arrest patients as well as the doctors and nurses who treat them.

“Technically speaking, that’s how you get the time of death — it’s all based on the moment when the heart stops,” Parnia said.

When talking to patients, Parnia was stunned to find that many of them could remember conversations that doctors and nurses were having in their hospital room after their hearts stopped beating. Though the patients were technically considered to be “dead” since their hearts were not beating, their brains were still working.

“They’ll describe watching doctors and nurses working; they’ll describe having awareness of full conversations, of visual things that were going on, that would otherwise not be known to them,” Parnia said.

Parnia added that this research indicates that people may know that they are dead because their brain is still functioning even after their heart stops.

“We’re trying to understand the exact features that people experience when they go through death because we understand that this is going to reflect the universal experience we’re all going to have when we die,” he said.

Parnia concluded by saying that his team will continue their research and monitor the brain from “beyond the threshold of death” so that they can come up with new strides in resuscitation.