The classic near-death experience (NDE) includes bright lights, an overwhelming feeling of peace, out-of-body experiences (OBEs), life review, reduced fear of death, and the perception of being in a long tunnel. NDEs are surprisingly common, affecting an estimated 4 percent of the population, as well as up to 18 percent of cardiac arrest survivors.

Historically, they have been linked to the afterlife and used as evidence of the soul, but, just like any other often-reported phenomenon, scientists are keen to get to the biological bottom of it. Perhaps unsurprisingly, there has not been a wealth of research investigating NDEs; the point in time at which they occur make them difficult to pin down in the laboratory.

Recently, Charlotte Martial, from the University of Liège and University Hospital of Liège, both in Belgium, and team set out to get a deeper understanding of the NDE experience. They wanted to discover whether or not people experienced the phenomenon in a similar order. Are NDEs the same for everyone?

This marks the first time that the order of NDEs has been investigated in a scientific manner, according to Martial. She says, “To the best of our knowledge, no study has formally and rigorously investigated whether NDE features follow a fixed order or distribution.”

Martial explains that the aim of their study “was to investigate the frequency distribution of these features, both globally and according to the position of features in narratives, as well as the most frequently reported temporality sequences of the different near-death experience features.”