Cardiac Patients Said to Recall Music Played During Moments of Clinical Death

THE UK AND SPAIN — A new study has reportedly found signs that awareness may persist beyond the point of clinical death, according to a report on the Unexplained Mysteries website, which itself cites Mail Online.

The report states that researchers enlisted 140 volunteers from hospitals in the United Kingdom and Spain, all of whom were considered at risk of cardiac arrest. During the first two minutes of efforts to resuscitate any who suffered an arrest, music or bird song was played.

Patients who recovered were afterward given a memory test about their experience. According to the report, those who had been played the sounds while technically deceased could recall them with an accuracy above what guesswork would produce.

The article says the findings indicated that consciousness was preserved even beyond clinical death. The author, T.K. Randall, adds a note of caution of a philosophical sort: only those who survived could report what they heard, so their consciousness must naturally have persisted for them to speak of it.

That leaves, the author observes, an open question regarding those who did not survive, and for how long they may have heard the music. The report offers no answer, and none is known to be forthcoming.