A team of scientists set out to measure the brainwaves of an 87-year-old patient who had developed epilepsy. But during the neurological recording, he suffered a fatal heart attack - offering an unexpected recording of a dying brain.
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It revealed that in the 30 seconds before and after, the man's brainwaves followed the same patterns as dreaming or recalling memories.
Brain activity of this sort could suggest that a final "recall of life" may occur in a person's last moments, the team wrote in their study, published in Frontiers in Aging Neuroscience on Tuesday.
Dr Ajmal Zemmar, a co-author of the study, said that what the team, then based in Vancouver, Canada, accidentally got, was the first-ever recording of a dying brain.
He told the BBC: "This was actually totally by chance, we did not plan to do this experiment or record these signals."
So will we get a glimpse back at time with loved ones and other happy memories? Dr Zemmar said it was impossible to tell.
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