Researchers said that common themes occur during the experience which gives it further credence because they can give it the strongest definition so far.

The part of the brain that deals with autobiographical memories was affected in a process that was like normal memory processing only on a far more intense scale.

The research shines a light on what the researchers say is `a most intriguing mental phenomenon that fascinated humans from time immemorial`.

They describe it as life-review experience (LRE) and say that it has featured in countless works of literature and film - yet little is known about its cognitive and psychological basis.

The researches from Hadassah University in Jerusalem analyzed seven accounts of LREs they had obtained from in-depth interviews with people who had experienced them.

Their responses were used to devise a questionnaire which was sent out to 264 other people who gave detailed responses of their experiences.

The respondents said that unlike Hollywood depictions of the phenomena there was rarely any order to their life memories and that they seemed to come at random.

One person was typical and he wrote: `There is not a linear progression, there is lack of time limits...
`It was like being there for centuries. I was not in time/space so this question also feels impossible to answer.

`A moment, and a thousand years… both and neither. It all happened at once, or some experiences within my near-death experience were going on at the same time as others, though my human mind separates them into different events`.

Another common feature were extremely emotional experiences - which were seen from somebody else`s point of view.

One respondent said: `I could individually go into each person and I could feel the pain that they had in their life…

`I was allowed to see that part of them and feel for myself what they felt`.

Another said: `I was seeing, feeling these things about him (my father), and he was sharing with me the things of his early childhood and how things were difficult for him`.

Every single person in the study said after their LRE, they came out of it with a new perspective on significant people in their lives or important life events.

The conclusions mean that there is not just more evidence that LREs are real, scientists are now closer to defining them.

The researchers said that the phenomenon could be caused by the parts of the brain that store autobiographical memories like the prefrontal, medial temporal, or parietal cortices.

Those parts of the brain are - not coincidentally - susceptible to hypoxia and blood loss during serious injuries.

The study, published in the journal Consciousness and Cognition, said: `Re- experiencing one`s own life-events, so-called LRE, is a phenomenon with well-defined characteristics, and its subcomponents may be also evident in healthy people.

`This suggests that a representation of life-events as a continuum exists in the cognitive system, and maybe further expressed in extreme conditions of psychological and physiological stress`.

/Daily Mail/

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