When a person is on the verge of death, “the senses are lost one by one.” Doctors have analyzed from their experience this unknown issue of those who accompanied a loved one in the last moments of their life, which makes them wonder whether the patient sees or hears him.

Also, joy is shared in those last hours or minutes when that person squeezes your hand from bed when asking a question. But all that “goodbye” is accompanied by the loss of human abilities.

what about the senses

James Hallenbeck, a palliative care specialist at Stanford University in the United States, quoted in El Heraldo de México, explains in his Palliative Care Guide for Physicians -Palliative Care Perspectives- that “the first thing that is lost is hunger and then thirst. And then the speech is lost.”

According to his experience, “vision is the first feeling organ to be lost.” And he claims, “The last senses to disappear are usually hearing and touch.”

See the light… is it real?

If sight is “the first sense to be lost”… then what happens in the brain.

For the director of the UCLA Brain Injury Research Center, David Hovda, “at those crucial moments, the brain begins to sacrifice areas that are less critical for survival.”

“As the brain starts to change and start to die, different parts get excited, and one of the parts that gets overloaded is the visual system, and that’s where people start to see the light,” he said.

“This ends up being an enhancement of some senses that seems to support what scientists know about the brain’s response to death,” the quoted outlet added.

According to Jimo Borjigin, survivors of cardiac arrest describe an “incredible experience in their brain” in which they see lights and everything is “more real than real.”

(…) In the final hours, “the patients will have stopped eating and drinking and will have lost their sight before they close their eyes and appear to be asleep.”

James Hallenbeck said that “from the last few minutes we have before death, “we can only deduce what is actually happening”.

“My impression is that this is not a coma, a state of unconsciousness, as many families and doctors think, but something like a state of sleep,” he concluded.

The last sense to “switch off”

A study conducted by Canadian experts and published in Scientific Reports reveals that hearing is the last sense a person loses at death, published in 20 Minutes.

The study authors “used electroencephalography (EEG) to monitor activity in the brains of unconscious patients in the last hours of life at a Vancouver hospital,” they added.

Cadena SER indicated that research from the University of British Columbia in Canada has shown that hearing is the last sense that remains functional in the trance of death.

What is the last sense that is lost before it dies?

Romayne Gallagher, a palliative care physician at St. John Hospice, said: “This research confirms the fact that hospice nurses and doctors have already noticed that the sounds of loved ones help comfort people when they die”.

And to me it adds a very important meaning to the last days and hours of life and shows that being present, whether in person or on the phone, is important. It is a comfort to be able to say goodbye and express love

Romayne Gallagher, PhD