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Consciousness, Awareness & Cognitive Experiences During Cardiac Arrest | NYU Langone Health

The phenomenon of awareness during cardiac arrest is not well understood from a biological standpoint. In some rare cases, patients may even move and show transient signs of being visibly conscious  (Woerlee's argument NDE by CPR) 

However, these instances typically do not represent a true cardiac arrest (refuted by Parnia) For example, some people may have a beating heart but are so ill that their pulse is weak and impalpable by hand. Clinicians will thus start CPR, which strengthens the heartbeat and enables enough blood flow to reach the brain and body while CPR is underway for people to show visible signs of movement.

However, in a true cardiac arrest, when there is no heartbeat, even with CPR there is insufficient blood flow to the brain (around 20 percent) to meet the needs of brain cells. Consequently, seconds after cardiac arrest, brain function ceases as evidenced by brain stem reflexes and electrical activity in the brain. People also immediately lose any visible signs of consciousness and are deemed unconscious by all available clinical assessments.

However, cognitive activity and conscious awareness have been reported by 10 to 20 percent of people from the period of true cardiac arrest. Studies of cardiac arrest survivors’ experiences of awareness during a time when the brain is not functioning support the idea that—as with many other conditions that biologically mimic death, such as deep hypothermic circulatory arrest—even when people lose conscious awareness of the outside world and do not feel pain or discomfort, the entity of the human consciousness and mind may not become immediately annihilated once the heartbeat ceases.