The human brain is, by most accounts, completely unhinged. We spend roughly a third of our lives unconscious, and we still cannot fully explain what happens up there while the lights are off. Comas are even further out—they’re a state of consciousness that neuroscientists still poorly understand.
Even with all of their equipment and decades of research, they can still only describe what they see happening in the brain rather than what it actually feels like from the inside. And the people who come back from them? They come back with stories. Stories so vivid, so detailed, and so emotionally devastating that waking up is sometimes the hardest part.
