Doctors say they have a clearer idea than ever about what people experience in the last hours of their lives. According to the Mirror, for most people who die from a lingering disease there's a sudden rapid slide that takes place around known as 'active dying'.
James Hallenbeck, a palliative-care specialist at Stanford University, said people tend to lose their senses and desires in a certain order. Writing in Palliative Care Perspectives, his guide to palliative care for physicians, he said: “First hunger and then thirst are lost. Speech is lost next, followed by vision. The last senses to go are usually hearing and touch.”
David Hovda, the director of the UCLA Brain Injury Research Center, said the brain "starts to sacrifice areas which are less critical to survival", reports The Atlantic. “As the brain begins to change and start to die, different parts become excited, and one of the parts that becomes excited is the visual system - and so that’s where people begin to see light."
