LONDON -- We've all read or heard accounts, first-hand sometimes, from people who have had a brush with death, be it through illness or accident or old age. In a new paper published by the Proceedings of the National Academy of Science, University of Michigan, scientists wonder whether such "tales of white light, visits from departed loved ones, hearing voices" are underpinned by "something fundamentally real"? "Similar signatures of gamma activation" were seen among animals and humans upon a loss of oxygen following cardiac arrest, the team reported, with two of the patients showing "an increase in heart rate along with a surge of gamma wave activity, considered the fastest brain activity and associated with consciousness."