My wife’s heart stopped beating for five minutes. She had a severe infection and her electrolytes had plummeted to the fatal point. Luckily it was in the emergency room and they were able to bring her back. She came to with amnesia. She’s regained/relearned most, and few can tell there was an issue. But she has no memory whatsoever of being in the hospital. Indeed, she has no memory of the weeks prior to her being in the hospital. All of the memory was essentially deleted. Shorter term memories are stored in a part of the brain that is highly sensitive to a lack of oxygen, with anoxic effects similar to that of Alzheimer’s. She was asked by who knows how many people if she remembered being dead, and all she could say was she remembered absolutely nothing. Life after death for her means being brought back from the brink by a defibrillator and an excellent team of doctors. I suppose had she been of a religious or spiritual bent, her imagination would have filled that void since then. But she’s not, and the memory void remains a void, and all she knows is what she’s been told–that she was not breathing for five minutes, lost a few million neurons, and then was revived. She has no belief in a life after death, except that she is living it now, and is quite happy to be here.