One man, a 57-year-old social worker from Southampton, gave an astonishingly accurate account of what was happening in the room during the three minutes that he was clinically dead. He could describe the movements of nurses and doctors in the room and said he felt like he was observing them as they worked to resuscitate him.

“The man described everything that had happened in the room, but importantly, he heard two bleeps from a machine that makes a noise at three minute intervals. So we could time how long the experienced lasted for," said Dr Parnia. “He seemed very credible and everything that he said had happened to him had actually happened.”

"We know the brain can’t function when the heart has stopped beating," he continued. "But in this case, conscious awareness appears to have continued for up to three minutes.

"This is significant, since it has often been assumed that experiences in relation to death are likely hallucinations or illusions, occurring either before the heart stops or after the heart has been successfully restarted, but not an experience corresponding with 'real' events when the heart isn't beating."

Dr David Wilde, a research psychologist at Nottingham Trent University who is currently studying out-of-body experiences, said the results were exciting.

“There is some very good evidence here that these experiences are actually happening after people have medically died," he told the Telegraph.

“We just don’t know what is going on. We are still very much in the dark about what happens when you die and hopefully this study will help shine a scientific lens onto that.”

Is there life after death? Study finds people experience real events up to three minutes after their heart stops beating