People can hear last goodbyes

FINAL farewells can be heard by dying loved ones even if they are unresponsive, the first study of its kind has found.

By analysing brain patterns and electrical activity, researchers discovered that hearing is the last sense to go in the dying process.

Palliative care physicians are hoping this will aid grieving people who wonder if their words of comfort helped loved ones as they said goodbye.

The researchers analysed data from healthy control participants, hospice patients when they were conscious, and the same patients when they became unresponsive.

Lead author Dr Elizabeth Blundon, from the University of British Columbia, Vancouver, said: “In the last hours before an expected natural death, many people enter a period of unresponsiveness.

“Our data shows that a dying brain can respond to sound, even in an unconscious state, up to the last hours of life.”