Of all the strange pitfalls associated with the near-death experience, none are as familiar as the tunnel to the light. People who have dangerously skirted the edge of death, or even beyond it for a few moments, sometimes describe moving through darkness, like a tunnel, toward a dazzling luminous portal, like a passage to another place. It is an image so deeply embedded in popular culture that it has become a powerful symbol of the end of life. But not everyone who reports a near-death experience sees a tunnel. Some describe vast, luminous spaces, curved horizons, or an overwhelming feeling of being surrounded by light. However, even despite these differences, a new study has found that different death-waiting experiences may have something peculiar in common. When researchers asked 50 people to draw maps of the spaces they remembered encountering during near-death experiences, an intriguing pattern emerged: The geometry of those spaces seemed to be linked to the colors people remembered seeing. The findings suggest that these otherworldly experiences may not be so unpredictable as they seem, and that their strange geometry could offer clues to what happens in the brain at the boundary between life and death. Near-death experiences fascinate most people, including scientists. However, they are not easy to study. People who experience them report something intense (emotional, personal, or spiritual) that they often have trouble articulating. The clinical questions posed by standard scientific surveys may record some aspects of the near-death experience, but they are unable to summarize its full complexity in words on a page. A participant’s reconstruction of a remembered tunnel-like space during a near-death experience. (Lerner et al., Frontiers in Psychology, 2026) Although researchers have identified recurring features such as tunnels, lights, and out-of-body sensations, comparatively little attention has been paid to the spatial structure of these experiences, or to how people perceive themselves moving through them. Neurophenomenology researcher France Lerner of the University of Haifa in Israel and her colleagues wanted to approach the question in a different way: visually. They thought that asking people to draw their experiences could reveal patterns that simple words couldn’t reveal. They recruited 50 people who reported having near-death experiences and asked them to reconstruct their memories in a series of guided online sessions, using a catalog of geometric pictograms to help represent the spaces they remembered. Participants were asked to divide their experiences into separate stages and then represent the shape of each space they remembered encountering. They were also asked to indicate where they perceived themselves to be within those spaces, how they moved through them, and what colors they used. they remembered having seen. The researchers then compiled a database of these reconstructions and compared them, looking for similarities in the geometry of the spaces and the qualities associated with them. And despite the intensely personal nature of the experiences, certain forms continued to appear. There were, the researchers discovered, four main categories: conical spaces, which included the family tunnel; wide and curved spaces, like arches; flatter spaces with softer curves; and spaces that seemed to surround the observer completely, like the inside of a sphere or oval. A participant’s reconstruction of a near-death experience, showing an immense space divided into regions of darkness and light, with his perceived position marked by a cross. (Lerner et al., Frontiers in Psychology, 2026) But the most intriguing pattern was not just in the shapes, but in the colors that study participants associated with them. Of the 28 conical spaces reconstructed by the participants, 22 were achromatic: they were perceived as black, white, gray, or light with no discernible color. On the contrary, 27 of the 31 wide and curved spaces were perceived in color. The other two geometric categories showed a mixture of colors. and colorless experiences, but the contrast between the tunnels and the wide, curved spaces was particularly striking. That relationship, between shapes and colors, could offer clues about the perceptual processes underlying these spooky experiences. According to Lerner and his colleagues, neurological and perceptual research has already documented some similar visual relationships. An example is tunnel vision, which can occur when the oxygen supply to the retina or brain is interrupted, restricting the field of vision. The predominance of black, white, and gray in tunnel-like spaces also has a possible parallel in ordinary vision. In low light conditions, our eyes become less sensitive to color as the light-sensitive cells responsible for seeing in low light take over. A participant’s map of a near-death experience, marking encounters with family, a life review, and visions of past and future lives, along with their perceived position and movement through space. (Lerner et al., Frontiers in Psychology, 2026) Meanwhile, some of the larger, more immersive spaces recalled by participants have similarities to a phenomenon called the Ganzfeld effect, in which a blank, unchanging visual field can give rise to unusual perceptual experiences, including hallucinations. However, these similarities do not establish what caused the participants’ experiences. The researchers emphasize that their study was designed to describe and compare remembered spaces, not to identify the mechanisms responsible for them. There are also some important limitations. The participants were a relatively small, self-selected group, and they reconstructed experiences from memories that, in some cases, were many years old. Furthermore, although the geometric pictograms were based on previous research, presenting participants with a selection of shapes may have influenced how they reconstructed their experiences. The researchers also guided the sessions, which may have introduced subtle biases. Finally, without a comparison group reconstructing other types of unusual experiences, it is impossible to know whether these geometric patterns are unique to near-death experiences. Still, the patterns that emerged from the visual recording of memories of the experience reveal something that previous research has largely overlooked: suggesting that tapping into the uncanny may require asking questions in a different kind of language. The research has been published in Frontiers in Psychology. This article was fact-checked by Rebecca Dyer and edited by Rebecca Dyer. While we take pride in our process, we are human. If you spot an error, please let us know.
