Families are often encouraged to keep speaking to an unresponsive person near the end of life. A 2020 study added evidence that parts of the auditory system can continue responding to sound during the final hours.
That is not the same as proving conscious awareness. Electrical responses show that the brain detected aspects of a sound pattern, not that a person understood a sentence, recognised a voice, or had a subjective experience that researchers could measure.
This article is for general information and does not provide medical or mental-health advice.
What the researchers measured
The Scientific Reports study used EEG recordings from hospice patients while they were responsive and again when some had become unresponsive and were actively dying. Researchers played sequences of tones and looked for brain responses to changes in those patterns.
Most unresponsive patients showed at least an automatic response to a change in tone, and some showed responses associated in other settings with higher-level processing. The sample was small and responses differed between patients.
What remains uncertain
The authors explicitly noted that it was unknown whether unresponsive patients were aware of the words or touch of loved ones. EEG cannot provide a report of subjective experience from someone who cannot respond.
Speaking gently at the bedside may still be meaningful for families and is consistent with common hospice practice. The careful scientific statement is that auditory processing can persist in some patients near death. It is not evidence that every voice is consciously heard or understood.
Editor’s note: This article was substantially revised on September 14, 2026, to correct the earlier implication that an EEG response established conscious awareness.
