A good friend of mine, since High School, had a driving accident in which the vehicle (an SUV) was completely wrecked. He (and a friend riding with him) came out completely unscathed. So there was no "dying brain" involved. And yet he did relate to me an NDE like experience including a complete life review that he had at the time of the accident. I'll never forget him telling me his account, since he simply wasn't the kind of guy to make "that" kind of story up at all. So, yes, it is not "just" the dying brain apparently that can and does initiate an NDE like experience. Probably would even be a good area to conduct more NDE research, since I think it would provide some good evidentiary data to refute some of the wildly concocted rebuttals skeptics come up with based just on a "dying brain" scenario.
Fascinating.
Suppose we do somehow scientifically come to a consensus and establish that consciousness does survive. Then what? There is still quite a bit of mystery left to unravel. Surely people will wonder and want to know "what comes next" if anything? For what does come next, could possibly determine how they live their life now, no? For example, if what comes next is some kind of state of remarkable bliss and love, why then bear the burden, and the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune, when with a bare bodkin one might quickly escape the travails of suffering that so many seem fated to live? It would seem silly to continue to suffer when so much bliss awaited you?
On the other hand, science is still working just on the question of whether it is even possible there be survival, and likely will only be answered by solving the hard problem of consciousness. And yet even when the question of consciousness is resolved, there will be so many more questions still left unanswered, that I think, will have quite a bit of bearing on how we live our lives now.
Carl Jung once wrote, "The decisive question for man is: Is he related to something infinite or not?" Certainly, life after death would seem to be relatable to the infinite. But what else is relatable to the infinite?