Above all this is a post in the Watercooler section, so no serious Dhamma conversation or analysis was envisaged originally (at least by me!).
Nevertheless, it is an interesting fact the indeed people are trying to find out whether transition from to life to death can be said to be a binary state transition or instead a gradual process. And it seems that the transition is to some extent gradual when it comes to the ceasing of consciousness-correlated brain activities.
Dependent origination allows us to assess our process of becoming, experiencing existence, from a perspective of necessary and sufficient conditioning.
Also, the inter-lifetimes linkage offered by ignorance-sustained (avijja-fueled) informed choices (sankhara) suggest sthat just as birth death is a gradual and dependent originated process.
I can recall that in the Kamma & Rebirth workshops presented by both @Brahmali and @sujato we came to this topic a very similar thing was suggested.
If I am not wrong, Bhante Sujato uses the analogy of how gradual and not instantaneous is the process of moving houses: first you pack everything, then you move it (sometimes all at once or in many trips), then once in your new place you still feel somehow moving in, and once the first meal is had and the first night is spent you think that is becoming your place.
Another note is that whenever I experienced death within my family, with elders getting sick and eventually passing away, I noticed that some sort of gradual process starts occurring long before the event of passing: as the life faculty fades away people have all sorts of reaction but one way or the other they fade away as well as individuals.
A friend who is a doctor says he can as well sometimes smell death coming when a terminal patient’s bodily functions approaches collapse. In his view, it is a combination of severe weakening of one’s immune system and will to live.
An interesting and more serious thread on this topic is this one: