A battery is an even better analogy.

Mass and energy are independent of sentience.

A brain-dead patient is still producing biochemical energy yet has no sentience. The sentience simply ended when the brain injury occurred either through outside trauma or internal event (e.g. aneurysm).

Where some kind of dramatic equivalent exchange could be made with outside trauma (e.g. car crash unleashes "soul" in a spectacular death), it would be more interesting to consider the aneurysm example.

A very small blockage happens, a headache develops and grows ever stronger, and..."poof", there goes sentience.

How much "energy" was generated by this?

Very little.

Was that the "soul"?

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So, no, I don't believe in an afterlife but also can't explain all of the unexplainable events that occur to other people.

Other than suggesting that the human brain, in all of it's complexity, is as individual as a fingerprint, and where most may have the "God" node, some don't; where some have schizophrenia, most do not, and for those who do, some forms of schizophrenia may be quite mild, only evidencing itself as "voices" in times of stress (e.g. bereavement, Kirk Gibson’s home run in the 1989 World Series, etc.)