Near Death Experiences

Chriskavo

I recently watched an excellent BBC documentary on this subject and found the whole phenomenon really fascinating. Some scientists are coming around to the Idea that consciousness survives death and the documentary includes the testimony of half a dozen near death survivors. Their was the obligatory skeptic to spoil the party but her arguments were not very persuasive in my opinion. I have include the incredible testimony of Pam Reynolds from the documentary to view for yourselves. I would be very interested to hear any stories from people out there who might have had a similar experience or know someone who had this happen to them.

Dave!

There's a thread about this over in the Spirituality forum with some good info on it.

I'm afraid all of the current evidence suggests that consciousness is a product of the brain, and NDE's are caused by changes in the brain resulting from oxygen deprivation or other chemical changes.

There's no evidence that consciousness survives death, that's just wishful thinking from some people.

Sorry to hear that the skeptic spoiled the party, I'm sure you'd prefer to just hear stories that support your original beliefs.

Unfortunately I've no sound on this PC, so can't watch the clip at the moment.

Sincerely,

Token skeptic

Edit:

Here's an excellent recent blog post about NDE's:

http://www.sciencebasedmedicine.org/?p=4802

Back in 2008 I wrote on Near Death Experiences (NDE’s). I have an interest in this topic as I have frequent exposure to near death; my wife has a predilection for watching Judge Judy. Since 2008 there have been a few studies on the topic of NDEs as researchers try and find evidence that consciousness transcends the brain, if that is what a NDE represents. I have also been ill for most of the last week and have not had the usual time to spend generating typos to drive some readers to distraction. Fortunately, I have a miracle cure that is 100% effective in resolving all my self -limited illnesses: time. It passed and with it the illness. As a result I am about 10 days behind in the commitments in my life, so this will be a shorter than usual post.

As will come as no surprise to anyone who reads this blog regularly, I am of the opinion that NDEs are almost certainly physiologic in origin. I see no reason why consciousness should exist beyond physiologic brain function. I am not sympathetic to the whole mind-brain dichotomy and see no reason why the mind is not the result of brain function. No one ever speaks of the lung-gas exchange dichotomy or the kidney-urine production dichotomy. But that is my bias, and I mention it at the beginning of the post in the interest of openness.

There is an enormous popular literature on NDEs, but little in the way of science, probably, I would guess, is that it is difficult to prospectively find subjects upon which to do studies.


There are people, however, who are going to die and it is nice to allow them to go gentle into that good night. I appreciate the efforts of palliative care specialists, as while I have never particularly worried about being dead, the process of getting there has never seemed particularly inviting. Part of ensuring that patients are comfortable is to monitor their cerebral function to make sure the remain unaware. This technique was developed by anesthesiologists who did not want their patients to become conscious during surgery yet have no ability to communicate that they were now aware that their appendix was being removed.

Dying patients had their brain function monitored to make sure they remained unconscious as they died. If you decide to remove a patient from the ventilator as an example, you do not want them to be aware.

As the brain dies, there appears to be a last, short, burst of a of electrical activity.

“…loss of blood pressure, as monitored by indwelling arterial line, was followed by a decline is BIS/PSI activity followed by a transient spike in BIS/PSI activity that approached levels normally associated with consciousness. This spike in electroencephalogram (EEG) activity had short duration and the activity then declined to a level of activity associated with burst suppression.”

A last gasp of activity before the void. What is happening? What does this burst represent? Is the world being observed one last time? Does the patient see themselves from afar? Are they going to the light? Are memories reviewed or being formed? No one knows. Everyone died and are unable to report what they thought or experienced with the burst of activity. But one could speculate. And one does

“We speculate that this level of BIS/SEDline activity is related to the cellular loss of membrane polarization due to hypoxemia. We further speculate that since this increase in electrical activity occurred when there wash no blood pressure, patients who suffer “near death” experiences may be recalling the aggregate memory of the synaptic activity associated with this terminal but potentially reversible hypoxemia.”

So perhaps the NDE is the last flurry of electrical activity by the brain and, if the patient were brought back from the grave, they would recall this activity as a NDE. Or not. Like most of what occurs in the minds of the dying, it is lost to death.


NDEs can be induced by drugs. Ketamine, an anesthetic drug, can also cause a reaction similar to an NDE. Ketamine can cause visual distortions and a lost sense of time, sense, and identity. Ketamine works as a NMDA receptor antagonist, similar to the action the more familiar drugs dextromethorphan, phencyclidine (PCP), and nitrous oxide. All these drugs can cause a dissociative state. I remember when I had nitrous oxide for my wisdom teeth extractions, I became convinced that I was not in the dental chair, but was somehow outside looking in on the oral surgery. To ‘prove’ I was in the chair, I kept lifting my hands up and waving them, to the distraction of the oral surgeon. I had a similar reaction to indomethacin, a sense that I was in the corner of the room looking down at me. It is most odd.

Ketamine can cause NDEs.

“We aimed here at assessing, in a sample of ketamine misusers, concordance between the typical near-death experience (NDE) features and the on-drug psychoactive effects the subjects experienced. In 2003-2005, a sample of previous ketamine misusers recollecting a ketamine-related NDE were recruited through snowballing and screened with the means of the Greyson NDE Scale; 125 participants made an initial contact with the researcher and 50 reported a minimum score of seven at the “Greyson NDE Scale”. Interviewees were in the range 21-66 years old; 27 participants (54%) were educated at BA level, 18 (36%) had an MSc, and 5 (10%) a PhD. Eight (16%) interviewees had a definite religious background. An average lifetime ketamine intake of 140 occasions was reported by the interviewees, who typically presented with a polydrug, including cannabis and MDMA/ecstasy, misuse history. In 45 (90%) cases, the NDE occurred during the first few occasions of intake. Most frequent features of reported NDE states included: altered perception of time (90%), strong sense of detaching from own physical body (88%), and a sense of peace/joy (76% of subjects). Although results here described were elicited from a self-selected, nonrandomized, limited size sample of misusers, we suggest that recreational ketamine intake may be associated with occurrence of near-death related states.”

Of course, just because James Randi can bend a spoon using prestidigitation doesn’t mean that Uri Geller isn’t bending spoons with his mind. Similarly, just because NDEs can be mimicked in ketamine abusers, er, I mean misusers, doesn’t mean that ‘real’ NDEs are not the consciousness going towards the hereafter. But I am an Occam kind of guy; why should entities be multiplied beyond what is necessary?

Numerous physiologic parameters go awry as you die and all your body functions fail. Many tightly controlled parameters become progressively deranged: pH, C02, sodium, etc. Could these derangement’s have something to do with the physiology of NDEs?


In a recent study they evaluated 52 patients who survived an out of hospital cardiac arrest, of whom 11, or 21% had an NDE. As a group, the NDEs had both higher CO2 levels and lower O2 levels in the blood. They also found increased potassium in those with NDEs.


They note prior studies that demonstrate that low levels of oxygen can result in NDEs, perhaps by way of the NMDA receptor as well. Low oxygen and high CO2 may be a plausible physiologic partial explanation for NDEs. Whether some brains are predisposed to NDEs (since some patients had more than one, poor guys, nearly dying more than once) or there are other factors has yet to be elucidated.

The high potassium? In the discussion they comment,

“Alternative theories found the explanation for NDEs in quantum theory, which suggests that consciousness may arise from quantum processes within neuronal microtubules. The recent work of Bernroider and Roy suggests that quantum entanglement in the ion channels (especially in the potassium channel) of brain cells underlies information processing in the brain and, ultimately, also consciousness. Although untenable and purely theoretic, this possible connection between potassium channels in the brain and the mechanism of consciousness (and therefore the possible mechanism of NDEs) deserves further investigation.”

Once you invoke quantum mechanics for any process macroscopic process in medicine (except, perhaps, MRIs), you lose credibility. Exactly why an untenable explanation deserves further investigation is not explained.

Potentially psychologic factors were not associated with NDEs in this study. ”Sex, level of education, fear of death, time until ROSC, and religious belief” were not associated with an NDE, lending credence to that idea that NDEs are a physiologic response rather than spiritual response, although I suspect the authors lean towards the spiritual side.

“Clearly, the presence of NDEs pushes the current knowledge of human consciousness and mind-brain relation to the edge of our understanding.”

To my mechanistic, reductionist way of thinking, NDEs are the last gasp of activity of a dying brain. Like a cramp in an ischemic leg, it does not push the muscle-contraction relation to the edge of out understanding.


Again, association is not causation, but there is an interesting rat study that suggests that both low pH and increase C02 combine to inhibit NMDA receptors, just like ketamine.

“BACKGROUND: Carbon dioxide (CO2) dose-dependently decreases minimum alveolar concentration (MAC) of anaesthetics in rats. CO2 also dose-dependently decreases cerebrospinal fluid pH. N-methyl-D-aspartate (NMDA) channels exhibit pH sensitivity and are putative targets for inhaled anaesthetics. We hypothesized that CO2 dose-dependently decreases rat NMDA channel current via an acidifying effect at concentrations relevant to CO2 MAC.

METHODS: To test this hypothesis, we studied rat NR1/NR2A glutamate receptors expressed in voltage-clamped Xenopus oocytes. To measure pH effects, we used perfusates adjusted between 7.3 and 5.3 with HCl. To measure CO2 effects, we used equimolar sodium perfusates containing either 0 or 24 mM NaHCO3 and CO2 between 0% and 87% atm. Solution compositions were measured using a blood gas analyser with values corrected using a calibrated pH meter and gas chromatograph with solutions at 37 degrees C.

RESULTS: We found that decreasing pH decreased NMDA current. Moreover, pH effects produced by adding CO2 to NaHCO3-containing perfusates were identical to those produced by adding HCl to normal perfusates. The pH inhibiting 50% of NMDA current was 6.52. The CO2 concentration inhibiting 50% of rat NMDA current was 63% for solutions with 24 mM NaHCO3. CO2 exhibited a linear dose-dependent NMDA response analogous to that observed for in vivo CO2 anaesthetic potency in rats.

CONCLUSIONS: CO2 and hydrogen ions act via the same mechanism to inhibit NMDA receptors. Moreover, CO2 inhibits rat NMDA receptors in a manner that is consistent with CO2 MAC-sparing effects in rats.”

NDEs will unlikely be an area of research that will ever lead to definitive conclusions. Dead men tell no tales and those that survive are unlikely to volunteer their brains for further evaluation, and most patients to survive a cardiac arrest are in no condition to be used in acute clinical studies.


NDEs appear to be reproducible by medications and are probably the response of the dying brain to an inhospitable metabolic milieu. However, like Houdini, when I die, if I can come back, I will come back and tell you about my dying. In the meantime, if I see the light, I’m not going towards it, no matter how inviting.

Chriskavo

A shame you cant hear this documentary. All of what you posted to me was discussed in said documentary. This particular NDE is quite incredible and really needs to be heard. The scientists who investigated this particular NDE found it very difficult to explain and all their research and conclusions which you have posted to me conflicted with this unique NDE . Some scientists hypothesis that tiny infinitesimal neurons found deep inside the brain survive death. The documentary is called 'The Day I Nearly Died'. I am a token skeptic too and I don t really know what to conclude on the subject but I am also quite open minded. Scientists are human after all and not all their conclusions are right. Watch the documentary when you get the chance. Take care, Chris.

MrMojoRisin

Chriskavo wrote: »

A shame you cant hear this documentary. All of what you posted to me was discussed in said documentary. This particular NDE is quite incredible and really needs to be heard. The scientists who investigated this particular NDE found it very difficult to explain and all their research and conclusions which you have posted to me conflicted with this unique NDE . Some scientists hypothesis that tiny infinitesimal neurons found deep inside the brain survive death. The documentary is called 'The Day I Nearly Died'. I am a token skeptic too and I don t really know what to conclude on the subject but I am also quite open minded. Scientists are human after all and not all their conclusions are right. Watch the documentary when you get the chance. Take care, Chris.

I mentioned that story about Pam Reynolds on here in August of last year. Her case is pretty extraordinary.

You could argue that it's just the result of a shift in subjective perception caused by oxygen deprivation and neurological changes in the person, but how does that account for the NDE/OBE-experiencing person being able to recall specific external details lucidly afterwards?

Anyway, this is my post from last year...

MrMojoRisin wrote: »

There’s a very interesting true story about this American lady called Pam Reynolds.

She woke up one morning and found her head was swelling up inside (she was suffering an aneurysm), so she was rushed to a neurological institute in Phoenix, Arizona for a tricky operation to get the thing removed from underneath her brain stem. The only way the surgeon could do that was to drain all the blood from her head, drill off the top part of her skull and manoeuvre the fluid sac from underneath that brain stem. Tough job.

Anyway, while Pam was anaesthetised to the rafters while all this was going on, she felt herself moving out of her body and floating up in the air inside the operation theatre. She was able to see what surgical tools the medics were using on her body below and she heard a conversation between the surgeon and the nurses where they were talking about a major problem with the procedure and decided on an emergency re-think on how to do it. When this woman came round after the operation was (successfully) completed, all the details she related about what had occurred during the surgery on her were confirmed as being absolutely accurate by her cardiologist Dr Michael Sabom and her surgeon, Dr Robert Spetzler. And if you’re thinking, “Oh she wasn’t properly anaesthetised or knocked out at all”, well, every clinical physiological sign from her body was being monitored by state-of-the-art machines.

The concept of Quantum Entanglement – how microtubules in the base of our brains that contain all the information on and processes of who we are but the info is bunched together even after physical death – might explain consciousness. It says that when we bite the dust, the information that’s held in these microtubules doesn’t die as well. Why? Because it all exists on the quantum level, which is the level on which space, energy, time and matter (basically the whole f*ckin universe) exist.

Where this entanglement comes in is that these streams of information that had been stored in our microtubules all manage to stick together as an independent whole. So, the mind and body are able to exist independently of each other but our brains aren’t responsible for creating consciousness – our brains just seem to channel the intelligence that makes up our consciousness.

MrMojoRisin

Chriskavo wrote: »

I would be very interested to hear any stories from people out there who might have had a similar experience or know someone who had this happen to them.

I haven't ever had a NDE or an OBE, but I know one fella and a friend's mother who have had NDEs. To me, their experiences sounded pass remarkable because they just said they had 'visions' of beautiful landscapes, tunnels of white light, mysterious, unknown faces, and angels, etc. That sounded a bit hallucinatory to me.

I would have sat up and taken more notice if they came back with some info they couldn't have possibly known that was subsequently verified, or whatever.

My friend said his mother saw herself looking down on her own body in the operating theatre while she was being operated on, but he didn't elaborate much on it.

Chriskavo

MrMojoRisin wrote: »

I haven't ever had a NDE or an OBE, but I know one fella and a friend's mother who have had NDEs. To me, their experiences sounded pass remarkable because they just said they had 'visions' of beautiful landscapes, tunnels of white light, mysterious, unknown faces, and angels, etc. That sounded a bit hallucinatory to me.

I would have sat up and taken more notice if they came back with some info they couldn't have possibly known that was subsequently verified, or whatever.

My friend said his mother saw herself looking down on her own body in the operating theatre while she was being operated on, but he didn't elaborate much on it.

Thanks for your replies. I really enjoyed your take on Pam Reynolds which was very well written. I would agree with pretty much all of it. The fact that Pam Reynolds was able to describe those distinct type of tools used to open her skull while her her eyes were taped shut as well as being as clinically dead as dead can be is really incredible. I have yet to read a satisfactory scientific explanation for this or for the remarkable story of the profoundly blind woman who gained sight during an N.D.E. Her blindness was so profound that she was unable to comprehend color was including black and her dreams consisted of only smells and sounds. She was however and to the astonishment of emergency workers and doctors able to provide vivid descriptions of what she saw and heard despite being pronounced dead at one point. I think we are looking at a new branch of science here which is not been given the proper finance probably because it runs contradictory to orthodox science and therefore is not taken serious enough.

KeithAFC

There is a lot of stories out there about NDEs.

One of the best ones was this.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d76ZPMtOt-w

maccored

very much in two minds about NDEs but the idea its a product of the brain has been ousted due to people being brain dead before coming back. if the brain is dead, its not creating NDEs.

"In the NDE, you are unconscious. One of the things we know about brain function in unconsciousness, is that you cannot create images and if you do, you cannot remember them ... The brain isn't functioning. It's not there. It's destroyed. It's abnormal. But, yet, it can produce these very clear experiences [NDEs] ... an unconscious state is when the brain ceases to function. For example, if you faint, you fall to the floor, you don't know what's happening and the brain isn't working. The memory systems are particularly sensitive to unconsciousness. So, you won't remember anything. But, yet, after one of these experiences [NDEs], you come out with clear, lucid memories ... This is a real puzzle for science. I have not yet seen any good scientific explanation which can explain that fact." (Peter Fenwick)

Dave!

maccored wrote: »

very much in two minds about NDEs but the idea its a product of the brain has been ousted due to people being brain dead before coming back. if the brain is dead, its not creating NDEs.

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And how does one verify that the experiences associated with NDEs (out of body experience, etc) occur while the brain is dead as opposed to beforehand, or after it comes back? Does the person who's brain is dead (presumably they'd have to be in a medical situation for that to be confirmed clinically) take a look at their watch during it?

maccored

if you take a bit of time to research NDEs you'll find a few 'at the time dead' people report on things that where happening in the theatre whilst according to the medical euipment, they were brain dead.

maccored

this is why Im in two minds about it. I find the detractors dont really know alot of the subject, but yet the 'believers' seem to be very easy to please. theres been a few of the more hard evidence type of reports which have since been proved fake - ones like the blind woman who claimed she could see in an NDE and dscribed objects she could never have seen plus the woman who saw a runner on one of the higher levels of the building. afaik both of those have been proved false yet many use them as prime examples of NDE.

Personally, I havent a clue if its the brain or not. I'd like to see the medical evidence to prove someone having an NDE and who is apparently braindead, isnt.

maccored

Dutch cardiologist and near-death researcher Pim van Lommel notes that, at the moment of an NDE, “these people are not only conscious, their consciousness is even more expansive than ever. They can think extremely clearly, have memories going back to their earliest childhood, and experience an intense connection with everything and everyone around them. And yet their brain shows no activity at all.”

http://discovermagazine.com/2007/jun/soul-search/article_view?b_start:int=1&-C=

Dave!

Just had a bit of a google about this Pam Reynolds business, and found a rather comprehensive article that goes through it point by point:

http://www.infidels.org/library/modern/keith_augustine/HNDEs.html#pam

A few key quotes:

But anyone who gives Sabom's chapters on the case more than a cursory look will see two glaring errors in the descriptions above. First, it is quite clear that Pam did not have her NDE during any period of flat EEG.[16] Indeed, she was as far as a patient undergoing her operation could possibly be from clinical death when her OBE began.[17] Second, she had no cerebral cortical activity for no longer than roughly half an hour.

Of course, the issue of whether Pam was "really" dead within standstill is an extraordinarily misleading red herring in this context. And it is blatantly irresponsible for Sabom to explicitly state that her NDE occurred "while in this state." As Sabom's own account reveals, her standstill condition had absolutely nothing to do with the time when we know that her near-death OBE began: A full two hours and five minutes before the medical staff even began to cool her blood, during perfectly normal body temperature![19] (Again, see Figure 1.)

Second, there is her description of the bone saw. But the very observation that provides the greatest potential for supporting the notion that she actually left her body during her OBE actually tends to count against that hypothesis. As Sabom recounts,

Pam's description of the bone saw having a "groove at the top where the saw appeared to go into the handle" was a bit puzzling.... [T]he end of the bone saw has an overhanging edge that [viewed sideways] looks somewhat like a groove. However, it was not located "where the saw appeared to go into the handle" but at the other end.

Why had this apparent discrepancy arisen in Pam's description? Of course, the first explanation is that she did not "see" the saw at all, but was describing it from her own best guess of what it would look and sound like (187).

Precisely! Except that, of course, Pam didn't need to guess what the bone saw sounded like, since she probably heard it as anesthesia failed. An out-of-body discrepancy within Pam's NDE prima facie implies the operation of normal perception and imagination within an altered state of consciousness. Indeed, this explanation is so straightforward that Sabom considers it before all others. And it is telling that the one visual observation that Pam (almost) could not have known about other than by leaving her body was the very detail that was not accurate.

Can't say I've looked into it in any great depth, but there's alot of good points made in the article.

loldog

Whatever about the neurochemical theories, which aren't very convincing, one thing that strikes me about these NDE's is the similarity of experiences people report. Both the good experiences and the bad experiences, like this guy who says he was being led into Hell before being rescued by Íosa:

It got me thinking that they're very culturally specific and I wonder if people from other cultures experience different things in a NDE.

Also, this story about the grenade was curious:

A marine sergeant was instructing a class of young recruits at boot camp. He stood in front of a classroom holding a hand grenade as he explained the mechanism of pulling the pin to detonate the weapon. After commenting on the considerable weight of the grenade, he thought it would be useful for each of the recruits to get a "hands-on" feeling for its actual mass. As the grenade was passed from private to private, one 18-year-old recruit nervously dropped the grenade as it was handed him. Much to his horror, he watched the pin become dislodged as the grenade hit the ground. He knew he only had seconds to act, but he stood frozen, paralyzed with fear. The next thing he knew, he found himself traveling up through the top of his head toward the ceiling as the ground beneath him grew farther and farther away. He effortlessly passed through the ceiling and found himself entering a tunnel with the sound of wind whistling through it. As he approached the end of this lengthy tunnel, he encountered a light that shone with a special brilliance, the likes of which he had never seen before. A figure beckoned to him from the light, and he felt a profound sense of love emanating from the figure. His life flashed before his eyes in what seemed like a split-second. In midst of this transcendent experience, he suddenly realized that grenade had not exploded. He felt immediately "sucked" back into his body (Gabbard and Twemlow 42).

Gabbard and Twemlow conclude that "thinking one is about to die is sufficient to trigger the classical NDE"

Dave!

What's curious about that story? As it says, fear is often sufficient to trigger a NDE. It's certainly interesting, but not unusual.

At least five separate studies (Gabbard, Twemlow, and Jones; Stevenson, Cook, and McClean-Rice; Gabbard and Twemlow; Serdahely, "Variations"; Floyd) have documented cases where fear alone triggered an NDE. As Ian Stevenson, Emily Williams Cook (now Emily Williams Kelly), and Nicholas McClean-Rice conclude, "an important precipitator of the 'near-death experience' is the belief that one is dying—whether or not one is in fact close to death" (Stevenson, Cook, and McClean-Rice 45). They go on to label those (otherwise indistinguishable) NDEs precipitated by fear of death alone "fear-death experiences" (FDEs). Physiologically, such NDEs might be mediated by a fight-or-flight response in the absence of an actual medical crisis. In a case reported by Glen Gabbard and Stuart Twemlow, an NDEr dislodged the pin of a dummy grenade he thought to be a live one, producing a classic NDE similar to the one Pam experienced:

<marine story>

Gabbard and Twemlow conclude that "thinking one is about to die is sufficient to trigger the classical NDE" (42). After comparing experiences that occurred in nonthreatening conditions with those where subjects were actually close to death, they also concluded that no particular elements were "exclusive to near-death situations," but "several features of the experiences were significantly more likely to occur when the individual felt that death was close at hand" [emphasis mine] (42). That expectation alone can trigger NDEs in certain individuals, then, is well-documented.

You bring up an interesting point about culture. I'd say consistency or lackthereof between cultures could both possibly count as evidence for the physical nature of NDEs. If all humans have pretty similar bodies, then similar chemical reactions in our brains can produce the same effects (and indeed out-of-body experiences and seeing white light occur across different cultures, I believe).

Similarly, variation between different cultures' experiences during a NDE would surely suggest that it's our thoughts and memories (ie. our minds) that influence what form the experience will take. If it were something transcendental, then surely it'd always be the same experience (unless there are many gods)?

So it's kinda inconclusive.

Chriskavo

What's curious about that story? As it says, fear is often sufficient to trigger a NDE. It's certainly interesting, but not unusual.

So what is it Dave? Is it fear or lack of oxygen to the brain that trigger NDE's ?and how do you explain Pam Reynolds accurate description of the saw tool despite being clinically dead, having loud clicking pads in her ears and having her eyes taped shut?

faceman

There was a study some years ago, I cant remember the name of it but its referenced in a book i have at home. Scientists believed they could recreate the experiences an individual experiences during an NDE using a device strapped to ones head, using magnets, electrical currents etc etc. (Sorry i will look it up when I get home for the details)

Anyway, the results were very poor. Even Richard Dawkins gave it a shot and was quoted as being "disappointed" with the results.

Dave!

Chriskavo wrote: »

So what is it Dave? Is it fear or lack of oxygen to the brain that trigger NDE's ?

Who knows? It's by no means fully explained, but there are various hypotheses, many of which are supported by studies and experiments in the lab. Fear, oxygen deprivation, trauma, drugs, magnets, and various other things, have all induced out-of-body experiences and near-death-experiences. So there's plenty of theories out there, and they all suggest a physical explanation

And the paranormal explanation is supported by....... anecdotes and stories that are usually explainable by physical means.

Chriskavo wrote: »

and how do you explain Pam Reynolds accurate description of the saw tool despite being clinically dead, having loud clicking pads in her ears and having her eyes taped shut?

But it wasn't accurate, was it? From a NDE researcher (Michael Sabom):

Pam's description of the bone saw having a "groove at the top where the saw appeared to go into the handle" was a bit puzzling.... [T]he end of the bone saw has an overhanging edge that [viewed sideways] looks somewhat like a groove. However, it was not located "where the saw appeared to go into the handle" but at the other end.

Why had this apparent discrepancy arisen in Pam's description? Of course, the first explanation is that she did not "see" the saw at all, but was describing it from her own best guess of what it would look and sound like (187).

Why did she see the 'groove' at the total opposite end?

And the earphones have been mentioned previously as though they should completely eliminate sound, but they don't! You ever put earphones in and play music? Don't you think you could hear a saw if it was 4 feet from your skull? I certainly could. But these earphones weren't even playing music, just an intermittent beep. So she could easily have heard the saw, and she could have heard the conversations too (about her arteries being too small).

Did you read the link I posted earlier? Have a geez. She wasn't brain dead the whole time at all, only for half an hour. The rest of the time she was just sedated.

faceman wrote: »

There was a study some years ago, I cant remember the name of it but its referenced in a book i have at home. Scientists believed they could recreate the experiences an individual experiences during an NDE using a device strapped to ones head, using magnets, electrical currents etc etc. (Sorry i will look it up when I get home for the details)

Anyway, the results were very poor. Even Richard Dawkins gave it a shot and was quoted as being "disappointed" with the results.

There have been various different attempts to recreate it in the lab, with varying degrees of success. Here is an interesting article that details some of them.

Near Death Experiences and Altered States of Consciousness

...

Neuroscientist Michael Persinger, in his laboratory at Laurentian University in Sudbury, Canada, for example, can induce all of these experiences in subjects by subjecting their temporal lobes to patterns of magnetic fields. I tried it and had a mild out-of-body experience.

Similarly, the September 19, 2002 issue of Nature, reported that the Swiss neuroscientist Olaf Blanke and his colleagues discovered that they could bring about out-of-body experiences (OBEs) through electrical stimulation of the right angular gyrus in the temporal lobe of a 43-year old woman suffering from severe epileptic seizures. In initial mild stimulations she reported “sinking into the bed” or “falling from a height.” More intense stimulation led her to “see myself lying in bed, from above, but I only see my legs and lower trunk.” Another stimulation induced “an instantaneous feeling of ‘lightness’ and ‘floating’ about two meters above the bed, close to the ceiling.”

In a related study reported in the 2001 book Why God Won’t Go Away, researchers Andrew Newberg and Eugene D’Aquili found that when Buddhist monks meditate and Franciscan nuns pray their brain scans indicate strikingly low activity in the posterior superior parietal lobe, a region of the brain the authors have dubbed the Orientation Association Area (OAA), whose job it is to orient the body in physical space (people with damage to this area have a difficult time negotiating their way around a house). When the OAA is booted up and running smoothly there is a sharp distinction between self and non-self. When OAA is in sleep mode — as in deep meditation and prayer — that division breaks down, leading to a blurring of the lines between reality and fantasy, between feeling in body and out of body. Perhaps this is what happens to monks who experience a sense of oneness with the universe, or with nuns who feel the presence of God, or with alien abductees floating out of their beds up to the mother ship.

Sometimes trauma can trigger such experiences. The December 2001 issue of Lancet published a Dutch study in which of 344 cardiac patients resuscitated from clinical death, 12 percent reported near-death experiences (NDEs), where they floated above their bodies and saw a light at the end of a tunnel. Some even described speaking to dead relatives.

The general explanation for all of these phenomena is that since our normal experience is of stimuli coming into the brain from the outside, when a part of the brain abnormally generates these illusions, another part of the brain interprets them as external events. Hence, the abnormal is thought to be the paranormal. In reality, it is just brain chemistry.

More specifically, NDEs and OBEs have biochemical correlates. We know, for example, that the hallucination of flying is triggered by atropine and other belladonna alkaloids, some of which are found in mandrake or jimson weed and were used by European witches and American Indian shamans. OBEs are easily induced by dissociative anesthetics such as the ketamines. DMT (dimethyl-tryptamine) causes the feeling of the world enlarging or shrinking. MDA (methylenedioxyamphetamine) stimulates the feeling of age regression where things we have long forgotten are brought back to memory. And, of course, LSD (lysergic acid diethylamide) triggers visual and auditory hallucinations and gives a feeling of oneness with the cosmos, among other effects. The fact that there are receptor sites in the brain for such artificially processed chemicals, means that there are naturally produced chemicals in the brain which, under certain conditions (the stress of trauma or an accident, for example) can induce any or all of the feelings typically described in a NDE. Thus, NDEs and OBEs are forms of wild “trips” induced by the extreme trauma of almost dying.

Psychologist and paranormal researcher Susan Blackmore has taken the hallucination hypothesis one step further by demonstrating why different people would experience similar effects, such as the tunnel. The visual cortex on the back of the brain is where information from the retina is processed. Hallucinogenic drugs and lack of oxygen to the brain (such as sometimes occurs near death) can interfere with the normal rate of firing by nerve cells in this area. When this occurs, “stripes” of neuronal activity move across the visual cortex, which is interpreted by the brain as concentric rings or spirals. These spirals may be “seen” as a tunnel. Similarly, in the OBE the experience of visualizing things from above is actually just an extension of a normal process we all do called “decentering” — picture yourself sitting on the beach or climbing a mountain and it will usually be from above looking down.

These studies are evidence that mind and brain are one. All experience is mediated by the brain. Large brain areas like the cortex coordinate imputes from smaller brain areas such as the temporal lobes, which themselves collate neural events from still smaller brain modules like the angular gyrus. This reduction continues all the way down to the single neuron level, where highly-selective neurons, sometimes described as “grandmother” neurons, fire only when subjects see someone they know. Caltech neuroscientists Christof Koch and Gabriel Kreiman, in conjunction with UCLA neurosurgeon Itzhak Fried, have even found a single neuron that fires when the subject is shown a photograph of Bill Clinton. The Monica neuron must be closely connected.

The search for the neural correlates of consciousness begin at this fundamental level, and then we ratchet up from there, as we look for emergent properties of complex systems of thought that arise from these simpler systems of neuronal connections. Of course, we are not aware of the workings of our own electrochemical systems. What we actually experience is what philosophers call qualia, or subjective states of thoughts and feelings that arise from a concatenation of neural events. But eventually even the grand mystery of consciousness will be solved by the penetrating tools of science.

This is the fate of the paranormal and the supernatural — to be subsumed into the normal and the natural. In fact, there is no paranormal or supernatural; there is only the normal and the natural … and mysteries yet to be explained.

Chriskavo

And the earphones have been mentioned previously as though they should completely eliminate sound, but they don't! You ever put earphones in and play music? Don't you think you could hear a saw if it was 4 feet from your skull? I certainly could. But these earphones weren't even playing music, just an intermittent beep. So she could easily have heard the saw, and she could have heard the conversations too (about her arteries being too small).

The earphone were not making intermittent noise as was disclosed in the clip. They were loud constant click clicks in each ear making it impossible to hear.

Could Pam have heard the intraoperative conversation and then used this to reconstruct an out-of-body experience? At the beginning of the procedure, molded ear speakers were placed in each ear as a test for auditory and brain-stem reflexes. These speakers occlude the ear canals and altogether eliminate the possibility of physical hearing (Sabom, "Light" 184).

And still no satifactory explanation for her accurate description of the bone saw. I don't care what you say but I would never guess a saw to look like a toothbrush - furthermore the implication with that theory is that she lied and I see no reason for her to do that.

And another example - For example, in one case, a patient reported having a near-death experience while she was resuscitated. She told a nurse she saw a red shoe on the roof of the hospital. The nurse told a resident, who in turn had someone unlock the door to the roof. He descended from the roof with a red shoe in hand. Research is being conducted to try to establish the validity of what these subjects see during the NDE.

maccored

tbh i think that one about the shoe has been disputed - oh so i read in Six Foot Over

loldog

Dave! wrote: »

What's curious about that story? As it says, fear is often sufficient to trigger a NDE. It's certainly interesting, but not unusual.

What's curious is we have all the theories about CO2 and lack of Oxygen and talk about hallucinogenics, but in the case with the grenade, it was just an ordinary everyday situation - the only trigger would have been fear.

But again, we're going on anecdotal evidence of the NDE, that can't be verified in any way.

.

Dave!

Chriskavo wrote: »

The earphone were not making intermittent noise as was disclosed in the clip. They were loud constant click clicks in each ear making it impossible to hear.

Could Pam have heard the intraoperative conversation and then used this to reconstruct an out-of-body experience? At the beginning of the procedure, molded ear speakers were placed in each ear as a test for auditory and brain-stem reflexes. These speakers occlude the ear canals and altogether eliminate the possibility of physical hearing (Sabom, "Light" 184).

Again you haven't read the link I posted, have you?

But is this last claim really true? Since Sabom merely asserts this (and has an obvious stake in it being true), we have little reason to take him at his word—especially on such a crucial point. What is the basis for his assertion? Does he have any objective evidence that the earphones used to measure AEPs completely cut off sounds from the external environment?

Since Sabom does not back up this claim in Light and Death, I did a little research and discovered that his claim is indeed false. According to the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke, as a matter of procedure, a patient who is monitored by the very same equipment to detect acoustic neuromas (benign brain tumors) "sits in a soundproof room and wears headphones" (NINDS). But a soundproof room would be unnecessary, of course, if the earphones used to measure AEPs "occlude the ear canals and altogether eliminate the possibility of physical hearing." It is theoretically possible that the earphones used in 1991 made physical hearing impossible, whereas the earphones used today do not. However, it highly unlikely, as it would be far cheaper for medical institutions to continue to invest in the imagined sound-eliminating earphones, rather than soundproofing entire rooms to eliminate external sounds. As Gerald Woerlee points out, "earplugs do not totally exclude all external sounds, they only considerably reduce the intensity of external sounds," as demonstrated by "enormous numbers of people ... listening to loud music played through earplugs, while at the same time able to hear and understand all that happens in their surroundings" (Woerlee, "Pam").

Chriskavo wrote: »

And still no satifactory explanation for her accurate description of the bone saw. I don't care what you say but I would never guess a saw to look like a toothbrush - furthermore the implication with that theory is that she lied and I see no reason for her to do that.

Maybe she had seen one prior to the surgery? On TV for example? Maybe she saw it in the room before her eyes were taped? Either way, her description was clearly flawed, she seemingly saw something at the exact opposite end it was really at.

She could have lied, or she could just be mistaken, or she could be deluded.

Chriskavo wrote: »

And another example - For example, in one case, a patient reported having a near-death experience while she was resuscitated. She told a nurse she saw a red shoe on the roof of the hospital. The nurse told a resident, who in turn had someone unlock the door to the roof. He descended from the roof with a red shoe in hand. Research is being conducted to try to establish the validity of what these subjects see during the NDE.

At least Pam's story has a load of information supporting it, this one is just a quote out of nowhere with no substantiation and I'm supposed to take it as gospel It's on google dozens of times, but it just amounts to a nice story with no verification. We don't even know the patient's name ("maria") AFAIK.

Here's a quote from another forum, can't say I've looked into it though so take it as you wish:

Barry Beyerstein co-authored a piece on exactly this incident in the Skeptical Inquirer (Vol 20, No. 4 (1996)), titled Maria's Near-Death Experience: Waiting for the Other Shoe to Drop. It's a pretty thorough investigation--among other things, they documented that the ledge on which the shoe was found was clearly visible from several different places, including both the emergency entrance and the bed in Maria's room. A fun read.

lawl

Ah, I just found the article

HAVE A READ OF IT INSTEAD OF JUST IGNORING IT LIKE MY EARLIER LINK
http://records.viu.ca/www/ipp/pdf/NDE.pdf

Thoroughly debunked, even though it's an unsubstantiated story in the first place

MrMojoRisin

Dave! wrote: »

Maybe she had seen one prior to the surgery? On TV for example? Maybe she saw it in the room before her eyes were taped?

There's a possibility she may have seen the surgical saw on TV and either played dumb later, or she just registered the previous sighting of the saw unconsciously. Either way, there isn't any way of knowing for certain.

Dave! wrote: »

Either way, her description was clearly flawed, she seemingly saw something at the exact opposite end it was really at.

Isn't it true that images are formed on the retina upside-down when going through the cornea to begin with? Newborn babies see everything upside-down. Could Pam Reynolds' visual cortex - which would then process an image received via the optic nerve correctly - have been compromised in its efficacy in processing the image the right side up? She was undergoing a very serious neurological procedure, after all.

Dave! wrote: »

She could have lied, or she could just be mistaken, or she could be deluded.

I find the Americans are worst for 'commiting' all of the above. Yes, I'm probably a racist, or whatever you call people who aren't too fond of a particular nationality. Listening to Pam Reynolds speak for the first time in that documentary made me think she sounded like a bit of a spacer.

I read that she's a singer - I can see that faking a NDE would definitely be a handy way of propelling your career further up the ranks due to the resulting publicity.

I can see the validity of the points made about Reynolds possibly being able to hear the saw being used and possibly having an idea of the instrument being used (the saw) and what it looked like.

Dave! wrote: »

At least Pam's story has a load of information supporting it, this one is just a quote out of nowhere with no substantiation and I'm supposed to take it as gospel It's on google dozens of times, but it just amounts to a nice story with no verification. We don't even know the patient's name ("maria") AFAIK.

I actually find it very irritating about how there's an account of a supposed NDE and they can't even disclose the full name of the patient. I might be able to start taking the story of damn Rapunzel seriously now.

Personally, I believe the brain can be as much a receiver as a generator of consciousness, and thus might be fine-tuned in altered states to pick up wavelengths that are normally inaccessible to us. What is received (i.e. signals, music, voices) is not produced by the receiver, but may exist separately as electromagnetic waves that are processed by the receiver to make them visible or audible to the senses. And since matter is now seen as a form of energy, an energy body alternative to the material body could explain an NDE.

In any case, the transcendental aspect of human consciousness during NDEs also corresponds to principles found in quantum physics - multi-dimensional reality, quantum consciousness, quantum interconnectivity, zero point, non-locality, etc.

That's my own take on it, even though I'm unable to prove all of it. But it's also still important to register that no empirical evidence exists that rules out the notion of all paranormal-related phenomena entirely. There are some very logical and reasonable explanations for a lot of so-called 'phenomena', though, with which I do agree.

I believe that hallucinations could have given rise to some early religious notions about supernatural realms and beings,etc, and the survival of death by the soul; the same thing could be happening nowadays because the average human brain's size or wiring hasn't changed at all during the last 5000 years.

But I read before that oxygen deprivation, severe dehydration, or hallucinogenics need not be present to cause unusual experiences. Apparently two out of every 100 humans have the ability to fall naturally and spontaneously into deep states of trance. At the same time, NDEs may be different from hallucinations because few NDE witnesses have reported distortions of time, place, body image and disorientations seen in drug-induced experiences, or otherwise. Instead, they typically involve the perception of another reality superimposed over this one. Genuine NDEs may not necessarily be the result of psychiatric pathology or brain dysfunction. At the same time, NDEs could be symbols or archetypes of things like rebirth of the self or ego dissolution.

Apparitions of the deceased have been induced under scientific controls, as carried out by a fella named Dr. Raymond Moody. He constructed a psychomanteum - a specially built laboratory with mirrors that was used in Ancient Greece - and found that 85% of the people who underwent the full process made contact with a deceased loved one. Interestingly, they didn't meet the loved one whom they had in mind beforehand. I think you can go about constructing your own psychomanteum.

There was a woman named Dr. Yvonne Kason who had a NDE after the airplane in which she was travelling crashed into a lake. After her recovery, she had strange visions - one of which was concerning a friend of hers. When Kason thought of her friend, she could see a vision in her mind of a "brain covered with pus". Kason knew immediately that this symbolised meningitis.

The friend was perfectly healthy at the time and exhibited no symptoms of meningitis, but Kason begged her friend to get tested anyway. Surprisingly, the test showed positive for meningitis. The friend managed to get treatment for the meningitis before it progressed to a deadly stage. At least her NDE turned out to be useful.

There's also a fella named Rev. George Rodonaia who was pronounced dead immediately after being struck by a car in 1976. So they put him in a morgue and he was left there for three days until an autopsy of his body began to be carried out. At the time, he was working as a neuropathologist and was a confirmed atheist. Anyway, when a doctor made an incision in Rodonaia's abdomen as part of the autopsy, Rodonaia suddenly came back to life.

After his experience, he started studying spirituality and became ordained as a priest...

Apparently Queen Elizabeth I, Einstein, Winston Churchill, and Mozart all had NDE experiences when they were children. Interesting.

mcmoustache

Excellent post mojo. I agree with a most but I have to nitpick.

Regarding matter-energy equivalence: You can convert from one state to the other but if a biological entity were to be converted, it would be fubared. Matter is like potential energy and when it "becomes energy", it becomes a volume of high temperature and it disperses to colder regions. It might create particle-anti-particle pairs but good luck bringing the particles back together to recreate the complex biological entity.

As for quantum effects, they don't apply to the macro world. The idea that they might is interesting but for now, the quantum world and the macro world follow completely different rules. Physicists are working on sorting out that discrepancy so who knows what the future holds....

On the other hand, the idea that we might be able to receive different electromagnetic frequencies is interesting. I think it might be possible during a heightened state to perceive more than usual. Hearing, for example, can be seriously altered. Magic mushrooms can demonstrate that.

Still, it will take more scientific research to explain all this. Fortunately, this can be approached scientifically and research is ongoing. We might be in for some interesting results