New study linking brain activity to NDE's

Can someone help me understand the claims from the article below??

It seems to me, that the claim is that the rat's heart has stopped, and no signs of life, yet the brain is still active and sending chemicals or messages to the heart that ultimately "kills" it or renders it incapable of "coming back online"? And then I suppose they r assuming the brain then shuts down as well.

And then they are making the leap that this brain activity that sends signals to the heart can account for near death experiences?

Do I have it right?

Near-Death Experiences: New Clues to Brain Activity
A new study of near-death experiences has revealed key changes in the brain that may trigger its onset. Scientists have long believed that the heart plays a central role in death, but the new study challenges that long-held belief.

The findings, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, are based on studies of heart and brain activity of rats in the moments before the animals died from lack of oxygen. The researchers found that the animals' brains sent a flurry of signals to the heart that caused fatal damage to the organ that led to death.

But when the researchers blocked those signals, the heart survived for longer. If a similar process occurs in humans, as the researchers suspect, then it might be possible to help people survive after their hearts stop by cutting off these signals from the brain.

"People naturally focus on the heart, thinking that if you save the heart, you'll save the brain," Jimo Borjigin, a neuroscientist at the University of Michigan Medical School in Ann Arbor who helped lead the new research.

"[But] you have to sever [the chemical communication between] the brain and heart in order to save the heart," Borjigin told LiveScience, adding that the finding is "contrary to almost all emergency medical practice."

Every year, some 400,000 Americans experience cardiac arrest and only about 10 percent survive, according to the American Heart Association.

But the new study shows even after a person’s heart stops beating, and loses consciousness and no signs of life, the brain continues to be active — flooding the heart with signals, probably in a desperate attempt to save the organ.

That brain activity may account for the near-death experiences some people report, Borjigin said.
 
Can someone help me understand the claims from the article below??

It seems to me, that the claim is that the rat's heart has stopped, and no signs of life, yet the brain is still active and sending chemicals or messages to the heart that ultimately "kills" it or renders it incapable of "coming back online"? And then I suppose they r assuming the brain then shuts down as well.

And then they are making the leap that this brain activity that sends signals to the heart can account for near death experiences?

Do I have it right?

Near-Death Experiences: New Clues to Brain Activity
A new study of near-death experiences has revealed key changes in the brain that may trigger its onset. Scientists have long believed that the heart plays a central role in death, but the new study challenges that long-held belief.

The findings, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, are based on studies of heart and brain activity of rats in the moments before the animals died from lack of oxygen. The researchers found that the animals' brains sent a flurry of signals to the heart that caused fatal damage to the organ that led to death.

But when the researchers blocked those signals, the heart survived for longer. If a similar process occurs in humans, as the researchers suspect, then it might be possible to help people survive after their hearts stop by cutting off these signals from the brain.

"People naturally focus on the heart, thinking that if you save the heart, you'll save the brain," Jimo Borjigin, a neuroscientist at the University of Michigan Medical School in Ann Arbor who helped lead the new research.

"[But] you have to sever [the chemical communication between] the brain and heart in order to save the heart," Borjigin told LiveScience, adding that the finding is "contrary to almost all emergency medical practice."

Every year, some 400,000 Americans experience cardiac arrest and only about 10 percent survive, according to the American Heart Association.

But the new study shows even after a person’s heart stops beating, and loses consciousness and no signs of life, the brain continues to be active — flooding the heart with signals, probably in a desperate attempt to save the organ.

That brain activity may account for the near-death experiences some people report, Borjigin said.

I can kinda imagine why they would make that assumption - the heart isnt active anymore but the brain is still working. Thats the train of thought here that leads them to the belief that the brain could create those NDE's while the heart isnt beating anymore for some sort of reason. But well - people speculate that the NDE's are happening while there is no brain activity at all - if that is believed to be true then the whole thing seems rather unlikely. In the end the NDE-part is more of a speculation here i guess - it could be a lead, but why would there be a NDE if the brain tries to rescue the heart at any cost? I see no reason to believe that just because the brain is still active after the heart died.
For me personally it seems like they tried to force a connection here to be more relevant since the study seems to be about something else. But i may be to harsh here.
 
Can someone help me understand the claims from the article below??

It seems to me, that the claim is that the rat's heart has stopped, and no signs of life, yet the brain is still active and sending chemicals or messages to the heart that ultimately "kills" it or renders it incapable of "coming back online"? And then I suppose they r assuming the brain then shuts down as well.

And then they are making the leap that this brain activity that sends signals to the heart can account for near death experiences?

Do I have it right?

Near-Death Experiences: New Clues to Brain Activity
A new study of near-death experiences has revealed key changes in the brain that may trigger its onset. Scientists have long believed that the heart plays a central role in death, but the new study challenges that long-held belief.

The findings, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, are based on studies of heart and brain activity of rats in the moments before the animals died from lack of oxygen. The researchers found that the animals' brains sent a flurry of signals to the heart that caused fatal damage to the organ that led to death.

But when the researchers blocked those signals, the heart survived for longer. If a similar process occurs in humans, as the researchers suspect, then it might be possible to help people survive after their hearts stop by cutting off these signals from the brain.

"People naturally focus on the heart, thinking that if you save the heart, you'll save the brain," Jimo Borjigin, a neuroscientist at the University of Michigan Medical School in Ann Arbor who helped lead the new research.

"[But] you have to sever [the chemical communication between] the brain and heart in order to save the heart," Borjigin told LiveScience, adding that the finding is "contrary to almost all emergency medical practice."

Every year, some 400,000 Americans experience cardiac arrest and only about 10 percent survive, according to the American Heart Association.

But the new study shows even after a person’s heart stops beating, and loses consciousness and no signs of life, the brain continues to be active — flooding the heart with signals, probably in a desperate attempt to save the organ.

That brain activity may account for the near-death experiences some people report, Borjigin said.

From abstract it appears that if they cut the spinal cord of the rats during asphyxia (before cardiac arrest/VR), they can reduce the amount of energy expended by the heart cells, thus prolonging the length of time before the heart goes into ventricular fibrillation (VR), and prolonging the amount of time the heart cells can survive whilst the body is in an energy starved state, therefore reducing damage to the heart cells.
 
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There have been some recent empirical evidence in humans that there is a sudden burst of brain activity once the heart stops, and can last for some time. I don't have the article in front of me, but it is relatively new data that appears to be confirmed. Which obviously Skeptics will latch on to and claim - this must be how NDE's are being created by the brain. Even though the data is preliminary and does not possess a shred of psychological data of how the brain would consistently create NDE like experiences for some dying patients and not others, nor does it explain the universal consistency of NDEs on different continents from people of all ages. But it does provide an opening that the brain may in someway be involved with NDE activity, but it does not deny the fact that NDEs don't occur. Nor does it provide any clear explanation for the veridical OBE aspects of NDEs that are commonly reported. Nor does it explain some NDE case studies where a patient's brain was clinically inactive for a long period of time while they were operated upon.

If anything, this new data provides more mystery to brain and physiological functioning regarding the process of dying and not less, and should be the basis for more scientific research and questions. Not the assinine assumption that will inevitably be made by Skeptics that this new finding proves NDEs are nothing more than last gasp manifestations of brain activity. The new data proves nothing of the sort.

My Best,
Bertha

It always made sense to me that even highly "spiritual" experiences have a biological element. Seems to make sense if we are intergrated beings...if that makes any sense.
 
How does a EEG look like on a person having a full-blown hallucination?
I would bet it's not particularly "flat"!?!

The argument from skeptics, that such an profound and vivid experience, such an NDE, occurs when a brain is "dead" - and that it somewhat occurs "deeper" in the brain, and that we just cant see it on EEG - will grind on, and on, and on, and on and........on.
 
I'll look at the full paper later (although based on looking at the supplementary material, this may be way above my pay grade :)).

Please note that they are looking at the EEG readings - i.e. we are not talking about brain activity which isn't showing up on EEG.

Linda
 
I've had a chance to read through the paper. It's not good news for proponents, I'm afraid.

It extends the findings from the previous rat study about the kinds of activities which are going on in the brain during periods of cardiac arrest and asphyxiation. It effectively kills those arguments which depended heavily upon claiming that the activity is woefully insufficient or absent based mostly on variable reductions in the amplitude and frequency of scalp EEG.

Findings relevant to the NDE:

Asphyxia triggers a brainstorm of coordinated cortical activity.
Indices of conscious information processing surge during asphyxic cardiac arrest.
There are surges of various neurotransmitters. These are associated with elements which are found in NDEs - increased alertness arousal and internal performance, increased affective emotion, the induction of visual hallucinations and mystical feelings.
An asymmetric surge of afferent (to the brain) signalling which favours the left hemisphere. Dopamine release favouring the left hemisphere would lead to feelings of love and maternal attachment over stress and anxiety (right hemisphere).

The intriguing finding was the triggering of a heart-brain coherence which wasn't present at baseline, but which consistently arose during asphyxiation (under these highly controlled conditions), which stimulated these electrophysical changes. This experiment started with asphyxiation, which then led to the cardiac demise, whereas we are more familiar with cardiac arrest as the starting point. But the connection was two-way, which suggests that this connectivity would also show up under cardiac arrest. It suggests that NDEs may not stimulated by the lack of perfusion or insults to the brain, but rather by the triggering of this coherence. And this can be triggered by a life-threatening stressor in the setting of normal heart and brain function - exactly what has sometimes been reported with NDE.

This is a pretty amazing paper. I'm probably going to have to re-read it another 20 times to really take it all in.

Linda
 
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I've had a chance to read through the paper. It's not good news for proponents, I'm afraid.

It extents the findings from the previous rat study about the kinds of activities which are going on in the brain during periods of cardiac arrest and asphyxiation. It effectively kills those arguments which depended heavily upon claiming that the activity is woefully insufficient or absent based mostly on variable reductions in the amplitude and frequency of scalp EEG.

Findings relevant to the NDE:

Asphyxia triggers a brainstorm of coordinated cortical activity.
Indices of conscious information processing surge during asphyxic cardiac arrest.
There are surges of various neurotransmitters. These are associated with elements which are found in NDEs - increased alertness arousal and internal performance, increased affective emotion, the induction of visual hallucinations and mystical feelings.
An asymmetric surge of afferent (to the brain) signalling which favours the left hemisphere. Dopamine release favouring the left hemisphere would lead to feelings of love and maternal attachment over stress and anxiety (right hemisphere).

The intriguing finding was the triggering of a heart-brain coherence which wasn't present at baseline, but which consistently arose during asphyxiation (under these highly controlled conditions), which stimulated these electrophysical changes. This experiment started with asphyxiation, which then led to the cardiac demise, whereas we are more familiar with cardiac arrest as the starting point. But the connection was two-way, which suggests that this connectivity would also show up under cardiac arrest. It suggests that NDEs may not stimulated by the lack of perfusion or insults to the brain, but rather by the triggering of this coherence. And this can be triggered by a life-threatening stressor in the setting of normal heart and brain function - exactly what has sometimes been reported with NDE.

This is a pretty amazing paper. I'm probably going to have to re-read it another 20 times to really take it all in.

Linda

Interesting, especially in light of the study linking recall of NDEs to recall of hallucinations (much to the surprise of the authors!)
 
Interesting, especially in light of the study linking recall of NDEs to recall of hallucinations (much to the surprise of the authors!)
It has been well established by many of the NDE studies, and the many decades worth of psychological studies in hallucinations, that there is next to no similarity between the two.

NDEs are orderly, logical, defined and predictable when compared to hallucinations. In addition, the NDE takes place when a person is unconscious, and when someone is unconscious you can't create images, nor can you remember them. Also, drugs and anesthesia are well known to limit memory of hallucinations, not create ordered NDE like experiences.

All the evidence fls and you have toward your absolute Skeptic faith in materialism is your own hardcore bigotry toward psi and ndes.

My Best,
Bertha
 
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http://forum.mind-energy.net/forum/.../5701-pim-van-lommel-s-take-on-the-rats-study

Smithy:

Yesterday I contacted cardiologist Pim van Lommel (author of Consciousness Beyond Life, and many articles about the NDE phenomenon) and this is what he has to say about the rats furore:

-----------
This terminal EEG activity in the first 30 seconds after cardiac arrest in rats, before the EEG flat lines, is just about activity in the brain. It tells us nothing about consciousness, and even the rats cannot tell us what they have experienced in the first 30 seconds after their cardiac arrest….

Moreover, in the studies in humans in induced cardiac arrest during threshold testing of ICDs there was a different kind of brain activity in the EEG in the first 10-20 seconds after cardiac arrest.

What is important that often veridical perceptions during NDE/OBE do occur later than the first 30 seconds after cardiac arrest, like the case of the denture man in our study, as in many other corroborated cases of veridical perceptions during NDE/OBE. So this activity in rat brains is no explanation whatsoever about NDEs, but it is an interesting finding.

From the article Nonlocal Consciousness, A concept based on scientific research on near-death experiences during cardiac arrest , Journal of Consciousness Studies, by Pim van Lommel
How do we know for sure that the EEG is flat in those patients with cardiac arrest, and how can we study this? In normal circumstances no attempts are made to register an EEG during cardiac arrest, because this takes far too much time, and patients need to be successfully resuscitated and defibrillated as soon as possible. But there have been some cases in which the electrical activity of the brain was measured (EEG) during a cardiac arrest, for example during surgery. Following the cardiac arrest (‘no-flow’), the EEG flat-lined after an average of fifteen seconds and remained flat despite external resuscitation (‘low flow’) (Hossmann et al., 1973, Moss et al., 1980, Clute et al., 1990, Losasso et al., 1992). A persistent flat-line EEG during external CPR has also been shown in animal studies (Bircher et al., 1980).

Monitoring of the electrical activity of the cortex (EEG) has shown that the first ischemic changes during induced cardiac arrest in humans are detected an average of 6.5 seconds after circulatory arrest. Ischemic changes in the EEG show a decrease of power in fast activity and in delta activity and an increase of slow delta I activity, sometimes also an increase in amplitude of theta activity, progressively and ultimately declining to iso-electricity. But more often initial slowing and attenuation of the EEG waves is the first sign of cerebral ischemia. With prolongation of the cerebral ischemia, progression to a flat-line EEG always occurs within 10 to 20 (mean 15) seconds from the onset of cardiac arrest (De Vries et al.1998, Clute at al., 1990, Losasso et al. 1992, Parnia and Fenwick 2002), and the EEG remains flat during the cardiac arrest until cardiac output has been restored by defibrillation (Fisher et al. 1996, Marshall et al 2001).

In tests on animals auditory evoked potentials, or measures of brain-stem viability, can no longer be induced, which means that the reaction caused in a normal functioning brain-stem by sound stimulation is no longer produced (Brantson et al, 1984, Gua et al, 1995).

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So far Van Lommel. I have not posted this in the current thread about "wide spread brain activity in rats after induced cardiac arrest", because that seems to have run wild somewhat.

I have also seen more comments on this rats study by people who have much more knowledge about the NDE phenomenon than the people who conducted this rats thing...​
 
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http://forum.mind-energy.net/forum/...periences-are-electrical-surge-in-dying-brain

alextsakiris:

Near-death experiences are 'electrical surge in dying brain'
August 14th, 2013, 09:24 AM
BBC Science: BBC News - Near-death experiences are 'electrical surge in dying brain'

Here's another instance of someone who obviously has very little knowledge of NDE research linking their research to the phenomena (thx for the heads-up on this Allen ).

If you read this article and remember going down this road before, check out: 140. Dr. Lakhmir Chawla Frustrates Near-Death Experience Researchers | Skeptiko - Science at the Tipping Point

Alex Tsakiris: So, Dr. Chawla, in 2009 you published a paper with the surprising discovery that some of your patients who were very close to death experienced a final surge in brain activity and the paper has gained quite a bit of traction, media attention, mainly because of this quote of yours:

“We think that near-death experiences could be caused by a surge of electrical energy as the brain runs out of oxygen.”

It‘s been a while since that paper was published. So first I want to ask you, do you still think that what you saw has anything to do with near-death experience?

Dr. Lakhmir Chawla: Obviously all of the patients in our study passed away so there’s really no way for us to truly know if what these people were experiencing is, in fact had they survived, being the signature of a near-death experience. What we did notice which was very striking is that in all these patients–and in this study we reported on seven patients on which we had very good documentation. We’ve seen these electrical surges, EEG activity, at the end of life in over 100 patients and what we basically have, I hypothesize that when people pass away something occurs in their neural structure.

We have a hypothesis for why this may be happening, that causes this large intensity of electrical energy. What we basically hypothesize further and speculate is that if somebody within the field, someone who’s having a heart attack, for example, and their heart stops and the oxygen to their brain went down and they have this sort of terminal surge of energy and then they were resuscitated and brought back, it’s very likely that they would recall that electrical surge.

If they did recall that electrical surge, we hypothesize and speculate that that could be what people describe in their near-death experiences. The one thing that we’ve seen rather consistently when you read the literature of near-death experiences is that not everyone has the same imagery. Not everyone has the same experience.

But the one thing that they all have in common is that the experience is very intense and very vivid. People can usually recall many, many years later on with great detail what they experienced. So it would take something that would be a very durable electrical event of energy for someone to have that. So we put those notions together and arrived at that speculation.

Alex Tsakiris: Okay. I just wanted to confirm that and it’s interesting that you reference the near-death experience literature. I’ve had a chance to interview some of the world’s leading near-death experience researchers and gosh, I even went back and talked to some of them about this. I couldn’t find any of them that would even seriously entertain that kind of speculation.

As a matter of fact, privately one of them told me, and this is pretty harsh, but he said, “It’s one of the dumbest explanations for near-death experience yet published.” So I guess I was really wondering exactly where you’re coming from, exactly what near-death experience research you’ve dug into that makes you feel like the speculation that you’re talking about would fit the broader research that’s been done into near-death experience.

Dr. Lakhmir Chawla: No, I mean I’m not a researcher in near-death experience. That’s not my primary scientific interest. We are basically at the bedside taking care of very sick patients in the intense care unit...

Alex Tsakiris: Right. Let’s just push that a little bit further. I appreciate where you’re coming from that near-death experience is a hot topic. Something happens at the final stages of life. I think it’s easy to make that connection.

The pushback I hear from the near-death experience researchers and why they say, “Wow, that just doesn’t really fit and we’ve been down that path before,” there’s a couple reasons. But the main one is the timing. You know, the first thing they’ll tell you is that while near-death experience has certainly been studied a lot in cardiac arrest patients because it eliminates a lot of the other variables, it’s not the only place where near-death experiences are reported.

The first thing that I heard back from the near-death experience researchers I talked to about your work is most people who report a near-death experience aren’t that bad off. They’re not in that much of a medical emergency, final stages kind of situation that you talk about. Heck, there’s even people who jump off the Golden Gate Bridge and don’t have any real physical trauma going on that have a near-death experience. Or people who are in the middle of a plane crash scenario that have a near-death experience. So the literature, when you get into near-death experience, goes way beyond people in this medical situation.

But moreover, this issue with the EEG becomes very interesting because we also have people in the near-death experience literature, case studies published in placed like the New England Journal of Medicine, all the right places to publish case studies, where they’ve induced cardiac arrest and they know there’s no EEG, and yet there’s the report of a near-death experience.
 
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  1. Bruce Greyson1,
  2. Edward F. Kelly, and
  3. W. J. Ross Dunseath

http://www.pnas.org/content/110/47/E4405.full

Excerpt:

Borjigin et al. (1) describe recordings from electrodes implanted in rat brains that were made during and after cardiac arrest in rats. The surprising and unexplained 30-s surge in electrical coherence and connectivity certainly merits further study, but the authors’ suggestion that this transient electrical surge has implications for near-death experiences in humans seems premature to us.

First, it is impossible to establish what, if anything, the rats were experiencing during the postarrest period of the surge.

Second, the activity observed following cardiac arrest represents a tiny fraction of the total neuroelectric power present just before arrest (as indicated in figures 1 and 2 of Borjigin et al.), and thus it is misleading to describe these rat brains as being “hyperaroused.” All that can be concluded is that activity of unknown functional significance occurred at a few places in the EEG frequency spectrum in the context of near-total obliteration of activity accompanying the waking state. The pertinent question here is not whether there is any brain electrical activity at all after cardiac arrest, but whether there is activity of the type currently thought to be necessary for conscious experience.

Third, the relevance of these findings in rats to human brain physiology is unclear. Monitoring of cortical electrical activity in humans during cardiac arrest has documented a slowing and attenuation of EEG activity in humans detected an average of 6.5 s after cardiac arrest, progressing to isoelectricity and absence of evoked potentials within 10–20 s (2).

Fourth, many reports of near-death experiences include verifiable perceptions by the experiencer that are anchored to specific time periods far longer than 30 s after cardiac arrest (3), the duration of the electrical surge in this study.

Fifth, many near-death experiences occur under conditions that do not involve cardiac arrest or decreased cerebral perfusion (4).

Sixth, about a quarter of reported near-death experiences occur under general anesthesia (5), but the rats in the study by Borjigin et al. did not show the observed postarrest EEG patterns under anesthesia.

Seventh, all of the rats exhibited the same stereotyped pattern of high-frequency EEG activity following cardiac arrest, but only 10–20% of humans undergoing cardiac arrest report near-death experiences (4).

For these reasons we believe that the finding of Borjigin et al. of surprising brain electrical activity after cardiac arrest, although intriguing and meriting further investigation, is unlikely to contribute to an understanding of near-death experiences.
 
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http://ncu9nc.blogspot.com/2013/08/an-electrical-surge-in-dying-brain.html

There are several reasons a surge of electrical activity in the brain cannot account for near-death experiences. A surge of electrical activity cannot explain:

Veridical (verifiable) near-death experiencess where the experiencer is aware of what is happening at a location he could not perceive with his normal senses even if he was conscious.


Shared near-death experiences where more than one person is close to death and they share the same near-death experience.


Shared near-death experiences where one person is close to death and one or more people around him share his near-death experience.


Near-death experiences that occur when the experiencer is not suffering cardiac arrest and is not physiologically close to death.


Near-death experiences where the subject experiences cardiac arrest for much longer than the surge of electrical activity lasts and the experiencer can report veridical information long after the surge of electrical activity ends.


Near-death experiences that occur when it is known that the experiencer's EEG shows no brain activity.​
 
http://ncu9nc.blogspot.com/2013/07/materialist-explanations-of-ndes-fail.html

Materialist explanations of NDEs fail to explain the phenomenon.

Greyson:
However, unconsciousness produced by cardiac arrest characteristically leaves patients amnesic and confused for events immediately preceding and following these episodes (Aminoff et al., 1988; Parnia & Fenwick, 2002; van Lommel et al., 2001). Furthermore, a substantial number of NDEs contain apparent time "anchors" in the form of verifiable reports of events occurring during the period of insult itself. For example, a cardiac-arrest victim described by van Lommel et al. (2001) had been discovered lying in a meadow 30 minutes or more prior to his arrival at the emergency room, comatose and cyanotic, and yet days later, having recovered, he was able to describe accurately various circumstances occurring in conjunction with the ensuing resuscitation procedures in the hospital.
 
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http://ncu9nc.blogspot.com/2014/04/anomalous-characteristics-of-near-death.html
Anomalous Characteristics of Near-death Experiences

Enhanced consciousness such as realer-than-real detail, 360 degree vision, and colors not seen before.

Blind people see during NDEs. (Hogan)

Memories of NDEs are more detailed than normal memories.

Visions of deceased people, sometimes deceased people the experiencer had never met or seen pictures of. (Hogan)

A life review where the experiencer feels how he affected other people from their point of view.

Veridical (verifiable) perceptions where the experiencer perceived something when their brain was not functioning, and or perceived something that they could not have perceived with their normal senses even if they were conscious.

NDEs have been experienced by people not close to death.

"Lucid consciousness, well-structured thought processes, and clear reasoning" (Beauregard), calmness and tranquility (near-death.com), when their medical condition should cause confusion and amnesia, disorientation and fear.

Spiritual transformation.

NDEs involve a subjectively conscious experience while the experiencer is objectively unconscious. Hallucinations almost always occur when the subject is awake and conscious. (near-death.com)

NDEs occur more often during flat EEGs and not during abnormal EEGs. (Hogan)

"NDEs are remarkably consistent across virtually all experiencers regardless of age, nationality, religious background, and all other demographics", including atheists. (Hogan)

"Many parts of the brain must be coherent for lucid experiences to occur yet NDEs occur when there is no EEG activity." (Hogan)

NDErs experience "heightened awareness, attention, and memory at a time when consciousness and memory formation are not expected to be functioning" and "only confusional and paranoid thinking... should occur" (Hogan)

"In some cases, a third party has observed visionary figures seen by the experiencers" (Tymn)

Healthy people attending the dying sometimes share in the NDE. (Facco and Christian)

Because of the way the brain is wired, it cannot produce an NDE. (Alexander)

Many NDEs occur during anesthesia when the patient should be unconscious. (Long)

"The most important objection to the adequacy of all ... reductionistic hypotheses is that mental clarity, vivid sensory imagery, a clear memory of the experience, and a conviction that the experience seemed more real than ordinary consciousness are the norm for NDEs. They occur even in conditions of drastically altered cerebral physiology under which the production theory would deem consciousness impossible. (Greyson)​
 
http://ncu9nc.blogspot.com/2012/05/skeptiko-interview-with-dr-melvin-morse.html

Skeptiko Interview with Dr. Melvin Morse

The full interview is here.
So by chance or coincidence or fate or whatever, I happened to be in Pocatello, Idaho and there was a child there who had drowned in a community swimming pool. She was documented to be under water for at least 17 minutes. It just so happened that a pediatrician was in the locker room at the same community swimming pool and he attempted to revive her on the spot. His intervention probably saved her life but again, he documented that she had no spontaneous heartbeat for I would say at least 45 minutes, until she arrived at the emergency room. Then our team got there.

She was really dead. All this debate over how close do these patients come to death, etc., you know, Alex, I had the privilege of resuscitating my own patients and she was, for all intents and purposes, dead. In fact, I had told her parents that. I said that it was time for them to say goodbye to her. This was a very deeply religious Mormon family. They actually did. They crowded around the bedside and held hands and prayed for her and such as that. She was then transported to Salt Lake City. She lived. She not only lived but three days later she made a full recovery.

Alex Tsakiris: And what did she tell you…

Dr. Melvin Morse: Her first words, the first words she said when she came out of her coma, she turned to the nurse down at Primary Children’s in Salt Lake City. She says, “Where are my friends?” And then they’d say, “What do you mean, where are your friends?” She’d say, “Yeah, all the people that I met in Heaven. Where are they?” [Laughs]

The innocence of a child. So I saw her in follow-up, another one of these odd twists of fate. I happened to be in addition doing my residency and just happened to be working in the same community clinic in that area. My jaw just dropped to the floor when she and her mother walked in. I was like, “What?” I had not even heard that she had lived. I had assumed that she had died. She looked at me and she said to her mother, “There’s the man that put a tube down my nose.” [Laughs]

Alex Tsakiris: What are you thinking at that point when she says that?

Dr. Melvin Morse: You know, it’s one of those things—I laughed. I sort of giggled the way a teenager would giggle about sex. It was just embarrassing. I didn’t know what to think. Certainly, I’d trained at Johns Hopkins. I thought when you died you died. I said, “What do you mean, you saw me put a tube in your nose?”

She said, “Oh, yeah. I saw you take me into another room that looked like a doughnut.”

She said things like, “You called someone on the phone and you asked, ‘What am I supposed to do next?’”

She described the nurses talking about a cat who had died. One of the nurses had a cat that had died and it was just an incidental conversation. She said she was floating out of her body during this entire time. I just sort of laughed. And then she taps me on the wrist. You’ve got to hear this, Alex.

After I laughed she taps me on the wrist and she says, “You’ll see, Dr. Morse. Heaven is fun.” [Laughs] I was completely blown away by the entire experience. I immediately determined that I would figure out what was going on here. This was in complete defiance of everything I had been taught in terms of medicine.​
 
It may be interesting to see what van Lommel et. al. have to say about this most recent study from Borjigin, which begins to address many of their criticisms from 2 years ago.

Does anyone else intend to read the actual study?

Linda
 
http://ncu9nc.blogspot.com/2013/07/materialist-explanations-of-ndes-fail.html

Materialist explanations of NDEs fail to explain the phenomenon.

Greyson:
However, unconsciousness produced by cardiac arrest characteristically leaves patients amnesic and confused for events immediately preceding and following these episodes (Aminoff et al., 1988; Parnia & Fenwick, 2002; van Lommel et al., 2001). Furthermore, a substantial number of NDEs contain apparent time "anchors" in the form of verifiable reports of events occurring during the period of insult itself. For example, a cardiac-arrest victim described by van Lommel et al. (2001) had been discovered lying in a meadow 30 minutes or more prior to his arrival at the emergency room, comatose and cyanotic, and yet days later, having recovered, he was able to describe accurately various circumstances occurring in conjunction with the ensuing resuscitation procedures in the hospital.

This is famous denture man case. You can find all about it - including the controverse with the indomitable anesthesiologist G.M.Woerlee, on:

http://nieuw.merkawah.nl/sites/default/files/pdf/

Cheers _ Smithy
 
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