Brain activity possible beyond flat EEG after all?

I am always cautious about putting too much confidence in fragments of amazing new research (at least in the medical field) see for instance:

http://www.plosmedicine.org/article/info:doi/10.1371/journal.pmed.0020124

I am also cautious about the implication that amazing NDE experiences are generated by residual activity in the brain after the heart has stopped beating.

Remember what smaller assaults to the brain typically do. A person who faints, only has a reduced blood flow to the brain, but they lose consciousness. People with damage to parts of their brain (strokes, head impacts etc.) are usually either unconscious or muddled in the early stages. Is it reasonable to assume that some residual brain activity which doesn't even show up on a normal EEG represents a hyper-real experience that will be remembered for the rest of that person's life?

I become suspicious/cynical when scientists dismiss the very tools that they normally use to study the brain - EEG machines - in order to 'explain' phenomena that would otherwise be unexplainable. Nowadays a lot of super-sensitive measurements can be made - think of detectors for minute quantities of chemicals - and it must always be a challenge to decide if these measurements are in any way useful.

David
 
I am also cautious about the implication that amazing NDE experiences are generated by residual activity in the brain after the heart has stopped beating.

Hallucinatory experiences appear to happen in times where there is less brain function, so being cautious is not ill-advised.
 
Well said, but to me it also raises the question why the NDE researchers are not doing this kind of research.
This is something we can not learn from endlessly collecting NDE reports, this is the kind of research that needs to be done before anyone can make far reaching declarations about the (im)possibility of brain activity beyond flat EEG.

With all due respect it has been Science that has told us about the declarations of impossibility of brain activity beyond flat EEG... so NDE researches are really just basing their studies on what Science knows so far.

Of course this still doesn't explain how someone can recite conversations between Surgeons and describe visually what happens whilst in this state during an operation when all of their auditory and visual pathways have been blocked regardless.

All of the brain activity in the world doesn't rationally explain that.
 
With all due respect it has been Science that has told us about the declarations of impossibility of brain activity beyond flat EEG... so NDE researches are really just basing their studies on what Science knows so far.

That just made me wonder what the general opinion would be if you used the opposite argument; e.g. claim that people remain perfectly aware of their environment with only the sub-EEG responses. Remove it from the NDE phenomena and use the counter-argument as a normal argument, and see if it would be considered an "obvious truth." Perhaps Socrates-esque, but I'm curious. I don't know if it would work as a question now because you would need to make special effort the people you asked didn't drop in to NDE defense/attack mode.
 
That just made me wonder what the general opinion would be if you used the opposite argument; e.g. claim that people remain perfectly aware of their environment with only the sub-EEG responses. Remove it from the NDE phenomena and use the counter-argument as a normal argument, and see if it would be considered an "obvious truth." Perhaps Socrates-esque, but I'm curious. I don't know if it would work as a question now because you would need to make special effort the people you asked didn't drop in to NDE defense/attack mode.

Absolutely. Was just watching some Dean Radin talks where he states something similar. He states that he personally hates theories himself because the problem with having a theory is that if the theory goes against a Scientists current belief they tend to start trying to "rationalize" it rather than just practising science looking at the data and observing the effect to see if there is something going on.

It's the same with EEG and NDE's. If the "theory" was removed... which is "Consciousness/soul can live independent of the physical body" and you just look at it with a sensible rational mind you would see that examples like someone being able to see and observe whilst their eyes are taped shut and head covered and being able to still hear with clickers inside their ears... well that is a phenomena that requires explaining because current materialistic science cannot explain it. Instead we have people rationalize it instead.
 
[..] examples like someone being able to see and observe whilst their eyes are taped shut and head covered and being able to still hear with clickers inside their ears... well that is a phenomena that requires explaining because current materialistic science cannot explain it. Instead we have people rationalize it instead.

So what we're looking at is:
"Some people appear to be able to accurately report details about their situation in a surgery room under astronomically improbable odds. I conclude they must have ESP or a soul component, as they could not have gotten those details without some form of fraud."
"They cannot have a soul component because souls don't exist and their brains were only under a heavy stress load, not offline."

But when you use the retort as a claim:
"Some people appear to exhibit the ability to sense information when their brain is in a deep form of hibernation and their sensory organs are obstructed."
"There is no evidence for ESP."

I hate to be on a bandwagon, but I'm questioning whether the skeptical position in this case is actually falsifiable at any point. Being able to "play the field" and claim all outcomes as a win seems to be a good sign that your philosophy is invalid, and a number of Greek philosophers can attest to that... I count invoking cryptomnesia as playing the field, because there is no way to prove someone didn't possibly hear something maybe and come up with it later but forgot about it so they think its new, as any and all arguments against can just be swept further under the "well, you forgot!" line.
 
Is this another nail in the survival coffin? I hope not, but something tells me otherwise...

It is not, because the survivalist argument is not only about experiences during no brain activity, but also about consistent experiences during brain activity insufficient to cause these experiences and veridical and extrasensory experiences could not be caused by the brain / senses.
 
I hate to be on a bandwagon, but I'm questioning whether the skeptical position in this case is actually falsifiable at any point. Being able to "play the field" and claim all outcomes as a win seems to be a good sign that your philosophy is invalid, and a number of Greek philosophers can attest to that... I count invoking cryptomnesia as playing the field, because there is no way to prove someone didn't possibly hear something maybe and come up with it later but forgot about it so they think its new, as any and all arguments against can just be swept further under the "well, you forgot!" line.
The skeptical position is certainly falsifiable: Find positive evidence for an afterlife realm.

I agree that "you got the information by some mundane means" is rather uninteresting. However, "I can't think of the mundane means, so it's the afterlife" isn't any more interesting, and certainly more unlikely. Presumably neuroscientists will try to discover the mundane means. Meanwhile, someone better try to find the afterlife realm.

~~ Paul
 
Meanwhile, someone better try to find the afterlife realm.

That wouldn't prove anything either. We already have models of physics which demonstrate the very plausible existence of multi-dimensional environments, means of which items within physics could interfere with one another across multi-dimensional environments, and the idea that humans could in some way be connected with those is still wholly scoffed at.

Unless you mean NASA building a 200 billion dollar planar shift device and walking in to an afterlife to say hello, but even then that would not be evidence because one could simply say that the law of large numbers made a bizzaro world where people who seem to be dead have copies of themselves here for the purpose of trolling us.
 
That wouldn't prove anything either. We already have models of physics which demonstrate the very plausible existence of multi-dimensional environments, means of which items within physics could interfere with one another across multi-dimensional environments,
We do? Such as?

Unless you mean NASA building a 200 billion dollar planar shift device and walking in to an afterlife to say hello, but even then that would not be evidence because one could simply say that the law of large numbers made a bizzaro world where people who seem to be dead have copies of themselves here for the purpose of trolling us.
If we discovered a parallel afterlife world, you can be assured that I would not blow it off simply due to the law of large numbers.

You seem to be trying to make the idea of an afterlife world unfalsifiable.

~~ Paul
 
We do? Such as?

String theory posits multiple dimensions, which a variant of has been simulated by a Japanese firm. There is also the "Many Worlds" interpretation of QM, which hasn't been dismissed out of hand. So models do exist to fit multiple existential dimensions in to physics, which was my claim. I did not claim that they were the de facto models.

If we discovered a parallel afterlife world, you can be assured that I would not blow it off simply due to the law of large numbers. You seem to be trying to make the idea of an afterlife world unfalsifiable.

That is a sticking point though, isn't it? You could always claim the parallel world wasn't an afterlife world, such as an equally unfalsifiable argument that Dimension #12 was actually just a separate universe where probabilities calculated different so those people hadn't actually died yet.
 
String theory posits multiple dimensions, which a variant of has been simulated by a Japanese firm. There is also the "Many Worlds" interpretation of QM, which hasn't been dismissed out of hand. So models do exist to fit multiple existential dimensions in to physics, which was my claim. I did not claim that they were the de facto models.
Ah, that's what you meant by "multi-dimensional environments." I don't think that has anything to do with entirely different realms such as an afterlife world, but okay.

That is a sticking point though, isn't it? You could always claim the parallel world wasn't an afterlife world, such as an equally unfalsifiable argument that Dimension #12 was actually just a separate universe where probabilities calculated different so those people hadn't actually died yet.
I could make various assertions about the content of the new realm, but at least it would be evidence that there can be different realms. Right now there is no positive evidence for an afterlife world.

~~ Paul
 
This is false. Apparitions of deceased, mediumship, children who seem to remember previous lives are positive evidence for an afterlife, another thing is that there is evidence to convince you.
Those are indirect lines of evidence, since they do not reveal the other realm.

~~ Paul
 
How is something indirect evidence yet there is no positive evidence? Unless the anecdotes are negative evidence, but that is a strange interpretation.
Sorry, the term "positive evidence" is vague. I would like to see direct evidence of the afterlife realm, as I can see direct evidence of the Moon. What we have now is subject to interpretation and, in some cases, fakery. If such evidence is produced, then I can no longer complain that the evidence is only indirect.

~~ Paul
 
How is something indirect evidence yet there is no positive evidence? Unless the anecdotes are negative evidence, but that is a strange interpretation.

A failure to find positive evidence for known forces/effects is used as indirect evidence for an unknown force/effect. This works reasonably well when experiments are performed where it would be very unlikely that you would fail to find positive evidence (for the known forces/effects).

Linda
 
Exactly. I dont know if you were around for it, but Smithy actually emailed Pim Van Lommel and asked him for clarification about what he meant by flatline EEG. He stated that he meant that a flatline EEG did not mean that there was no actvitiy, or that there was no deep brain activity. He meant that the EEG measurements were insufficient to facilitate conscious awareness.

The problem with introducing the argument from ignorance in regards to this condition is that the argument from ignorance can be used for everything, about everything. If we don't know enough about a dying brain to know what it can or cannot do, it is also likewise logical to assume that we don't know enough about the brain to say it produces conciousness. If you're willing to state that 'correlation is enough to prove causation', then when we have instances like these where a dying brain seems more functionally aware than a nondying brain, then that correlation begins to collapse. If you're willing to state that there is a causitive link between brain states and mind states, then the model you impose should account for the extremely lucid experiences experienced in states of near death. The fact that this anomaly shattered our expectations of how a brain would operate gives evidence away from a standard model of how we view the relationship between the mind and the brain. It's okay to state that the brain still creates the mind albeit some function unknown to us; but how are those criticisms of transmition valid when this is the accepted attitude towards these questions.

The argument was never supposed to be there was NO correlation between brain states and mind states, such as low-level brain activity in the states of a coma. The argument has always been that these types of activities and measurements were insufficient to explain the depth and bredth of an experience of this type in reference to a disfunctioning brain. If you're willing to challenge the assumption that a dysfunctioning brain cannot function properly, then you also have to challenge the assumptions of the model that provided you the prediction that it couldn't.

Genuine questions: 1) What is "Conscious"? 2) What is "awareness"? 3) What is conscious awareness?

I have to ask because the term "conscious awareness" seems to be a trifle tautological. Does "Conscious Awareness" refer to awareness that can be associated with clearly defined correlates of brain activity, and clearly delineated as activity correlated with data input to one or more of the senses (Touch, taste, sight, hearing, smell, balance, etc). What is the correct term for awareness that increases as brain activity decreases?
 
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