Flat EEG and Neural activity

Hi Haruhi,

Although I don't disagree with the direction of your point, the point I was making in relation to the research was not that the hippocampus can itself account for higher cognitive functions but rather that the rhythmic pulses emanating from the hippocampus can lead to whole brain activity including in the neocortex even though the EEG is flat. But as I said its one thing to have stimulation of the neocortex via rhythmic activity of the hippocampus its another to suggest this can produce lucid ndes without any associated electrical activity.

I understand.

Assuming that there is some level of activity in a "flat-lined" brain, there is still the question of whether or not that activity is capable of producing an NDE. I think that question is quite legitimate, and unsettled at this time.

But the evidence indicates that brain activity can not cause some NDEs, not only for the lucidity, but also by the "Peak in Darien" cases and extrasensory and veridical experiences.
 
The only people I'm absolutely sure has no brain activity are those making claims that it MUST be one cause like anoxia or god/buddha/k'thulhu.
:) Yes, I think it's premature to draw hard conclusions from what we currently (don't) know.

Pat
 
Are you fully convinced that the experience is happening when the brain is at its most compromised?
No. To be honest, I'm not even convinced that is is an experience, in the same sense as waking experiences. I think it is possible and plausible that memories are recorded, such as sensory input, and then later spun into a narrative by the mind.

Pat
 
Are you fully convinced that the experience is happening when the brain is at its most compromised?

There are NDEs cases with temporary markers, ie, objective events narrated in the NDE to occur when the brain was compromised.
 
Occam's Razor was left by the side of the road a half mile back, beaten to a bloody pulp. Why anyone thinks that mere scraps of electrical activity in the brain can somehow account for experiences so vivid and intense that they completely transform people's lives is beyond me.

This is just another case of goal post shifting. First NDE's don't exist, then if they do exist, they didn't occur while the brain was fully compromised. Now that they do exist and they occur when the brain is compromised, it must be because of some residual brain activity. This completely flies in the face of every materialistic assumption about the brain=mind hypothesis, which MUST be that there is a DIRECT correlation between experience and brain activity. The skeptics here seem quite willing to ignore this obvious problem and pretend that it doesn't exist.
 
Assuming that there is some level of activity in a "flat-lined" brain, there is still the question of whether or not that activity is capable of producing an NDE. I think that question is quite legitimate, and unsettled at this time.

I agree - but its not going to be solved just by thinking about it. That's fine for hypothesis generation but these are things that need to be studied.

That was my point too regarding the Lancet paper: its not that the research to date hasn't raised some very legitimate questions. It has, imo, raised many legitimate questons - but its not so advanced in terms of reliable answers yet. That's not a knock on the research - these things take time. There seems to be an urge by many to jump from interesting/intruiging questions to assuming that they know the answer. Alex calls this being stuck on stupid but I don't see what the benefit is in acting as if questions that haven't even been studied are considered solved.
 
Can you give a quick thumbnail of the example? (I don't have the book.)

Pat

It's mainly the standard arguments. Lack of Oxygen doesn't make sense. Hallucinations don't make sense. Etc. He'd often say he could guarantee he could give a patient in cardiac arrest some LSD and they won't hallucinate. He would also delineate between brain cells being viable and being functional. I think if you watched any of his many youtube videos, or read some interviews, you would hear him discuss this.

So nothing terribly new, other than this time it's a leader in the field of resuscitation science talking about it.
 
Why anyone thinks that mere scraps of electrical activity in the brain can somehow account for experiences so vivid and intense that they completely transform people's lives is beyond me.

This is a good example of a good question, one deserving of study. And its also a good example of gun jumping.

The "realer-than-real" is a another good example of this. I don't have any problem with that description - I think I have a decent idea of what they mean when they say that. I can imagine various reasons for why that could happen both from a chemical/brain source and a non-physical source. Again - very good thing to study. Again: to presume the brain couldn't produce that during the NDE is premature. It is something that needs to be studied.
 
No. To be honest, I'm not even convinced that is is an experience, in the same sense as waking experiences. I think it is possible and plausible that memories are recorded, such as sensory input, and then later spun into a narrative by the mind.

Pat

This is something else Parnia and many others argue against. When gauging brain trauma on patients one thing doctors will assess is memory loss. Various types of brain trauma mean you're not able to form memories. That's another mystery on many of these NDEs - from what we know, these patients should not have remembered anything, given the nature of the injuries.
 
It's mainly the standard arguments. Lack of Oxygen doesn't make sense. Hallucinations don't make sense. Etc. He'd often say he could guarantee he could give a patient in cardiac arrest some LSD and they won't hallucinate. He would also delineate between brain cells being viable and being functional. I think if you watched any of his many youtube videos, or read some interviews, you would hear him discuss this.

So nothing terribly new, other than this time it's a leader in the field of resuscitation science talking about it.

This is what I raised in the Lancet thread: it may very well be that lack of oxygen on its own is not the explanation. But the brain processes that become triggered when there is lack of oxygen may be involved, or simiilar brain processes. There may be several ways of triggering these brain processes, lack of oxygen being only one of them. The triggers and combinations of them during the NDE may be different from those induced where there is lack of oxygen. Again, these are areas requiring further study, imo.
 
This is what I raised in the Lancet thread: it may very well be that lack of oxygen on its own is not the explanation. But the brain processes that become triggered when there is lack of oxygen may be involved, or simiilar brain processes. There may be several ways of triggering these brain processes, lack of oxygen being only one of them. The triggers and combinations of them during the NDE may be different from those induced where there is lack of oxygen. Again, these are areas requiring further study, imo.

What processes?
 
This is something else Parnia and many others argue against. When gauging brain trauma on patients one thing doctors will assess is memory loss. Various types of brain trauma mean you're not able to form memories. That's another mystery on many of these NDEs - from what we know, these patients should not have remembered anything, given the nature of the injuries.

Another good example of areas to study!

Do you guys see my point? This is heavy duty neuroscience guys - its not easy stuff!
 
Whatever brain processes may be going on. This is what needs to be studied.

Just keep in mind, that if you're looking for brain processes deep within the brain, or operating on a glimmer of residual electrical activity, it goes against everything "heavy duty neuroscience" knows about the brain, that it should not generate hyper-real lucid experiences under those conditions. In addition, in most cases, it doesn't make sense in explaining the full NDE phenomenon. Talking about "various processes" without identifying the processes, or even having an inkling of how they can do this, is "hand waving" at this point. I can say the mechanism that kicked off the Big Bang involved various processes, but in reality I said absolutely nothing.

The point of study is trivial. We all get it, but for some reason you seem to think we don't, so you keep making the point. Who here do you think is against further study? Everybody wants to see more study. Some just don't want to see certain areas of study ignored, which the mainstream tends to do.
 
Whatever brain processes may be going on. This is what needs to be studied.
Study them all you want, just don't veer off into make believe land and pretend that they can account for NDE's. This is a board to discuss science, not tooth fairy grade speculation.
 
But the evidence indicates that brain activity can not cause some NDEs, not only for the lucidity, but also by the "Peak in Darien" cases and extrasensory and veridical experiences.
I think each of those lines of evidence has potential problems. I also think that each one would make for interesting discussion in its own right.

Starting with lucidity, the problem, as I see it, is that we have no way to gauge how lucid the experience actually was. All we have are the memories of the experience, as told by the experiencer, after the fact. In the case of someone under the influence of drugs, by contrast, we can question them and observe their behavior, and get some kind of objective reading of their lucidity. If they later say "All the knowledge of the universe was clearly laid out before me", but at the time they were babbling nonsense, we're probably not going to buy into their claim of lucidity.

With the NDEer, however, we have no such access at the time of the event.They are by definition unconscious, so we have no way to question them or observe their behavior as the NDE is unfolding. As lucid or hyper-real as it may seem to them, we have no way of verifying that lucidity, so its evidential value is questionable.

And something else - Even the standard of lucidity itself is hugely skewed in this context. If a mental health worker were evaluating a patient's lucidity and the patient said "I was just pulled through a dark tunnel and then I had a conversation with my dead uncle", would the patient be deemed lucid? I realize that we sort of "grade on the curve" when dealing with NDE accounts, but if their lucidity is to be seriously condidered as evidence, I think this issue needs to be dealt with.

Pat
 
I think each of those lines of evidence has potential problems. I also think that each one would make for interesting discussion in its own right.

Starting with lucidity, the problem, as I see it, is that we have no way to gauge how lucid the experience actually was. All we have are the memories of the experience, as told by the experiencer, after the fact. In the case of someone under the influence of drugs, by contrast, we can question them and observe their behavior, and get some kind of objective reading of their lucidity. If they later say "All the knowledge of the universe was clearly laid out before me", but at the time they were babbling nonsense, we're probably not going to buy into their claim of lucidity.

With the NDEer, however, we have no such access at the time of the event.They are by definition unconscious, so we have no way to question them or observe their behavior as the NDE is unfolding. As lucid or hyper-real as it may seem to them, we have no way of verifying that lucidity, so its evidential value is questionable.

And something else - Even the standard of lucidity itself is hugely skewed in this context. If a mental health worker were evaluating a patient's lucidity and the patient said "I was just pulled through a dark tunnel and then I had a conversation with my dead uncle", would the patient be deemed lucid? I realize that we sort of "grade on the curve" when dealing with NDE accounts, but if their lucidity is to be seriously condidered as evidence, I think this issue needs to be dealt with.

Pat
This is a deeply flawed argument. All you can do is question someone about their experience. There is no other insight into someone else's experience other than to ask them. Just because you can observe someone doesn't mean that you can tell what's going on in their mind as there is no way other than telepathy to directly access another person's thoughts. Even then, unless you're telepathic yourself, you're just getting a report from another person.

You're really just applying your beliefs to this situation. If it sounds outlandish or incredible to you, then it must be suspect. But this only has to do with your own personality and experience. That's what determines what you believe. It's not even remotely objective to treat science this way.

More than likely the health worker in your example will just shrug. They have no reason to doubt this person because for them, such stories are commonplace. More for nurses than doctors. Anyone who has to deal with an endless parade of ghosts is not likely to worry too much about the whole mind=brain thing.
 
I realize that we sort of "grade on the curve" when dealing with NDE accounts, but if their lucidity is to be seriously condidered as evidence, I think this issue needs to be dealt with.
Pat

I think it more, or less, has. If you got any psychotherapist to listen to an NDE'er talk about their experience, they would probably deem the patient and their memories as lucid. Besides, it's one thing thinking you are lucid during the experience under duress, but is another thing then thinking you were lucid after the fact when you can clearly evaluate your own behavior and thought processes. Typically, if you weren't really lucid, you become aware of this after the fact. Ever been drunk and think you could sing, only to wake up realizing you made an ass out of yourself the night before. ;-)

There was also the recent study that showed that NDE memories feel more "real than real"

Working together, researchers at the Coma Science Group (Directed by Steven Laureys) and the University of Liège's Cognitive Psychology Research (Professor Serge Brédart and Hedwige Dehon), have looked into the memories of NDE with the hypothesis that if the memories of NDE were pure products of the imagination, their phenomenological characteristics (e.g., sensorial, self referential, emotional, etc. details) should be closer to those of imagined memories. Conversely, if the NDE are experienced in a way similar to that of reality, their characteristics would be closer to the memories of real events.

The researchers compared the responses provided by three groups of patients, each of which had survived (in a different manner) a coma, and a group of healthy volunteers. They studied the memories of NDE and the memories of real events and imagined events with the help of a questionnaire which evaluated the phenomenological characteristics of the memories. The results were surprising. From the perspective being studied, not only were the NDEs not similar to the memories of imagined events, but the phenomenological characteristics inherent to the memories of real events (e.g. memories of sensorial details) are even more numerous in the memories of NDE than in the memories of real events.

http://medicalxpress.com/news/2013-03-memories-death-real-reality.html

http://www.dailygrail.com/Spirit-World/2013/4/The-Reality-the-Near-Death-Experience

So, not only should the patients not have had these memories in the first place in most cases (again due to trauma to the brain), there seems to be something awfully special about them too.
 
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