DasMurmeltier
New
New study linking brain activity to NDE's
- Thread starter Bill33
- Start date
I didn't go far enough. It's more like " Why are there so many imbeciles getting published in science"?
Whatever someone does, there'll usually be corresponding activity in their brain. If there isn't they (or more accurately their physical self) won't know they're doing it. Now with physical activities one can also view the activity so correlations can be made. But given that experiences in an NDE take place in other realities, there is no way in standard science -AWKI to make any solid correlation.
With all due respect, your comments are not relevant to this particular paper.
I didn't go far enough. It's more like " Why are there so many imbeciles getting published in science"?
Whatever someone does, there'll usually be corresponding activity in their brain. If there isn't they (or more accurately their physical self) won't know they're doing it. Now with physical activities one can also view the activity so correlations can be made. But given that experiences in an NDE take place in other realities, there is no way in standard science -AWKI to make any solid correlation.
I think we should try for an informed discussion of this research (i.e. read the research paper). It looks like Borjigin is finding this line of investigation fruitful.
Linda
DasMurmeltier
New
Well i dont have a account there, but the abstract tells a few things aswell. Let me try to interpret this as a layman. The "brainstorm" as they call it when the heart dies seems to be a thing. I get out of that study that the brain "starts to panic" at some point and will start to do all kinds of shit in its attempt to live on. While doing so it kills off the heart. Well, thats the other way around as we thought before huh. That means that the brain is certainly active at that time period. Needs further studies though to confirm or deny that this brain activity is NDE-related. But since the whole study wasnt about NDE's i feel its kind of pointless to interpret anything like that into it without further research. Otherwise the conclusions would be based on too many assumptions.
This is not the paper I was referring to.
But this is the full paper, written by Rivas et al:
http://nieuw.merkawah.nl/sites/default/files/pdf/jndsdentureman.pdf
And there are more in the same section.
Cheers - Smithy
Well, that was part of the point of this research - "further study to confirm or deny that this brain activity is NDE-related". That's why the authors looked specifically at EEG patterns and neurotransmitter release which would be specifically relevant to NDEs. I gave a summary of these findings in my post.
Well, at the very least it strikes a fatal blow to the idea that there isn't sufficient brain activity during a medical crisis to support the NDE.
Linda
Thanks, but realistically, since the previous study was widely discussed and this study strikes an even stronger blow against the claim that brain activity is absent or insufficient during cardiac arrest (a claim which Van Lommel hangs his hat upon), I suspect that many people will already be bringing this to his attention.
Well, the authors discuss their connection to full-blown NDEs in the paper. And you have to remember that non-proponent scientists will likely look at whether these explain the types of NDEs documented in the good-quality prospective studies.
Linda
Jim_Smith
New
What do you mean by section? Do you mean http://nieuw.merkawah.nl/sites/default/files/pdf When I try to go there with a web browser I get an error:
I found those other papers searching the directory by googling:
dentures site:nieuw.merkawah.nl/sites/default/files/pdf/
Okay - you have done well. Indeed, there they are.
Bertha Huse
New
Actually - it turns out I was looking at some Skeptic BS claims made a few years ago. The current study which the Skeptics are getting a hard-on with at the moment is the rat EEG study. It's already been shown to be pretty weak on a number of fronts. But this of course won't stop them from saying Allelujah Atheist Jesus - we Skeptics now have proof we were right all along! heh
My Best,
Bertha
DasMurmeltier
New
Ah, does it? How much brain activity is needed to create a NDE then? Is there a certain threshold for that? Im a bit cynical here on purpose. I just dont see those NDE-related conclusions from that study. Sorry. I may be just dumb, cant help that. Even though you wrote that...
... i still dont get it. The study was aimed at NDE's? I read your summary of the paper to the study. How are they making the connection between NDE's and their study there? Because there are NDE's under cardiac arrest sometimes and they found out that there is still brain activity going on those 2 must be related? I can understand that they are making that assumption there, sure, thats actually something i would have done aswell. But i personally would need proof that the described coherence really triggers NDE's before i could believe in that. A mere suggestion or a indicator is a beginning, surely, but like i wrote, theres more research needed. And if they were to be right with that, nice, great stuff.
I actually agree with BotchCat btw, if there is any spritual element to NDE's or to us as beings it propably would be symbiotic anyways. Otherwise we humans couldnt exist like we do know. Biological components are surely at play here.
Max_B
Member
I've downloaded the paper, but I think I need to be fresh to read it properly, so perhaps I'll get time over the weekend.
There is paywall preventing me from reading the paper.
Quite recently we published in our quarterly (of IANDS the Netherlands) an ECG as well as an EEG of a man whose heart suddenly stopped during a medical investigation, due to recurring moments of sudden unconsciousness. It is seen that after the heart stopped the ECG shows a flatline after just a few seconds, whereas soon after the resuscitation the ECG returns to normal. The two graphs show almost simultaneous images.
For me a full blown NDE is one with strong veridical en verifiable components.
From what I have seen so far from this kind of studies, It seems likely to me that in this paper such NDEs are not discussed. Why, because it seems extremely hard to explain such experiences with "storms in the brain".
Arouet
Member
I made a post about this paper in another thread that is probably more on topic for this thread so I will repost it here:
It is quite an interesting study, exploratory and small, but will hopefully will lead to more study.
“Reality” of near-death-experience memories: evidence from a psychodynamic and electrophysiological integrated study
They took various pscyhological and phisiological readings of people recalling NDEs vs. control group who had not experienced ndes. There is a hypnosis element to the study which IIRC did not make a significant difference to the overall findings.
The psychological results were pretty much as expected, the recall of NDE memories and real memories had the similar amount of detail and both were more complex than imagined memories. Hypnosis improved recall complexity and detail in all categories, though more of an effect for NDE and real compared to imagined.
I believe for most of the readings the results were similar between NDE and real memories and different from imagined memories amongst the main and control group. However, given reports of the uniqueness of the NDE experience, they wanted to find a difference.
They noted that despite there being unequivocal distinctions, NDEs probably share common processes with hypnosis, and that experiences similar to NDE can be generated during hypnosis (they site another study Facco 2012 for this - haven't looked at it). They note Holden's 1993 account of a man who replicated his NDE during hypnosis, including phycial changes.) Overall they found "a peculiar pattern of neural activity associated with the recall of NDE memories linked to slow-wave activity, including both delta and theta oscillations" They note that theta power is well-known to be linked to memory processing, particularly in relation to episodic memories, and that delta is associated with internal mentation including the recollection of the past.
The next part is the really interesting bit:
The authors conclude that their findings are "in line with the hypothesis that the core components of a NDE have a neural counterpart." Note the authors are proponents and are not ready to give up non-brain causes. They write that the data linking to neural counterparts "are not necessarily in contrast with a more spiritualistic theory...uncovering the neural counterpart of NDE does not exclude per se survivalist hypothesis." It is interesting that the authors spend some time looking at the previous rat study and the opposition to it. It will be interesting to see how the sequel study that just came out will impact on the discussion in this paper.
Note that the aspects related to hallucination readings were not the main focus of the prime study, and came out of the exploratory aspect of the study. The comparisons they made were to study participants in other unrelated studies. More research will be required to explore this aspect.
Overall very interesting study, especially in conjunction with the recent one that has come out. The authors should be commended for their approach - probing beyond surface comparisons and going out of their way to explore the nuances of NDE research.
Since Pim van Lommel, Alex, etc. have been making the claim for years that brain activity necessarily is below the threshold, why are you asking this question now? Shouldn't you have brought this up with Alex if you thought it was relevant?
Yes, the study was aimed at the claim of "arrested brain function" and "the absolute absence of cortical function during cardiac arrest" made by Pim van Lommel, Parnia, Greyson and Fenwick.
I don't think that there's an assumption that they must be related, only that the activity which would support the various elements of the NDE is present (rather than absent).
Yeah, this seems to be a path of investigation Borjigin is taking. It will be very interesting to see where it leads.
Linda
Bertha Huse
New
Bleh. What's funny is Arouet here seems to think this rat EEG business somehow is in serious contention for refuting the independent consciouness hypothesis of NDEs. Hypnosis shows that NDEs are likely hallucinatory? What intellectual garbage. LOL
My Best,
Bertha
My Best,
Bertha
Yeah, Borjigin found that the "decrease in raw EEG (scalp or intracortical) signal amplitude is a poor indicator of cortical function", so that's not particularly helpful.
I'm not sure why this would be hard to explain. The "storms in the brain" makes it sound like this is chaotic but that's misleading. They specifically looked at indicators of conscious processing and found that they were increased during this period, supporting the idea that they were capable of high levels of information processing. They focused on elements of deep NDEs, not only superficial NDEs, when they looked for the kinds of brain activity which could support these elements.
Linda