http://www.sciencedaily....2013/08/130812153553.htm

The article is very short, so I strongly suggest reading it; but TLDR: researchers investigate the "near death experience" commonly reported by survivors of cardiac arrest and find that these experiences may be due to a high output of electrical signals in certain areas of the brain.

I found these excerpts here of particular interest:



Anyways, thought some of you might find this interesting.

Yes I thought this was very cool aswell, you beat me to posting it! Definitely very interesting the spike in brain activity. Wonder if Strassman has his eye on this study. Thanks for sharing!

Thank you for sharing, the findings are interesting - although not a surprise considering all the subjective reports in literature.

Just an observation:



What the researchers found, again, is correlation. That is, early stages of clinical death happen to be compatible with "highly synchronized brain activity" according to the research, but this is not conclusive regarding whether that brain activity causes the subjective near death experience, or is a consequence of it, or neither of the above.

agreed

Somebody, somewhere on Nexus, must have an interest in this?

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-23672150

It's possible that everything happens in the brain and only in the brain: death experiences, hallucinogenic ones, astral travel etc. But that would mean that we physically evolved a brain that "lies" to ourselves, so we can feel better about our death, so we can have closure. Which may very well be true. But it's also sad, if you think about it.

But it ain't right in their faces, and stop scolding presumably hard- and goodworking scientists trying to study these experiences with the tools and huge education they got at their disposal. You should encourage people using lots of their time on difficult matters instead!

Besides, nowhere in this article, except in the stupid headline, has anyone concluded that the brain produces consciousness, or that NDEs originate in the brain entirely. All that is said is what was found, and that these findings are interesting and may open doors to further research in order to (try to) explain these things. I think it is fantastic =)

You should change the title of this thread to reflect the actual data presented. Nowhere is evidence presented to conclude that near death experiences are electrical surges in a dying brain. All that is provided is evidence of electrical surges in a dying brain.

Beyond the fact that this was also only done on rodents and not humans, I don't see any mention of people who have been clinically pronounced dead for prolonged periods of time who have these experiences.

Multiple questions can be asked in the wake of such data, and people can come to any number of conclusions.

I think this is really interesting. Past research by NDE researcher and resuscitation specialist Dr Sam Parnia looking at cardiac arrest victims was highly suggestive that consciousness doesn't just go out like a light on death and that consciousness and brain activity may continue for some time after 'clinical death'. He also mentioned a small study looking at dying people in a hospice environment, and people as they died seemed to have a surge in calcium ions in their brain or some part of it. I believe these may play an important role in as bioelectric messengers on the molecular/cellular level (as they also do in plants) and it is also associated with neurotransmitter release. Really interesting stuff though, thanks for sharing.

Ah, my mistake--thanks for the correction. Getting ahead of myself

Regardless of whether the study is a correlation or not, given the nature of these experiments it is close to impossible with our current technology to design an experiment that demonstrates causation. We should definitely be careful when interpreting correlation studies but we must always also bear in mind that this is the best we can have at the moment

Interesting study nevertheless!!

Thumbs up if NPR brought you here. jk.

This is cool research. The woman in charge seemed very passionate about her work.

Lots of interesting thoughts. Personally, the first time I read the article I didn't find anything biased about it--though I can see where some of you are coming from.

I'd have to agree with Cailieg that the evidence doesn't necessarily mean that the experience is a product of the brain, but that the evidence might be an indication as to the vastness of information being processed prior to death. Glad to hear you're alright after such a nasty accident btw.

And Jamie, I changed the title to something a little more accurate--I'm hoping it reflects the findings of the study more clearly than before. Though I'm not sure the former title ever suggested that NDEs are the result of electrical surges, as you suggested; but simply that researchers measured electrical surges during apparent NDEs--to be honest I'm still unclear as to what's so misleading about that. Regardless, I changed the title for the sake of being as objective as possible. I do agree though; there's a lot of loose-ends in the study, but I didn't share this article for anyone to draw conclusions. I just thought it was interesting and relevant to our collective interest, and as such I assumed you all might find it interesting as well. I do think it warrants some speculation in order to make sense of and to assimilate into our respective worldviews, and therefore I hoped it might spark some interesting dialogue--which it seems to have done.

Interesting stuff, my 2c, for what its worth...

My job allows me to watch people die fairly regularly.... in a sort of bizarre way, it is one of the attractions to the profession (in the sense that it allows me a unique opportunity to confront death frequently before my own turn). Of course, we try as hard as we can to prevent death, but it is an inevitability and at least once every week or two, I spend 12 hours with a patients final hours.

I have learned a lot watching people go. The first thing that stuck me is that death is a process, not a singular event. Clinically, we define death as cessation of measurable brain and/or cardiac activity... but in reality it isn't quite so simple. People die in stages, reminding me that we are much more a collection of millions of independent cells than a singular organism. I've seen rigor mortis well before the onset of clinical death. Organs die one by one in a cascade until the process gains enough momentum to be irreversible.

I have learned not to find this process unpleasant or morbid. It is just one of biology's many facets, and although intellectually we all know it is coming, I think that most of us dont REALLY think that it will happen to us. The reality is that death is often sudden, unexpected and unpoetic. It just happens.

Sorry if this veered off topic... what i meant to contribute is that we had a patient die recently who had 24hr EEG monitoring. I watched the electrical activity of her brain while we withdrew care. The waveforms persisted after her brain suffered a complete anoxic injury, eventually flatlining. I honestly think that much as we don't really know what life is, we are equally ignorant of what death is. The YOU that (at least I think) we often associate as one autonomous entity is in reality so many billions of tiny pieces, each harmonizing with each other to produce the temporary and transient nature that is us. Its so fascinating.