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Neurologists Shine Light On Near-Death Experiences
Hugh Pickens DOT Com writes "Mainstream science has long considered the brain to be inactive during the period known to doctors as clinical death. However, survivors regularly report having powerful experiences when they come close to dying, often saying they had an overwhelming feeling of peace and serenity. Frequently they describe being in a dark tunnel with a bright light at the end, and many report meeting long-lost loved ones. 'Many of them think it's evidence they actually went to heaven — perhaps even spoke with God,' says Jimo Borjigin. Now scientists at the University of Michigan have found that the brain keeps on working for up to 30 seconds after blood flow stops, possibly providing a scientific explanation for the vivid near-death experiences that some people report after surviving a heart attack. In the study, lab rats were anesthetized, then subjected to induced cardiac arrest as part of the experiment while researchers analyzed changes in power density, coherence, directed connectivity, and cross-frequency coupling. In the first 30 seconds after their hearts were stopped, they all showed a surge of brain activity, observed in electroencephalograms (EEGs) that indicated highly aroused mental states. 'We were surprised by the high levels of activity,' says George Mashour. 'In fact, at near-death, many known electrical signatures of consciousness exceeded levels found in the waking state, suggesting that the brain is capable of well-organized electrical activity during the early stage of clinical death.' Borjigan thinks the phenomenon is really just the brain going on hyperalert to survive while at the same time trying to make sense of all those neurons firing and it's like a more intense version of dreaming. 'The near-death experience is perhaps really the byproduct of the brain's attempt to save itself,' says Borjigan"
While interesting, it's important to remind ourselves that this research is not conclusive: "Borjigin and Mashour hesitate to state a direct connection between their findings and near-death experiences. The links are merely speculative at this point and provide a framework for a human study, Borjigin said."
... of rats.
The light at the end of the tunnel is just as likely to be an oncoming train headed for the trauma center as it is to be a private conference with god or dead loved ones.
Bazinga.
Instead of "come towards the light!", it's "come towards the cheese!"
#DeleteChrome
While this can possibly explain the tunnel and the white light, how can this explain people seeing things even when their eyes were closed?
I can think of some politicians who would make ideal candidates for human testing. Though they may already be brain dead, so... maybe not.
This is rather unpleasant but what does this research mean for people that have been decapitated (quick and clean) - will they also be aware for another 30 seconds? Old reports of victims turning their eyes and looking at people were always brushed off as nonsense "because the brain dies right away" but this research, though not directly to do with decapitation, seems to refute that... even if consciousness lasts for another 10 seconds instead of 30.
When the copyright term is "forever minus a day", live every day like it's the last.
After being resurrected the lab rats reported all kinds of experiences about their near rat death experience, how they went to cheese heaven and flew above large blocks of mozzarella with a fresh hit of rot in the air, how they saw the rat goddess herself in the distance, how she was surrounded by a white tunnel that was pulling them onward to the wonderful tunnel of forever and ever and even more cheese (much like this comment). A few rats however spoke of a dark and foreboding place devoid of cheese where the fondue fires had melted it all and ultra fat rats sat all day mainlining the cheese directly into their rat guts. For some reason though the scientists didn't understand these near death experiences of the Rats and where more interested in their instruments of Rat torture. One day the "truth" will come out about rat near death experiences and the torture that prevents all rats from knowing about the cheesy Rat Heaven and Rat Indulgent Hell Yeah bring it on! To Rat Truthers everywhere!
Is this a good enough reason to induce cardiac arrest in mice?
That light at the end of the tunnel? The train comes.
The creatures outside looked from Alt-Right to Antifa; but already it was impossible to say which was which.
Connie Willis wrote an interesting piece of fiction on the phenomena in her book "Passage". Even though her (spoiler: non-religious) assumption on their purpose is speculation it is very satisfying and plausible.
So at a time when you're not conscious, and random activity is spiking in your brain, you might experience something as the various bits turn on.
Now, as with so many things in science, it's not "real" until you've measured it and seems like something obvious after someone has.
And, of course, that won't stop people from believing that it really was a supernatural experience, instead of random electrical impulses which your brain is trying to assign meaning to.
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
Yes. And that may also explain the bump in church attendance by rats.
are just what's needed to transfer your consciousness to the resurrection hub.
And it's not even incompatible with religious views, as they could be explained by people inclined to view it as such as being perhaps a final opportunity to transmit data back to the spirit realm. Of course, they wouldn't want to address the implications that would have on people whose heads/brains were destroyed in the process of ending the life...
In SOVIET RUSSIA... erm...NSA AMERICA, the Internet logs onto YOU!
The higher level of brain activity could be an upload in progress.
like the cylons in the BSG remake
the electrical activity is the soul uploading out of the body
SQUEAK.
Eat shit and die.
No, that's for the fruit flies.
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
So they're going to go around asking if they can induce heart attacks in people to see what happens to their brain while they're clinically dead? That anyone thinks this is even remotely not a bad thing is chilling to the core...
So the model here seems to be, people coming out of near-death experiences have these memories, and while they're likely not "real", they're a record of some sequence of cognitive states, and the puzzle is, how can we detect these cognitive states? There seems to be an underlying assumption that the memories are a faithful chronological record of something, and the investigation is, what is the something -- what is the brain recording while it's apparently inert.
This may well be right, they seem to have good evidence of apparently-inert brains being not-so-inert, so at this point I suppose I'm quibbling.
But the part I have never understood about discussions of near-death experiences (IANAneurologist) is, why do so many of these stories assume that the memories people wake up with were created during the apparently-inert time? It's true that the memories are subjectively of long duration, people report that they remember spending a lot of time flying towards the light or conversing with the angels, but surely they can be sincere without being right.
We know a fair amount now about how memories can be manipulated, and how recollections depend on the environment -- memories are very slippery things. So, isn't it possible that, during the apparently-inert period of a near-death experience, the brain actually is inert, and not forming memories, and that at the time of recovery, during which there is plenty of obvious brain activity, the memories are all formed in a brief period, but with the subjective sense of having taken place over a longer period? This means the memories are basically wrong, but this seems to me to be a much lower bar to clear than requiring chronologically faithful memory construction in quiescent gray matter.
Any neurologists in the crowd care to comment?
2*3*3*3*3*11*251
Scientists are determined to show that there is nothing more than this f-d up reality.
(spot the vegan)
I had a heart attack on Mar. 1, 2010. I stayed conscious, although in heavy pain. Got stents put in, was sent home on Mar. 4... and had congestive heart failure about 6 hours after I was out of the hospital. This time, my heart just plain stopped. I was dead. EMS dudes shocked me back to life and got me to the hospital where I was treated. I obviously survived.
But I was dead for between 3 and 4 minutes before the EMS crew got to me. No breathing, no heartbeat.
White lights and tunnels? No. Everything faded to black. That was it. Nothing to see, nothing to hear. No gods or angels. Just... nothing.
I enjoy this kind of research. It's always interesting to further our understanding of the complexity of life, and all the weird, nigh inexplicable stuff it entails.
However, it seems a lot of readers are jumping to conclusions not even the researchers have come to; We still have, essentially, no understanding of what consciousness is, where it come from, or where it goes during these sorts of episodes. Hopefully we'll figure it out one day, and have an even greater understanding of our universe.
I usually try to stay out of these metaphysical-themed debates; having personally experienced a fair amount of strange shit that current scientific knowledge cannot explain, my thoughts in this arena tend to be less than popular... something I've always found ironic, and a bit sad. I mean, if we're supposed to be a community who believes in science, why would anyone dismiss a hypothesis or concept out-of-hand, without proper experimentation and research?
Oh, well, I went and said it anyway. Let fly with the down-mods, Philistines and Hypocrites, as I've broached topics you refuse to even consider, let alone debate intellectually.
An enigma, wrapped in a riddle, shrouded in bacon and cheese
What we'd love to see is some commentary on this from Eben Alexander, the neurosurgeon of recent NDE fame.
Development is programmable; Discovery is not programmable. (Fuller)
We can't even comprehend half of the science that makes our universe work the way it does, who the hell do we think we are to "conclude" anything? DMT is one way to feel the near death experience without being killed. I suggest you try it before you read too deeply into what ignorant scientists are telling us.
Discover magazine had something similar, where they studied nematodes and found that some sort of signal propagated through the gut that would tell all of the cells to shut the whole thing down.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2612587/
More interestingly, they were looking at ways to block or delay that signal. So then even if part of a multi-cellular organism died, the rest of it wouldn't know about it and keep going in a zombielike state.
But yeah, the cellular shutdown mechanism had something to do with the mitochondria, and it did release visible light in the brain cells as it was propagating through that area of the nematodes they were studying. So the bright light at the end of the tunnel is probably just the mitochondria of nearby cells in your optical cortex exploding.
It's the paramedic shining a penlight in your eyes to check your pupils.
> In the first 30 seconds after their hearts were stopped, they all showed a surge of brain activity, observed in electroencephalograms (EEGs) that indicated highly aroused mental states
Holy Shit! I think my heart just stopped!
No compassion for the innocent animals being tortured. Do you think they understand what is happening to them? Do you care?
Yeah, yeah. Meat is murder. Delicious hickory smoked murder.
"Borjigan thinks the phenomenon is really just the brain going on hyperalert to survive while at the same time trying to make sense of all those neurons firing and it's like a more intense version of dreaming." Talk about over-interpreting data... This "surge in activity" which they see could be pretty much anything. We have no idea what it means, only speculation.
soylentnews.org
As one who disagrees with capital punishment in ANY form, this research is interesting. Part of the premise of lethal injection it that it is humane.
So now, aside from the amazing hypocrisy that killing for killing implies, we have evidence that the brain is not just active under very similar circumstances (put to sleep, then heart stopped, only thing missing is stopping breathing)
It seems no surprise to me that when the brain senses a sever lack of oxygen or blood flow that it in a sense panics. A lizards tail keeps moving after detachment. These are nerve impulses and prove that nerves can fire for a long time without oxygen. While not as complex perhaps as the nerve structures in a mammalian brain.
While some people may overcome their fear of death (buddhist monks, and some others), many, regardless of what they say do not. This is evidenced by the massive amounts of resources spent on end of life care.
So now, we have a system that is steeped in societal and political hypocrisy, causes severe fear for long drawn out periods of time as appeals wear on and on, and now seems to not be as 'humane' as it was made out to be.
I know someone will counter with the usual arguments, these people are sick, murders, it costs more to house them for the rest of their life, the crime rate will skyrocket with no deterrent. Let me refute those:
These people may be sickos, murderers, but they are people. Condoning killing them makes you just as complicit in murder as they are, even if you delegate the pulling of the switch elsewhere. As Neddard Stark would say, if you are willing to sentence a man to death, you should be willing to swing the blade. In addition, there are people who have been executed that were not the guilty party. Mistakes and malfeasance -happen-, and preventing one wrongful death outweighs just about any other justification
The ongoing costs of nearly endless appeals almost always outstrip the cost of incarceration.
Countries with no capital punishment have no higher crime or murder rates than those that do.
The logical process that leads one to believe capital punishment is just, no matter how well couched in legal or logical terms is just a guise for ow own vengeful and violent nature. It proves that those who think so could and would kill with the right justification. A murder thinks he has justification too, even if it is incorrect.
I have digressed quite a bit from the primary topic, but I hope this research will shine some light into the stupidity and inhumaneness in capital punishment. In fact, while you cannot kill people to test that this is true in humans, you can use those that are being executed as such. All it takes is a portable EEG unit at the execution. I bet many would volunteer, but the states would block it in some fashion.
Silence is a state of mime.
This heightened activity is clearly just an orderly shutdown involving the purging of caches and closing log files. This way on the reincarnation there's no sluggish fsck to deal with.
The natural science lacks explanation for consciousness (hard problem of consciousness). Nothing in the laws of natural science as presently known indicates what is it like to be such and such arrangement of elementary particles and fields. The mere correlation between reports or introspection of conscious states and electro-chemical activity of the brain does not imply that conscious state is produced or maintained by the this electro-chemical activity. After all, there are no little people dancing and singing inside TV even though their activity is strongly correlated with electrical activity in the TV and can be interfered with by cutting off the electric power to the TV.
You mean that the brain's capabilities were put into overload, allowing it to do things it might not normally be able to do in a normal state?
Sounds to me like this could do more to further belief in the supernatural than anything else.
Love sees no species.
I was honored to be able to hold my father's hand when he passed away from stage IV lung cancer a few years back. One can never really say they are ready for a loved one to pass, but I was resigned to the fact, and therefore there weren't many emotions going through my head while telling my dad it was ok to let go. (I had read in a couple of places that scientists believe hearing might be one of the last senses to shut down immediately prior to death, so I figured I could do no harm telling him everything would be ok.)
One thing I did notice, and will probably never forget: In the moments up to his final breaths, while his BP was dropping, his eyes never stopped moving, It could have been involuntary movements, but they would stop for an instant as if to focus on something, then move again. He never acknowledged me while I was with him the last few hours, but his eyes: They would flick around the room as if he was looking for something, or maybe seeing something only he could see. The doctor said it was likely his vision had already shut down at that point, which made it all the more impactful on me. Even as his BP dwindled away to 0/0, after his breathing had stopped (no death rattle, just shallower and shallower, with increasing apnea gaps, until it simply stopped), his eyes made a few last furtive movements, then were still.
Who knows what my dad was seeing in his final moments? Obviously he didn't live to tell me about it. But the scientific part of my brain tells me something was going on his brain right up to the moment that he no longer had blood flowing through his brain.
NDEs are something that only a small percentage of the population experience. Most people just black out. Same deal with blood loss in the brain due to a centrifuge or the like. The government has studied it on military pilots and while most black out, some have NDE like experiences. At this point, we don't know why only some people experience it.
It could also be that these lab rats are excited to be meeting Rat Jesus!
Yeah, how misleading that they only mentioned that HALFWAY THROUGH THE SUMMARY!
Sarcasm aside, what's your point? Do you imagine that the human brain behaves much differently during death than rat brains? We like to think of ourselves as being very different from "lower vertebrates," but our neurons themselves are pretty similar from what we can tell. Take oxygen away from a human neuron and a mouse neuron, and I'll bet they both do about the same things. It's not like we faced a lot of evolutionary pressure to have different thoughts during death than rats.
> ...of rats
No, no! They were speaking euphamistically. They were testing on politicians.
(-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.
My son, we all choose who are parents are, don't you remember? It is theorized de-evolution/sin puts one in animals consciousness.
Just because a brain is hyperactive in states of near death does not mean that what they experience is made-up or fabricated...? What about when those having near death experiences that are able to list times from a hidden not visible to them, recall conversations during that time, even though they were "dead?" What about those experiencing OOB (Out-Of-Body) type experiences that can match up events or locations of objects that they couldn't possibly have seen or known of, like a shoe on the roof of the hospital?
Hyperactivity also means that we could be activating parts of our brain we don't use or aren't used to actively using...
Still doesn't explain the near-death experience and whether what they see is fiction/non-fiction. :)
the most likely explanation is that someone near death experiences a time dilation that makes the moments before the brain stops working stretch out. when the person comes back from the dead they think they've experienced as much time as a person alive throughout
No, that's for the houseflies. Fruit flies eat fruit.
So God is a giant rat.
More interestingly, they were looking at ways to block or delay that signal. So then even if part of a multi-cellular organism died, the rest of it wouldn't know about it and keep going in a zombielike state.
What could possibly go wrong?
Tell me - when and how did YOU choose to be born human, and not an animal?
Tell me - when did that ever matter?
For large sets, this will be our guide even unto death, for the LORD will work for each type of data it is applied to...
They should have just gone to Discworld and talked to this guy:
http://wiki.lspace.org/mediawiki/index.php/Death_of_Rats
Koans and fables for the software engineer
The lab rats had death experiences, not near-death experiences. Of course, those deaths probably came as a relief to them, or whatever the rat equivalent of "came as a relief" is. Tell me you wouldn't be relieved to die if some gigantic monster cut your head open, stuck in some electrodes, let you recover, and then induced a heart attack to see what would happen. Any claim that this type of research will save human lives, and so the suffering and deaths of animals is somehow ok, is intellectually dishonest.
New fuel for the debate about whether you're still conscious after your head is cut off.
No sig today...
If we could somehow harness that potential of brain power to solve some very difficult problems with some sort of cross-shaped device attaching the bodies of the dying to honor the ever-lasting and glorious Catholic Church of 28th century..
Hearing goes after vision, probably because it takes less energy. The effect is well-known in anesthesia.
I don't have much to say in regards to conjecture about what he saw (or did not see) but I am sorry for your loss, and it is good that you were there to be with him for it and I thank you for not (based on what you said anyway) being selfish and refusing to let go. If only more people could do that.
I watched my grandfather refuse to let my grandmother go. Her passing took a full week, and it was painful. If he had let her go, it would have been quick and quiet.
For large sets, this will be our guide even unto death, for the LORD will work for each type of data it is applied to...
No, that's for the houseflies. Fruit flies eat fruit.
Time flies like and arrow,
fruit flies like a banana.
I saw on an episode of 'House'.
Penn & Teller covered this in an episode of Bullsh!t. Test pilots who undergo high 'g' training report many of the same experiences of those who have had a near death experience. The g-forces force blood away from the brain, causing the same kind of starvation effect.
Dreams are one thing, delusions and hallucinations, and delirium are more appropriate. The clinical term should be delirium, the persons mind is not getting blood flow, and is not regulating itself the way it normally does. Everything the person is experiencing during this phase of neurological function should be described as chaos, and malfunction. When blood flow is cut off, resources are left over that probably take time to be drained. The starvation effect of the mind takes place, and I can imagine vivid drug induced like reactions occurring. If the person cannot physically think for themselves, they have uncontrollable responses and reactions to what's going on. That is what is responsible for what's going on in the mind of people and animals near death.
If we could borrow the NSAs Remote Neural Monitoring / Electronic Brain Link system, we could actually observe brain and bodily function in an individual as they were having these experiences. I am thinking the brain tends to lean towards what it knows, when it comes back to life, it tries to make sense of what it just experienced, and whatever is in the persons mind is used to describe it. there is a particular term for this psychotic reaction people have when things come back into place, people who come off of neuroleptics often have it when their neurons begin to function again. I just can't recall the name of that particular theory, but it sure sounds applicable to people and what they experience when they die and return to life and have reports of paranormal experiences. If they were a devout Christian, and didn't have a firm understanding of how the world worked, they might try to describe anything they experienced during death as being similar to what a Christian might expect. it is just the blue prints they use for their experience. they might even wonder if that's what is going to happen when they die, and this in turns gets worked up into any mind processes that are happening during death. effecting any delusions, dreams, and unregulated states of the mind.
This weapon system could certainly observe precisely why this is occurring: http://www.oregonstatehospital.net/d/russelltice-nsarnmebl.html
I always imagine how awesome this weapon is. It allows any mind to be tapped, monitored digitally, whether it's animals or humans, in any state of existence, subconciousness, consciousness or not. It doesn't have language barriers, and doesn't care how the individual interprets or sees the world. It is truly amazing.
I thought this was somewhat known in the past already? From what I recall brain death occurs rather quickly. (The Brain is one of the the fastest organs to fail in your body in the event of the lack of oxygen.) From what I recall, what happens is that as a single neuron dies from lack of oxygen it releases chemicals which cause other neurons to fire faster causing them to fail faster and so on. This causes a massive escalating cascade failure which is why loss of oxygen to the brain kills you so quickly. Of course what happens to your mind in this massive electrical storm is still unknown. Maybe you gain some sort of awareness and reach a level of consciousness that is the afterlife. Maybe it's all an illusion and you just end up on the best mental rush in your life. I guess most of us will find out someday...
It would be interesting to know from someone with the relevant expertise how this compares with the famous record of Jacques Beaurieux about the head of the guillotined Henri Languille.
SQUEAK, I TELL YOU!
A god by any useful definition would not allow animals to live and suffer in such grotesque ways.
This is one of the most sobering things I have ever read. Probably the most. May I never have to see it for myself.
The 2nd greatest trauma is on the living. For several months to a year after watching my father die, my memories of the events surrounding his death and the death of my mother 18 months before that were "scrambled". I'd sometimes forget that my mother was dead, or I'd have memories of my mother being alive and well with my father and then correct it. I knew it was irrational grieving stuff; but that didn't make it any less real. I didn't "see ghosts" or anything like that. It was more like my memory was edited strangely for a while. I tell people now not to make any big life-changing decisions for a year after a loved one dies. Unfortunately, the circumstances sometimes *require* you to make big decisions right away, which caused some issues in my life; but nothing I couldn't overcome.
BTW, if you're not sure about watching a loved on die I think you're better off watching. I stayed with my father in part because I wasn't with my mother. I ended up feeling a lot better about my father's death.
I've read that in one's last moment one turns even from family to the experience at hand. It's nothing personal. Just nature in action.
Where to begin...
1) the link between what they saw in rat's brains and any experience the rat may or may not have been having is merely inferred. All they actually have is an increase in activity, that's all. How or if that translates into the rat experiencing something specific and what it might be is pure conjecture. It is possible that the brain activates but the rat's consciousness or conscious awareness remains unawares. It may as well be terror the rat feels. We just don't know.
2) the link between this rat brain electrical activity and a specific human experience whose experiencers claim is not chaotic but has semantic meaning is the purest of pure conjecture. There is nothing, no-thing, linking these findings and this specific human experience but the sheerest of sheer conjecture, teetering daintily on the flimisiest of extrapolations.
3) it dodges the entire issue of what consciousness, conscious experience as opposed to things bumping into each other or chemically reacting, is. We don't suppose other compositions of matter - chairs, light switches, my computer- possess it, yet there it appears to be.
Thinking that consciousness is worth thinking about about goes in and out of fashion in academic and scientific circles.The glib answer offered up from some interpretations of materialism is- it's an epiphenomena of brains and nervous systems, on whom it appears to depend (how do we know that?).
The problem with that answer is it's a form of hand waving , of assuming the consequent (all consciousness "needs" matter), a defining away with words or in this case, referencing a process- neural activity. Instead of telling us what the thing is, it "explains" it away.
The real spooky implication of materialism is that consciousness may be omnipresent or exists sui generis in the universe. It's possible that it is the first among things and somehow gives rise to material in ways which are unknown.
We're stuck as a species of implicitly paradoxical materialists, who not only know for a fact that know we have conscious experience and thought but know further that this conscious experience and thought is the only means we have at discerning the material scientific truth about the world.
Chairs and tables which lack this also know nothing, or at least it seems that way.
I assert that the fact of conscious experience is the final frontier. Hypotheses non fingo. However, only someone with no scientific imagination supposes that the concepts and scientific frameworks known to her at the time she lives necessarily contain within them all the ideas needed to explain everything in the world, that there's not something which will come only later with the power to encompass all previous explanations, and extend them in a direction unimaginable by previous centuries of scientists, even into the realm of science fiction of "spirituality" .
Occam's razor is a proper thinking tool to decide between competing explanations, not defining ultimate scientific horizons.
People who have these experiences insist their nature is essentially *knowetic*, that they bear *meaning* and reveal a factual aspect of reality which was previously hidden.
This is the same "meaning" by the way that all semantic-bearing constructs in our environs - pictures, symbols, words, x-rays, scientific theories- are said to convey.
Many scientists equate these experiences with hallucinations. I submit that anyone making this certain, authoritative categorization is indulging in the priggish, short-sighted, self-satisfied kind of thinking that amuses us about long distant generations of 'scientists" and "doctors" with their clever, but technically constricted and ultimately wrong-headed theories of "stuff".
What did your grandmother want? Not everyone wants a "quick and quiet" death. My Aunt fought tooth and nail, refusing to even close her eyes, despite the extreme pain caused by the cancer. She refused more morphine because she was afraid of falling asleep for the last time. She was absolutely, positively intent on spending as many more seconds on this earth as she possibly could, no matter the cost. She spent 30 years with cancer (of various sorts) and other ailments, kept alive by an endless series of clinical trials. To her, every second alive meant a minutely small chance of that someone might come along with a miracle treatment to keep her alive another week or another month.
Don't presume to know what people want. Some people will endure unfathomable pain and disablement to stay alive. Others not so much--like my great grandfather who, rather than deal with a simple amputation of his foot (he was otherwise in decent condition), had the doctor euthanize him, because he didn't want to have to hobble into his favorite bar everyday.
All this study proves is that all rats go to heaven!
Great... 144 000 Jehova's Witnesses, a bunch of suicide bombers, and now rats. Next you'll be telling me Heaven is full of tarantulas...
Stick Men
There is no room for tarantulas because of the stripper factory.
That can't be right. If Fruit flies eat fruit, house flies must be eating houses and time flies like time.
But yeah, the cellular shutdown mechanism had something to do with the mitochondria, and it did release visible light in the brain cells as it was propagating through that area of the nematodes they were studying. So the bright light at the end of the tunnel is probably just the mitochondria of nearby cells in your optical cortex exploding.
Did you perhaps link the wrong study there?
Cause I can't find anything like "mitochondria and/or brain cells releasing visible light during apoptosis" mentioned in the link above.
Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens
During my wife's battle with cancer 20 years ago, she "coded out" two times, once when I was with her in the ICU, once on the operating table. She had the full-up near-death experience each time.
She described pretty much what you've all read in the other personal accounts of such events.
Whatever the biology, or even the physics (some have proposed a type of quantum entanglement occurs) of near-death are, I can affirm that it changed the way my wife looks at the nature of her life and existence in general. I am not unscathed by it, of course, but it is among the most deeply personal experiences one can have.
Although probably obvious, I'll close by saying my wife and I are still married and she has been cancer-free since the ordeal.
Do you imagine that the human brain behaves much differently during death than rat brains?
I thought science was about evidence and fact, not imagination?
These people have absolutely no way to know when the "experience" they had actually occurred. What makes them so sure it happened when they were "brain dead" anyway?
Where merely means "all you superstitious, paranormal-guzzling wankers can leave the room now, a scientist just showed up and shed the first useful photon on the matter".
This provides a "framework" for directing a second useful photon upon the matter, the framework mainly amounting to bathing less often in warm blood. But you have to start somewhere.
It sure does seem a very big deal to those of us still alive. Which is interesting to me. Most common things are utterly forgettable in human experience (what did you have for lunch 17 days ago?). But not the universal and completely common experiences of the ending of life. What does that mean that something so common is such a big deal to our consciousness? Perhaps nothing beyond biological reaction to the loss of an important member of one's "tribe". But I choose to hope that perhaps there are hints of a part of our existence that is outside the boundaries of what our bodies can see and touch - and does not understand the temporary/changing nature of our universe.
Do you imagine that the human brain behaves much differently during death than rat brains?
I think it might, depending on how much our self-consciousness contributes to the interpretation of the sensations.
I came close to bleeding to death once when I was living in a remote site. After a motorbike accident, I was in the back seat of a car being driven cross-country towards a hospital a few hours away, and gradually lost enough blood to pass out. I was revived with a blood transfusion in an ambulance that had driven out to the main road to meet us, but would have died without waking if they hadn't got there in time.
I mostly remember being very very cold and asking for blankets, despite it being a 35c day. My vision faded in and out, not by getting dark but by losing contrast. Even when I could see clearly, my mind would drift and not grasp anything I was seeing. There was whiteness, like light, but washed out from fading colour, not a bright source, Sound faded in and out in a similar way, and I strongly remember a woman sobbing, but little else, though the friends who were in the car tell me they were talking to me, and I sometimes responded.
Apart from the cold, and a sense of sadness that might have come from my crying friend, it was not at all distressing. Quite tranquil in fact, but for me, it was not mystical at all. I have no belief in gods or afterlifes, but I imagine someone from a religious background would have interpreted the physical experiences very differently. .
"I've got more toys than Teruhisa Kitahara."
Then logically house flies eat houses.
https://www.coursera.org/course/cardiacarrest
Cardiac Arrest, Hypothermia, and Resuscitation Science
Dr. Benjamin Abella, MD, MPhil
Proof of Heaven , by Eben Alexander MD .Simon Schuster, 2012, which has been a best seller for months. Alexander repudiates the idea that his NDE was only in his brain. He takes it as a true experience of (a wider) reality, and he's a neurosurgeon, so he ought to know, in his humble opinion.
Erasing Death: The Science That Is Rewriting the Boundaries Between Life and Death, Harper One, 2013, by Sam Parnia, MD
Otherworld Journeys: Accounts of Near-Death Experiences in Medieval and Modern
Times Carol Zaleski , Oxford. 1987.
~
You don't have to be a neurologist, just married. ;)
Visual memories are more than slippery, they're downright illusory. We remember by association--"photographic memory" has never been shown by anyone, despite countless experiments. Which means from the very instant we think we've memorized something, it's already a composition of other shit, with a smattering of what we thought we perceived.
Also, sight is probably the least reliable of all the senses. We remember sounds and smells with much higher fidelity and acuity, particularly the latter.
Frankly, I challenge any neurobiologist to come up with a workable, cognitive model of sight that's clearly and distinctly separate from the concept of imagination. You can't imagine smells (unless you're a synaesthete), and imaging sounds is pretty hard. Imagining visual images is--likely not coincidentally--second nature.
It's downright depressing when you think about it. All that childhood pondering about living in a dream world isn't that far from the reality, although much less banal.
That rat can read!! :D
Ant(Dude) @ Quality Foraged Links (AQFL.net) & The Ant Farm (antfarm.ma.cx / antfarm.home.dhs.org).
Some of them actually saw Cheesus!
...just as Scrat bounds toward the heavenly acorn.
Science is about seeking of facts to reinforce or disprove theories, many of which may indeed originate in peoples imagination.
You were "clinicaly" dead , aka you heart jsut stopped which is a pretty much stupid way to define death which ark back to a time when your heart stopped it was game over. Nowadays you use the definition of brain dead for dead (which is why it is said terry chavio long died before they cut off her support : her brain was quasi non existent). You definitively were not dead, you jsut had a cardiac arrest.
Frankky nowadays with the all the knowledge we have we should get ride of the stupid nonsensical clinical death definition and replace it with cardiac arrest, you are not "ressucited" when your heart starts again, and keep the brain death one.
C. Sagan : A demon haunted world:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0345409469/
visit randi.org
" We still have, essentially, no understanding of what consciousness is, where it come from, or where it goes during these sorts of episodes."
Consciousness is the emerging process of all brain process. It comes from the brain. If the brain do not work, it simply stops. Since it is an emerging process, once all underlying process of the brain starts again , it emerge again. We may not in *detail* explain how it works, but unless you want to use the nirvana fallacy, and require a perfect explanation, that explanation is enough for what I have quoted from you.
C. Sagan : A demon haunted world:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0345409469/
visit randi.org
In related studies from yesteryear: http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2009/09/fmrisalmon/
Consciousness is the emerging process of all brain process.
Assuming you're a physicalist: If that were true, how is it that we're able to accurately report on the content of our subjective experience?
That is, if consciousness is merely epiphenomenal, and thus supervenes on the brain, the content of such experiences would necessarily be inaccessible to the brain. That you can report on the content of your subjective experience suggests that it is accessible to the brain and, consequently, that your emergent hypothesis is untenable.
(It's a simple argument, but should be enough to keep you too busy to go around making further bold pronouncements unsupported by any actual science for a while.)
Required reading for internet skeptics
I think it is strange that there is no mention in TFA that high doses of ketamine have been shown to cause hallucinations (or "experiences") just like the typical near-death experience.
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2010/04/05/854337/-Near-Death-Experiences-the-Ketamine-Hypothesis
From the bottom of my heart, thank you for sharing this.
My father-in-law passed away three years ago of stage IV lung cancer as well and he passed away at home with my wife sitting next to him. I had just left to go home to get sleep since we were up all night with him. Something told me to stay but I needed rest. I still hate myself for leaving.
He was confined to a sitting position since it was difficult for him to lie down since fluid was building up in his lungs and it was also difficult for him to walk. Very weak. Interestingly, a few hours before he passed, and while I was still there around 4am, he got up from his propped up position on the floor, walked around and was the most lucid I had ever seen him. Crystal clear thought, speech, cognition. It was amazing. I didn't even need to help him to the bathroom. After a few minutes, he finished up, sat back down and that was the last I ever spoke to him.
Six weeks from diagnosis to death. I miss that man. Jesus I'm going to be a mess when my father... //dusty in here
To be honest, that's not a particularly hot topic in my region.
They had a cool radio lab on NPR where they talked to this guy who did testing in one of those planes bodies attached to an arm spinning in circles. they would purposefully try to knock him out, going to some huge amount of g force, then do it again and again. They call it G-LOC, gravity-induced loss of consciousness. They reported having oob experiences and seeing the white light at the end of the tunnel if i remember correctly. The whole segment seemed to suggest that near death and out of body experiences were just physiological reactions, not anything spiritual. But then again, it is NPR.
http://www.radiolab.org/2006/may/05/out-of-body-roger/ is the link for that sorry
The near-death experience is perhaps really the byproduct of the brain's attempt to save itself,' says Borjigan
Brain: Main power is offline! Re-route emergency power to life support! Engineering, what the hell is going on down there? Status report!
Engineering: Not sure, Brain, the main reactor just suddenly went offline! We're working on restoring main power now!
Brain: Get every available unit working on the problem! How long can we last on emergency power?
Engineering: We've got less than 5 minutes of emergency power, Brain, after that we're dead.
Brain: Attention all units! Report to main Engineering and assist with restoring main power!
Yeah, it's like that, I think.
"In the first 30 seconds after their hearts were stopped, they all showed a surge of brain activity" - yeah, thats the rat saying "get that fucking metal spike out of my brain you bastard"
They could solve some of the prison overcrowding and excessive cost problems by experimenting on those assholes and leaving the innocent rats alone.
Death means the body is dead. The spirit lives on. What we have here is conjecture from someone who never died. âoeTo the absent from the body is to be present with the Lord."
But .. but .. politicians don't have brains .. or spines ...
Glad you were able to speak to him. Don't beat yourself up over leaving. He didn't pass away alone.
I can tell by your UID that you are an old school type scientist. You need to get with the times.
The new right fascists are bilingual. They speak English and Bullshit.