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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."
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.
The higher level of brain activity could be an upload in progress.
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.
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.
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 is frequently reported. Sometimes there seems to be evidence for the patient having visual knowledge not explainable by hallucinations.
There *IS* an explanation for the observation out there, but denying the observation because you don't know what that explanation is is rarely a path to knowledge.
Near Death experiences provoke a lot of 'expert opinions' from people who are grossly ignorant. The best estimate of how many now still living people have reported a near death experience under clinical conditions alone is a seven or even eight digit number (well over a million people, and possibly over ten million, that is). I have been at conferences on this and heard professional speakers from the "scientific, it's just a brain state, in many ways like dreaming or halucinating" side of debates refer to the 'handful of documented cases' each year. Yet if you phoned your local hospital and asked them if anyone had ever reported a near death experience at that hospital, they would likely tell you they had a dozen cases just last year or similar figures.
I've asked experts just how many cases are reported each year, and had some, unfortunately way too many of them, say things such as "I'm not sure if they happen often enough that there is one in the west every single year." or "a few dozen or less".
It's pretty damned simple - make up your own mind on whether there's anything supernatural or not, or whether there's any connection between what's reported and 'life after death', 'heaven' and anything else, but don't let any 'expert' who comes up with a number less than 100,000 per year influence you. If you were having to make decisions about expanding existing air bag laws, and somebody who was billed as a transportation safety engineer said there were nearly three dozen automotive fatalities in the US last year, would you let him influence your judgement any further? If you were arguing one way or another on Obamacare, and somebody kept insisting the average cost of open heart surgery was $1.49, would you defer any further to his judgement? Or do you inform such people they are obviously not qualified to have an opinion and should let everybody who knows at least a few facts speak instead.
It may be very difficult to test who knows something meaningful about near death experiences. The number of new age gurus and such on one side of the debate turns many rationalists off to that side. But try asking a simple question in a manner designed to maximize the evidence based, rational analysis of the claim, like "How many NDEs are reported in hospital settings in a given year?", and you can at least clearly detect that some people have an extreme axe to grind.
"Hi! I'm off by six orders of magnetude!" is not a good introduction for a real working scientist.
Who is John Cabal?
It's far rarer than dreaming; but 'Anton-Babinski Syndrome' provides some examples of a strange situation where a person is blind; but remains unaware of, and in denial of, that fact. If pressed for visual details, they will readily (but no more correctly than any other blind person taking an educated guess) confabulate descriptions of what the are 'seeing'. Very curious.
Then you've got the odd case of 'blindsight', where the is blind (they no longer 'see' consciously); but the eyes and some aspects of the visual system are intact, so they, despite being incapable of describing the scene and performing other tasks we associate with sight, are capable of performing well above chance on certain tests that rely on visual stimuli. It feels like guessing; but they are substantially better than ordinary blind people (who guess at chance, as one would expect) on those tests.