Near Death Explained - 04 21 2012 new science is shedding light on what really happens during out-of-body experiences... with shocking results... by Mario Beauregard Brain Wars from Harper One 1991 Atlanta-based singer/ songwriter Pam Reynolds felt extremely dizzy... lost her ability to speak... had difficulty moving her body... CAT scan showed that she had a giant artery aneurysm... a grossly swollen blood vessel in the wall of her basilar artery... close to the brain stem... if it burst it would kill her... standard surgery to drain/ repair it might kill her too... Pam turned to a last... desperate measure offered by neurosurgeon Robert Spetzler at the Barrow Neurological Institute in Phoenix Arizona... Dr. Spetzler was a specialist/ pioneer in hypothermic cardiac arrest... a daring surgical procedure nicknamed “Operation Standstill”... Spetzler would bring her body down to a temperature so low that she was essentially dead... her brain would not function... would be able to survive longer without oxygen at this temperature... low temperature would also soften the swollen blood vessels... allowing them to be operated on with less risk of bursting... when the procedure was complete... the surgical team would bring her back to a normal temperature before irreversible damage set in... Pam agreed to die in order to save her life... in the process had what is perhaps the most famous case of independent corroboration of out of body experience... OBE... perceptions on record... this case is especially important because cardiologist Michael Sabom was able to obtain verification from medical personnel regarding crucial details of the surgical intervention that Pam reported... here is what happened... Pam was brought into the operating room at 7:15am... she was given general anesthesia... she quickly lost conscious awareness... Spetzler... his team of more than 20 physicians/ nurses/ technicians went to work... they lubricated her eyes to prevent drying... taped them shut... they attached EEG electrodes to monitor the electrical activity of her cerebral cortex... they inserted small/ molded speakers into her ears... secured them with gauze/ tape... the speakers would emit repeated 100-decibel clicks... approximately the noise produced by a speeding express train... eliminating outside sounds... measuring the activity of her brainstem... at 8:40am the tray of surgical instruments was uncovered... Robert Spetzler began cutting through her skull with a special surgical saw that produced a noise similar to a dental drill... at this moment Pam later said she felt herself “pop” out of her body... hover above it watching as doctors worked on her body... although she no longer had use of her eyes/ ears... she described her observations in terms of her senses/ perceptions... “I thought the way they had my head shaved was very peculiar... I expected them to take all of the hair but they did not...” she described the Midas Rex bone saw... the dental-drill sound it made with considerable accuracy... “the saw thing that I hated the sound of looked like an electric toothbrush... it had a dent in it...” meanwhile Spetzler was removing the outermost membrane of her brain... cutting it open with scissors... at about the same time a female cardiac surgeon was attempting to locate the femoral artery in ner right groin... remarkably Pam later claimed to remember a female voice saying... “we have a problem... her arteries are too small...” then a male voice... “try the other side...” medical records confirm this conversation... yet Pam could not have heard them... the cardiac surgeon was right... her blood vessels were indeed too small to accept the abundant blood flow requested by the cardiopulmonary bypass machine so at 10:50am a tube was inserted into her left femoral artery... connected to the cardiopulmonary bypass machine... the warm blood circulated from the artery into the cylinders of the bypass machine where it was cooled down before being returned to her body... her body temperature began to fall... at 11:05am her heart stopped... her EEG brain waves flattened into total silence... a few minutes later her brain stem became totally unresponsive... her body temperature fell to a sepulchral 60 degrees Fahrenheit... at 11:25am the team tilted up the head of the operating table... turned off the bypass machine... drained the blood from her body... Pamela Reynolds was clinically dead... at this point her out-of-body adventure transformed into a near-death experience (NDE)... she recalls floating out of the operating room... traveling down a tunnel with a light... she saw deceased relatives/ friends... including her long-dead grandmother waiting at the end of this tunnel... she entered the presence of a brilliant/ wonderfully warm/ loving light...sensed that her soul was part of God... that everything in existence was created from the light... the breathing of God... but this extraordinary experience ended abruptly as her deceased uncle led her back to her body... a feeling she described as... “plunging into a pool of ice...” meanwhile in the operating room... the surgery had come to an end... when all the blood had drained from her brain the aneurysm simply collapsed... Spetzler clipped it off... soon the bypass machine was turned on... warm blood was pumped back into her body... as her body temperature started to increase her brainstem began to respond to the clicking speakers in her ears... the EEG recorded electrical activity in the cortex... the bypass machine was turned off at 12:32pm... her life had been restored... she was taken to the recovery room in stable condition at 2:10pm... tales of otherworldly experiences have been part of human cultures seemingly forever... but NDEs as such 1st came to broad public attention in 1975 by way of American psychiatrist/ philosopher Raymond Moody in his popular book Life After Life... he presented more than 100 case studies of people who experienced vivid mental experiences close to death or during “clinical death”... were subsequently revived to tell the tale... their experiences were remarkably similar... Moody coined the term NDE to refer to this phenomenon... the book was popular/ controversial... scientific investigation of NDEs began soon after its publication with the founding in 1978 of the International Association for Near Death Studies (IANDS)... the 1st organization in the world devoted to the scientific study of NDEs... their relationship to mind/ consciousness... NDEs are the vivid/ realistic/ often deeply life-changing experiences of men/ women/ children who have been physiologically or psychologically close to death... they can be evoked by cardiac arrest... coma caused by brain damage... intoxication... asphyxia... they can also happen following such events as electrocution... complications from surgery... severe blood loss during or after a delivery... they can even occur as the result of accidents or illnesses in which individuals genuinely fear they might die... surveys conducted in the US/ Germany suggest that approximately 4.2% of the population has reported an NDE... it has also been estimated that more than 25 million individuals worldwide have had an NDE in the past 50 years... people from all walks of life/ belief systems have this experience... studies indicate that the experience of an NDE is not influenced by gender/ race/ socioeconomic status/ level of education... although NDEs are sometimes presented as religious experiences... this seems to be a matter of individual perception... furthermore researchers have found no relationship between religion... the experience of an NDE... that is it did not matter whether the people recruited in those studies were Catholic/ Protestant/ Muslim/ Hindu/ Jewish/ Buddhist/ atheist/ agnostic... although the details differ... NDEs are characterized by a number of core features... perhaps the most vivid is the OBE... the sense of having left the body... of watching events going on around the body... occasionally at some distant physical location... during OBEs... near-death experiencers (NDErs) are often astonished to discover that they have retained consciousness/ perception/ lucid thinking/ memory/ emotions/ their sense of personal identity... if anything... these processes are heightened... thinking is vivid... hearing is sharp... vision can extend to 360 degrees... NDErs claim that without physical bodies... they are able to penetrate through walls/ doors... project themselves wherever they want... they frequently report the ability to read the thoughts of others... the effects of NDEs on the experience are intense/ overwhelming/ real... a number of studies conducted in the US/ Western European countries/ Australia have shown that most NDErs are profoundly/ positively transformed by the experience... one woman says... “I was completely altered after the accident... I was another person according to those who lived near me... I was happy/ laughing/ appreciated little things/ joked/ smiled a lot/ became friends with everyone... so completely different than I was before!..” however different their personalities before the NDE... experiencers tend to share a similar psychological profile after the NDE... indeed their beliefs/ values/ behaviors/ worldviews seem quite comparable afterward... importantly... these psychological/ behavioral changes are not the kind of changes one would expect if this experience were an hallucination... as noted NDE researcher Pim van Lommel/ his colleagues have demonstrated... these changes become more apparent with the passage of time... some skeptics legitimately argue that the main problem with reports of OBE perceptions is that they often rest uniquely on the testimony of the NDErs... there is no independent corroboration... from a scientific perspective... such self-reports remain inconclusive... but during the last few decades some self-reports of NDErs have been independently corroborated by witnesses such as that of Pam Reynolds... one of the best known of these corroborated veridical NDE perceptions... perceptions that can be proven to coincide with reality... is the experience of a woman named Maria whose case was 1st documented by her critical care social worker Kimberly Clark... Maria was a migrant worker who had a severe heart attack while visiting friends in Seattle... she was rushed to Harborview Hospital... placed in the coronary care unit... a few days later she had a cardiac arrest but was rapidly resuscitated... the following day Clark visited her... Maria told Clark that during her cardiac arrest she was able to look down from the ceiling... watch the medical team at work on her body... at one point in this experience... said Maria... she found herself outside the hospital... spotted a tennis shoe on the ledge of the north side of the 3rd floor of the building... she was able to provide several details regarding its appearance including the observations that one of its laces was stuck underneath the heel... that the little toe area was worn... Maria wanted to know for sure whether she had “really” seen that shoe... she begged Clark to try to locate it... quite skeptical... Clark went to the location described by Maria... found the tennis shoe... from the window of her hospital room the details that Maria had recounted could not have been discerned... upon retrieval of the shoe Clark confirmed the observations of Maria... “the only way she could have had such a perspective was if she had been floating right outside at very close range to the tennis shoe... I retrieved the shoe... brought it back to Maria... it was very concrete evidence for me...” this case is particularly impressive given that during cardiac arrest the flow of blood to the brain is interrupted... when this happens the electrical activity of the brain as measured with EEG... disappears after 10-20 seconds... in this state a patient is deeply comatose... because the brain structures mediating higher mental functions are severely impaired... such patients are expected to have no clear/ lucid mental experiences that will be remembered... nonetheless studies conducted in the Netherlands/ UK/US have revealed that approximately 15% of cardiac arrest survivors do report some recollection from the time when they were clinically dead... these studies indicate that consciousness/ perceptions/ thoughts/ feelings can be experienced during a period when the brain shows no measurable activity... NDEs experienced by people who do not have sight in everyday life are quite intriguing...1994 researchers Kenneth Ring/ Sharon Cooper decided to undertake a search for cases of NDE-based perception in the blind... they reasoned that such cases would represent the ultimate demonstration of veridical perceptions during NDEs... if a blind person was able to report on verifiable events that took place when they were clinically dead that would mean something real was occurring... they interviewed 31 individuals of whom 14 were blind from birth... 21 of the participants had had an NDE... the others had had OBEs only... strikingly... the experiences they reported conform to the classic NDE pattern... whether they were born blind or had lost their sight in later life... the results of the study were published in 1997... based on all the cases they investigated... Ring/ Cooper concluded that what happens during an NDE affords another perspective to perceive reality that does not depend on the senses of the physical body... they proposed to call this other mode of perception mindsight... despite corroborated reports... many materialist scientists cling to the notion that OBEs/ NDEs are located in the brain... 2002 neurologist Olaf Blanke/ colleagues at the University Hospitals of Geneva/ Lausanne in Switzerland described in the prestigious scientific journal Nature the strange occurrence that happened to a 43-year-old female patient with epilepsy... because her seizures could not be controlled by medication alone neurosurgery was being considered as the next step... the researchers implanted electrodes in her right temporal lobe to provide information about the localization/ extent of the epileptogenic zone... the area of the brain that was causing the seizures... which had to be surgically removed... other electrodes were implanted to identify/ localize by means of electrical stimulation the areas of the brain that... if removed would result in loss of sensory capacities/ linguistic ability/ even paralysis... such a procedure is particularly critical to spare important brain areas that are adjacent to the epileptogenic zone... when they stimulated the angular gyrus... a region of the brain in the parietal lobe that is thought to integrate sensory information related to vision/ touch/ balance to give us a perception of our own bodies... the patient reported seeing herself... “lying in bed... from above... I only see my legs/ lower trunk...” she described herself as “floating” near the ceiling... she also reported seeing her legs “becoming shorter”... the article received global press coverage... created quite a commotion... the editors of Nature went so far as to declare triumphantly that as a result of this one study... which involved only one patient... the part of the brain that can induce OBEs had been located... psychologist Michael Shermer... Director of the Skeptics Society which seeks to debunk all kinds of paranormal claims said... “it is another blow against those who believe that the mind/ spirit are somehow separate from the brain... in reality all experience is derived from the brain...” 2004 in another article Blanke/ co-workers described 6 patients of whom 3 had experienced an / incomplete OBE... 4 patients reported an autoscopy... that is they saw their own double from the vantage point of their own body... in this paper the researchers describe an OBE as a temporary dysfunction of the junction of the temporal/ parietal cortex... as Pim van Lommel noted... the abnormal bodily experiences described by Blanke/ colleagues entail a false sense of reality... typical OBEs in contrast implicate a verifiable perception from a position above or outside of the body... of events such as their own resuscitation or a traffic accident... the surroundings in which the events took place... along the same lines psychiatrist Bruce Greyson of the University of Virginia commented that... “we cannot assume from the fact that electrical stimulation of the brain can induce OBE-like illusions that all OBEs are therefore illusions...” materialistic scientists have proposed a number of physiological explanations to account for the various features of NDEs... British psychologist Susan Blackmore has propounded the “dying brain” hypothesis... a lack of oxygen... anoxia during the dying process might induce abnormal firing of neurons in brain areas responsible for vision... that such an abnormal firing would lead to the illusion of seeing a bright light at the end of a dark tunnel... would it?... Van Lommel/ colleagues objected that if anoxia plays a central role in the production of NDEs... most cardiac arrest patients would report an NDE... studies show that this is clearly not the case... another problem with this view is that reports of a tunnel are absent from several accounts of NDErs... as pointed out by renowned NDE researcher Sam Parnia... some individuals have reported an NDE when they had not been terminally ill... so would have had normal levels of oxygen in their brains... Parnia raises another problem... when oxygen levels decrease markedly patients whose lungs or hearts do not work properly experience an “acute confusional state” during which they are highly confused/ agitated/ have little or no memory recall... in stark contrast during NDEs people experience lucid consciousness... well-structured thought processes... clear reasoning... they also have an excellent memory of the NDE which usually stays with them for several decades... in other respects Parnia argues that if this hypothesis is correct then the illusion of seeing a light/ tunnel would progressively develop as the blood oxygen level of the patient drops... medical observations however indicate that patients with low oxygen levels do not report seeing a light/ a tunnel/ or any of the common features of an NDE we discussed earlier... 1990s more research indicated that the anoxia theory of NDEs was on the wrong track... James Whinnery... a chemistry professor with West Texas A&M... was involved with studies simulating the extreme conditions that can occur during aerial combat maneuvers... in these studies fighter pilots were subjected to extreme gravitational forces in a giant centrifuge... such rapid acceleration decreases blood flow... consequently decreased delivery of oxygen to the brain... in so doing it induces brief periods of unconsciousness that Whinnery calls “dreamlets”... Whinnery hypothesized that although some of the core features of NDEs are found during dreamlets... the main characteristics of dreamlets are impaired memory for events just prior to the onset of unconsciousness/ confusion/ disorientation upon awakening... these symptoms are not typically associated with NDEs... in addition... life transformations are never reported following dreamlets... if the “dying brain” is not responsible for NDEs... could they simply be hallucinations?.. in my opinion the answer is no... let us look at the example of hallucinations that can result from ingesting ketamine... a veterinary drug that is sometimes used recreationally... often at great cost to the user... at small doses the anesthetic agent ketamine can induce hallucinations... feelings of being out of the body... ketamine is thought to act primarily by inhibiting N-Methyl-D-aspartic acid (NMDA) receptors which normally open in response to binding of glutamate... the most abundant excitatory chemical messenger in the human brain... psychiatrist Karl Jensen has speculated that the blockade of NMDA receptors may induce an NDE... but ketamine experiences are often frightening... producing weird images... most ketamine users realize that the experiences produced by this drug are illusory... in contrast... NDErs are strongly convinced of the reality of what they experienced... furthermore... many of the central features of NDEs are not reported with ketamine... that being said... we cannot rule out that the blockade of NMDA receptors may be involved in some NDEs... neuroscientist Michael Persinger has claimed that he/ his colleagues have produced all the major features of the NDE by using weak transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) of the temporal lobes... the work of Persinger is based on the premise that abnormal activity in the temporal lobe may trigger an NDE... a review of the literature on epilepsy... however... indicates that the classical features of NDEs are not associated with epileptic seizures located in the temporal lobes... moreover... as Bruce Greyson/ his collaborators have correctly emphasized... the experiences reported by participants in the Persinger TMS studies bear little resemblance with the typical features of NDEs... the scientific NDE studies performed over the past decades indicate that heightened mental functions can be experienced independently of the body at a time when brain activity is greatly impaired or seemingly such as during cardiac arrest... some of these studies demonstrate that blind people can have veridical perceptions during OBEs associated with an NDE... other investigations show that NDEs often result in deep psychological/ spiritual changes... these findings strongly challenge the mainstream neuro-scientific view that mind/ consciousness result solely from brain activity... as we have seen... such a view fails to account for how NDErs can experience while their hearts are stopped vivid/ complex thoughts... acquire veridical information about objects or events remote from their bodies... NDE studies also suggest that after physical death... mind/ consciousness may continue in a transcendent level of reality that normally is not accessible to our senses/ awareness... needless to say... this view is utterly incompatible with the belief of many materialists that the material world is the only reality... excerpted with permission from The Brain Wars: The Scientific Battle Over the Existence of the Mind... Proof That Will Change the Way We Live Our Lives... Courtesy of Harper One... Mario Beauregard is associate research professor at the Departments of Psychology/ Radiology... the Neuroscience Research Center at the University of Montreal... he is the coauthor of The Spiritual Brain... more than 100 publications in neuroscience/ psychology/ psychiatry...
Posted on: Thu, 24 Jul 2014 22:03:38 +0000
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