First hint of 'life after death' in biggest ever scientific study

There is absolutely no way to tell whether the memories of these experiences formed post-revival. Dr. Steven novella (a neurologist) covers the issue (among others) here:

theness.com...

a reply to: VoidHawk

You don't need "eyes" to see. You probably know this by experience, unless you never had a vivid dream.

There are even reports (muffled voice) that we have technology that can actually produce images and voices in your brain directly

Anyway. Modern science says we don't "see" with our eyes: our eyes merely transmit signals to our brains and it are our brains that "see". How exactly this works is still not clear: you have electric and chemical signals and somehow YOU (what / who is "YOU"?) "see" something. What is that "YOU" we're talking about? Some believe "YOU" is simply part of the brain (and a smile is merely atoms changing places), some believe "YOU" is external to the brain. In all cases it may be that "YOU" can also receive information more directly. But how would that function? That is exactly what scientists try to figure out when they investigate these phenomena.

Okay the discussion is moving into the brain still working and seeing. I still would like to know how the man was observing from the corner of the room as reported.

My cousin who doesn't believe in the afterlife reported seeing himself from the ceiling at the operating table when he had a critical event involving his appendix.

a reply to: surrealist

I'll tackle this question for you. If you aren't looking through your eyes, you have no depth perception. So the feeling of looking at the events in the room from the corner or the ceiling may just be a result of the brain not being able to properly orientate itself within the room. So, when the brain builds the room in your head to look at by using your other senses, you end up looking at the events in the room from somewhere else.

As I skeptic, I hope NDE proves there is consciousness after death. For myself, I think there is something to NDE, but I'm not convinced it's exactly what the spiritual/religious people think it is (because experiences vary wildly).

In any case, this study will hopefully lead to more. But I don't see much here. In the state you are in while having the NDE, time seems to be perceived differently. It could be possible that people are experiencing something before the brain actually stops 'working', and they are experiencing time differently in their altered state. Also, despite the fact patients report being in the room and looking around, I would point out that experiments done in this regards have all failed to show that anyone could not only see in the room but pick out details. All we have are anecdotal evidence of this; the famous story of the patient that died on the table who could hear the conversations, see details in the room..etc. So far not one person has ever proven that they can see details in a room or pick out specific objects while in NDE, or even OOBE for that matter. This is what I'm waiting on. Yeah, we've heard story after story. But I want to see real evidence for it being true. It really shouldn't be that hard to prove this. It would change humankind, obviously.

I would also point out that people who are artificially induced into NDE also have NDE experiences, ie meeting their dead relatives, having after 'death' experiences..etc. If people who are artificially induced are being told they are dead by spirit beings, or being told they are to go to the light..etc, then something isn't right here.

One last bit of skepticism: People often report stories of NDE experiences not panning out. ie being told they are dead by a spirit being and that they will now go now, but they end up recovering instead. These stories of the 'visions' not panning out, or the experiences ending up confusing, are out there if you look.

Despite these problems, as a skeptic, I can't dismiss the fact that these experiences are too bizarre and similar, despite the general variations, to dismiss it entirely as the hallucinations of a dying brain/body. Why should so many experience the Light of Love in some form or another? The experiences are too profound and life-changing to the survivor. Something is clearly going on here, and has probably had a big hand in shaping our ideas of the afterlife. What is going on may not be exactly what those who believe in the afterlife may think it is, however.

NDE and studies of the mind may eventually show evidence for the mystical. We are closer than what people think for finding possible evidence for the afterlife, supernatural, paranormal. I believe it will originate around the study of the mind.

I would love to know what these descriptions were and how accurate they were. I don't think hearing sounds counts. If the guy accurately described what surgeons did specifically like their body language, recalled details which weren't supposed to be visible to them before they got into the operating room etc., I'd be willing to change my mind. l I'm sure when people say they see themselves float above the room they aren't lying, but I don't see how it proves that this actually happened and it isn't just a hallucination/dream.

How can they be sure that these images the person saw were generated in his brain as his brain wasn't functioning? We have all dreamt before, the whole perception of time is extremely skewed while you dream. You can have long adventures in your dreams that only last a couple minutes (or just seconds) in real time.

Ultimately, people are biased. There are countless psychological phenomenons that our brain is capable of creating just to lie to ourselves (split-personality disorder [or whatever official terminology that is used now] to avoid remembering traumatic experiences, placebo effect, various cognitive biases etc. etc.)

I'm sure most people have a strong desire for an afterlife to exist, the idea that our mind just disappears after we die is not fun. The idea that there may not be "ultimate justice" is not fun. So even someone who isn't religious may see a "bright light" and feel a "overwhelming sense of peace and calm" because these notions are ingrained into our culture and as you're about to die all the reason and rational thought may just vanish as your brain goes into "oh # oh #, Im about to die, let's pretend it's all ok!".

That's why I'm sceptical of these claims as well as overall religious experiences, there's a huge incentive to believe it and very little reason not to.

Maybe that's just a natural mechanism that every living organism has to make them feel better about the fact that they are about to cease to exist.

That said, if there's a well documented case about this, I'd be really interested as these sort of studies do seem to have a reasonable way to test the "other side". These sort of articles skew the perception by a lot as pointed out by Pinke.

a reply to: Calalini

FYI

[...] the research of Dr. Ken Ring, one of the deans of Near-Death research. In one of his books Mindsight, Dr. Ring investigated 31 blind people who had near-death-experiences and or out-of-body experiences. 80% of the respondents claimed that they were able to see when out of their bodies, even those who were congenitally blind (blind from birth). Congenitally blind people don’t even have a concept of sight; they only dream in audio. Many of these people had flat brain waves and were in cardiac arrest in hospitals. Five of them saw things that could be verified independently. I will ask one question of the scientific community. Without eyes, in cardiac arrest and with flat brain waves, what did these people see with? Unless all the participants in this study are lying, this particular phenomenon cannot be explained from the current scientific theory of material reductionism. The theory of Occam’s Razor would suggest that this is a real event.

See also

What is " actually dead is dead " ? How would you define it ? reply to: Tangerine

Can anyone explain how not only was the man conscious of the events taking place during his rescusitation, but was observing "from the corner of the room", suggesting he was at some distance from his body?

A very good question. It's one thing to say that these people are not "clinically dead", and therefore the research is pointless, but quite another to dismiss the claims that these people observe the events outside their bodies in a location where they could not possibly be.

a reply to: bjarneorn

This finding says nothing ... beyond what we already knew. The brain is working even after clinical death … it just lacks motor functions.

You mean like a car with no driver. There it sits, idling.

I noted that in your reply you left out the "from the corner of the room" point of view.

a reply to: surrealist

Great find. Too bad you jumped to "eternal soul." ....Some kind of "atomic eternity" might fly though.



F&

originally posted by: VoidHawk
I'm open minded so not disputing any claims, but I would like to how they are able to see? As living people we have our eyes, so what are the OBE people using?

Simply put, and what other posters are also trying to ask the naysayers.

What ARE they using to 'see' when their eyes are looking at their own bodies?

originally posted by: Krazysh0t
a reply to: surrealist

I'll tackle this question for you. If you aren't looking through your eyes, you have no depth perception. So the feeling of looking at the events in the room from the corner or the ceiling may just be a result of the brain not being able to properly orientate itself within the room. So, when the brain builds the room in your head to look at by using your other senses, you end up looking at the events in the room from somewhere else.

Ok, but how do you see your own self? Your own head, without a mirror? Where is that 'data' coming from that is part of the image built in your brain???

a reply to: new_here

That's a tough question since it hasn't been studied thoroughly enough to give a satisfactory answer (science doesn't work in unfounded assumptions). But if I were to apply Occam's Razor, I'd say that it has something to do with the mind already having a mental image inside it of what the body looks like.

But here's the thing, unlike people who immediately jump to the conclusion "afterlife is real and this is proof of it!", I recognize that there is something going on that science doesn't fully understand. Instead of making assumptions about things we don't have enough evidence for, I'd rather say that we don't know while recognizing the need for further study. People who make assumptions without evidence results in pseudo-sciences. If people in pseudo-sciences would stop making unfounded assumptions, maybe the scientific community wouldn't be so critical and disbelieving of their work.

originally posted by: new_here

originally posted by: Krazysh0t
a reply to: surrealist

I'll tackle this question for you. If you aren't looking through your eyes, you have no depth perception. So the feeling of looking at the events in the room from the corner or the ceiling may just be a result of the brain not being able to properly orientate itself within the room. So, when the brain builds the room in your head to look at by using your other senses, you end up looking at the events in the room from somewhere else.

Ok, but how do you see your own self? Your own head, without a mirror? Where is that 'data' coming from that is part of the image built in your brain???

Maybe in a similar way you can "see yourself" doing things when you are dreaming. In fact, I wouldn't be surprised if the brain fills in a lot of missing pieces AFTER the patient woke up, but made it seem as if those pieces were always there.

In general, a past memory of something may seem like 100% a past memory, but it's possible that some of the details of that memory may have been stuck into the old memory quite a long time after the fact.

originally posted by: Krazysh0t
a reply to: surrealist

I'll tackle this question for you. If you aren't looking through your eyes, you have no depth perception. So the feeling of looking at the events in the room from the corner or the ceiling may just be a result of the brain not being able to properly orientate itself within the room. So, when the brain builds the room in your head to look at by using your other senses, you end up looking at the events in the room from somewhere else.

This makes a great deal of sense to me. Frankly, your brain struggling to process surroundings and slap together a visual representation makes the most sense out of all theories. Has no one ever straddled the line between dreamland & being awake, where the line is rather blurred between the two? Surely someone has and has had a mental mash-up between a dream and a real life room that was an accurate representation of the goings on around them, even with details? The senses can take in much more than we give them credit for, and if someone's checking a clinically dead individual's pupil reaction, hello, there's incoming data for the brain to process there.
For example, I can remember thinking I saw Santa as a kid, swearing my eyes were open slightly, when it was really my dad hurriedly putting the gifts for everyone under the tree before I woke up. I've had several instances of incorporating the real world into my half-awake dreaming, too.

a reply to: Nyiah

Yeah. It's funny how the simplest explanation always seems to get thrown out the window for some crazy idea that only makes sense if you already believe that it is true. I guess the simple answer isn't as exciting as the crazy one...

Humans can experience disassociation with out having to be "near death". That being the case, how would that support or not support the OP?

Then the4re is the contention that the brain is flooded with di methyl tripdamine at the moment of death......That stuff could be part of the transition to out of body experiences as well as lasting a short time....10 to 30 minutes....giving the patient some very extraordinary mental capabilities perhaps....
But wearing off quickly during resucitataion...

a reply to: surrealist

There are two inherent problems with evaluating life-after-death in a scientific fashion.

1 - Skeptics insist that the person is not truly dead and that only a death without consciousness would count. Well, afterlife experiences are conscious ones so, it's a trick question. No instance of life-after-death will satisfy that definition because, just by having an experience, the instance will disqualify it as a death by that definition.

2 - To satisfy the other part of the definition, the subject must be "totally" dead. Like, no functioning whatsoever. You can't bring back a day-old corpse so this is sort of a trollish way for skeptics asking people to prove something that's impossible to prove.

It's one of those cases where the skeptics demand evidence, it is provided, then they move the goal posts and make the goal smaller. I don't see an end to that.