Near Death Experience Studies

That's what I think too, Deb. Especially when you read the accounts of children who have had these experiences. How could it possibly be generally the same for everyone unless everyone was experiencing the same thing.

Susan Blackmore's book "Dying to Live: Near Death Experiences" is old (1994), but most of it is still valid.

(1) Not all NDEs are the exactly same. There's a cultural component. Roman Catholics don't experience the same things as Southern Baptists or Hindus or whatever.

(2) The parts that are the same are caused by increased levels of carbon dioxide. We can produce CO2 hallucinations in the lab and they are the same as NDE reports. When the heart stops, CO2 builds up and eventually the hallucinations start.

(3) It's "near" death experience. People aren't actually dead. Their brains are still working. They can hear and feel.

(4) When children have NDEs and have a "heaven" experience, they see their friends and family who are not yet dead. When old people have NDEs and have a "heaven" experience, they see their many friends and family who are already dead. Basically, during a NDE hallucination, people can see people that are important to them.

It's a complicated subject, but there has been a large amount of research on the subject over the past 30-40 years and there's really not a mystery any more. One problem is that the hallucinations of NDEs are mislabeled by a malfunctioning brain as "real" and they so they FEEL real. Many people refuse to accept that something that FEELs real can be not true. But that's the nature of all hallucinations, whether caused by drugs or mental illness or brain stress or whatever. Feeling REAL is what makes a good hallucination.

Hi Fred,

I do understand that the brain could possibly create hallucinations as it shuts down or produces a higher or lower level of chemicals. The brain can do all kinds of things under stress or different circumstances, things that we would have no idea that it can do because we've been fortunate enough not to have it go thru that kind of trauma.

I don't think all NDE's are the same...but usually, for the most part, the *theme* (for lack of a better word) is the same. Most people like it and are compelled to *stay* in that state. Could this be the brain protecting us in a way...though I don't know why your brain at that point would care if you're afraid. There are people who live thru very traumatic, stressful and scarey situations so if that were the case I would think if it were a type of protection the brain would also give the same effect in those types of situations.


I do wonder though, what your thoughts are on those people who have had NDE's and claim to have been able to see and hear everything going on in not only the room their body is in but in other places as well. There are countless accounts of people who have woken up and told the doctors what was said, what kind of surgical equipment they were using...and stranger....what their family was talking about down the hall and who was crying, who was praying, what they were doing while they did these things. How would that be explained? How would your brain hallucinate what someone was doing/saying at the time you were dying?

As far as children....many do see dead relatives. In fact adults claim to have seen dead relatives as well but they're not all people they knew in life. A lot of them are people who passed before they were born or shortly thereafter-why would a person's brain consider those people important enough to hallucinate about?

Either way, I do believe it's a very interesting and debatable subject.

Tricia wrote:
>I do wonder though, what your thoughts are on those people who have had NDE's and claim to have been able to see and hear everything going on in not only the room their body is in but in other places as well.

Generally, when researchers look at such they find that the claims don't match what really happened. Mostly it's a case of bad memory. People see things or are told things and they remember seeing or hearing them while in NDE. You have to compare multiple sources - what the patient remembers, what medical staff remember, what relatives remember, etc. Several of these type experiences were investigated many years ago by Skeptical Inquirer magazine and they didn't find any that couldn't be explained by ordinary means. Like I wrote before NDE folk are not dead and they can hear going around them. Plus, medical staff and others tell them things that they incorporate into their memories and forget the true source of the info.

One of my favorite things is the "floating above" story. People remember floating above the ER staff (or whatever). My memories are ALL floating above. If I think me in a 3rd grade classroom, I don't see the room from my eyes (the actual view), but instead I see the room from a floating above viewpoint. I and see myself sitting at my desk. I'm not sure that everyone remembers like this, but many of us do. So if I "remember" myself in surgery, I will see myself from outside my body. That's my norm.

Tricia, your story about your grandfather gave me goosebumps. 

Fred, my memories don't have me floating above the scenes. It's more like looking at photographs or videos. If I'm in the scene then it's the interaction with the person or thing. I'm there. I'm not floating anywhere. I think this is a good one for Freud. 

When my mother had heart failure and was under medication for nine days after being rushed into surgery,  I asked her if she remembered anything about that time. She said no.

Tricia wrote:
>I wonder why it is then that this doesn't happen to everyone? There are lots of people who have come close to dying who "come back" with nothing at all.

In Blackmore's book she gives better numbers, but my memory is that only about 1/3 of us have NDEs. Possibly associated with fantasy-prone personalities. And, like I said, those that do often have wildly varied memories due to cultural expectations. There are even cases when people have had NDE just from falling off a mountain or some such, expecting to die, but not dying.

Human memory is very flaky and totally unreliable. Whereas when YOU get anesthesia you forget everything, I always remember everything. When I first wake up I see and hear everything that happened, like a fast-forward video, then, in about 10 seconds, it's gone and I don't remember it any more. So are my speed memories real? Don't know. I can't remember them long enough to verify them. LOL. But I have the "experience".

But here's the thing, all it takes is 4-5 minutes without oxygen to kill brain cells. If all your brain cells are completely dead (no activity), you don't come back. Ever. Dead brain cells do not get better. If your brain cells are not dead, just heading that way, there is always something going on (dreams, hallucinations, etc.). Sometimes a patient has lost a few brain cells, but still has enough left to recover. Stroke patients are excellent examples of brains with some brain cells that are dead and some that aren't. Depending on where the damage is, skills and personality can be lost.

>every single thing you just wrote is only absolute conjecture

Hmmm. The word "conjecture" implies something without any supporting evidence. Major research on strokes and brain damage has been going on for many, many years. Between strokes and head trauma from auto wrecks and such, there are literally hundreds of thousands of new cases every year. This is not a terribly mysterious subject.

"Major research on strokes and brain damage has been going on for many, many years."

But there is nothing in any of that research which *explains* NDEs. Neurologists have theorized that certain aspects of NDEs might be explainable in terms of oxygen deprivation, but that is, as Lily rightly says, conjecture, and an attempt to rationalize a facet of common human experience for which no satisfactory explanation exists.