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sure i did several where do you think all this ptsd came from disneyland?
Well, honestly...if you went on that freaky creaky half-broken-down, LSD-induced-visuals-esque Mr. Toad's Wild Ride...then I'd say that's entirely conceivable!
The reason the NDE is similar is because the brain reacts the same way and causes the light hallucination and floating experience. This experience can be reproduced in the lab.
Can you point us to links on these lab tests or any other sources please?
What I find hard to accept (but not rejecting) is that the brain can have such realistic hallucinations while it is flatlined or recovering from a flatlined condition. Sure, such hallucinations are probably happening during the recovery stages but why would such hallucinations seem so real when the brain is allegedly being bombarded with a flood random impulses? I would expect a state of delirium and confusion rather than clarity. That's a little different from artificially stimulating specific areas of the brain with electrical impulses I would think.
I do not believe that 'science' has all the answers or that scientists are free from personal biases and are totally objective. They are human just like you and me.
Location: Central Bay Area, CA as of Jan 2010...but still a proud Texan from Houston!
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Originally Posted by 303Guy
Can you point us to links on these lab tests or any other sources please?
What I find hard to accept (but not rejecting) is that the brain can have such realistic hallucinations while it is flatlined or recovering from a flatlined condition. Sure, such hallucinations are probably happening during the recovery stages but why would such hallucinations seem so real when the brain is allegedly being bombarded with a flood random impulses? I would expect a state of delirium and confusion rather than clarity. That's a little different from artificially stimulating specific areas of the brain with electrical impulses I would think.
I do not believe that 'science' has all the answers or that scientists are free from personal biases and are totally objective. They are human just like you and me.
People who make this claim have no clue what they are talking about. I watched Dr.Parnia actually disclose who the person was that supposedly performed this experiment in a lab in 1975. However this experiment was not conducted very scientifically or documented very well. A lot has changed in medical technology since 1975.
There have been no large scale modern day well documented studies ever performed until he became interested. He published the findings of his AWARE study this month in the Medical Journal Resuscitation . :: University of Southampton
I encourage everyone to watch as many lectures by Dr. Parnia. He knows the history to how these ignorant views came into existence and are still regurgitated by the misinformed and the naysayers today in spite of the overwhelming new well documented evidence.
How anyone can dispute the enormous number of humans across the globe that have had these experiences is just beyond me.
He gives a very nice history of how society and medicine basically dismissed all of the 1000's of reported cases and how any studies done where poorly conducted and not well documented. In his work as a Resuscitation Scientist he has over 3000 cases of NDE's that are well documented. He is a trailblazer in this area. This is very important work that he is doing and the first in history who will not allow the medical community or other narrow minded scientists stop him.
He is now doing his best to shift society away from this unfounded thinking.
At the very end of the first video he begins to talk about the 4 theories that were the start of this misinformation. The second video he goes more into it and talks about why he became interested in subject and undertook his own study.
Can you point us to links on these lab tests or any other sources please?
What I find hard to accept (but not rejecting) is that the brain can have such realistic hallucinations while it is flatlined or recovering from a flatlined condition. Sure, such hallucinations are probably happening during the recovery stages but why would such hallucinations seem so real when the brain is allegedly being bombarded with a flood random impulses? I would expect a state of delirium and confusion rather than clarity. That's a little different from artificially stimulating specific areas of the brain with electrical impulses I would think.
Actually, when the brain is flooded with electro-activity as in the case you describe above, it appears that the perception is of hyper-clarity, as well as, sometimes, brighter than normal colors, "new" colors the experiencer has never seen before (colloquially called "Martian colors," I believe - I'd have to vet that to make sure I have the term correct), extremely crisp images, unusual mental clarity and the like.
This U of Michigan study showed this effect, unfortunately in rats, so I'll have to find the human study of similar brain activity after I post this, but in the meantime:
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"But what is really interesting is that the coherence [in the dying rats] is more than two-fold higher than in their waking state," Borjigin said. "This suggests that after cardiac arrest, there is a kind of hyper-consciousness in the brain, with all of the neurons acting together in far more coherence than normal."
**
Additionally, the team found an increase in "feedback connectivity." Information processing in the brain occurs in two ways: Top-down and bottom-up. Bottom-up processing has to do with sensory awareness, while top-down processing involves your will and intention, such as when you decide to raise your arm. During anesthesia, doctors dampen both kinds of process to make sure that patients aren't aware of what's going on, and don't remember anything about the procedure.
The researchers found that dying rats showed an eight-fold increase in top-down processes and five-fold increase in bottom-up processes following cardiac arrest. Borjigin suggests that anything the rats experienced during this time would likely have seemed "hyper-real." Interestingly, patients have described near-death experiences as being "realer than real."
Again, yes, it's rats, so this is far from definitive for humans, but since areas of the brain in most animals have parallels, it's a fair jumping off point for more research, anyway. Here's what the researcher had to say:
How do study findings and observations in the brains of rats relate to what happens in human brains and human beings?
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In people's descriptions of life-after-death experiences, there are light perceptions associated with visual function. If you were to say those experiences came from their brains, their visual cortex had to be activated. So with rats, we'd have to look at their visual cortex as well, which is what we did. Our data shows the visual cortex is highly activated in rats after the heart stops. There are no data about this for humans, but we would now know what to look for in humans because of this study.
Pretty much what you'd extrapolate anyway but I thought I would put it in as my words, as a non-researcher, probably don't carry anywhere near as much weight (and they shouldn't, I am only reading about such studies, I'm not a researcher myself.
This doesn't disprove NDEs, by any means, I'm just trying to answer your question as to how a dying brain might experience hyper-clarity and what you called "realistic hallucinations." The implications are that such experiences could seem more real than waking reality...but obviously more research is needed...and specifically on human beings (even though the parallels in the physical aspects of the brains of both humans and rats should be, and is being, considered). Unfortunately, this study involved killing the rats, perhaps the researchers just aren't ready to kill people yet! (Yes, that's a joke...)
It will be interesting to see where researchers go with these findings as relate to humans and to, obviously, larger/broader studies.
Quote:
Originally Posted by 303Guy View Post
I do not believe that 'science' has all the answers or that scientists are free from personal biases and are totally objective. They are human just like you and me.
I don't either...whether, in this case, the researchers' bias is pro- or con-NDE validity. I do believe personal biases can sneak in there, so I agree with you. Still, ALL of these studies are interesting, to me, anyway.
Although there do seem to be similar experiences across stories from seeing a bright white light to 'floating outside of one's own body'
Neuroscience is erring into my field so I can speak to this topic somewhat myself if you wish. The feeling of being outside ones own body is something we are actually coming very close to understanding the neuro-unerpinings of. We can even cause that sensations artificially in people now with either drugs or, more interestingly, direct electrical stimulation of the brain.
I guess one of the common misapprehensions by the lay man that I know of is that the human being has 5 senses. Touch, taste, smell, sight and hearing. Nothing could be further from the truth. We have many more. The most obvious is our sense of balance. And while people think our sense of hot and cold is just part of touch, this is actually separate too. Depending on who you talk to we do not have 5 sense but anywhere upward of 30.
But less obvious is that we have a sense of our "place" in the world. Where we physically are and in what position.
And ALL our sense can be perturbed and misled. The most obvious of these that we all know are optical illusions and "seeing things" that are not there. But there is not a single sense that we have that can not be misled.
So the out of body experience really is nothing more serious than our sense of position not lining up with other data coming from our senses. It is just a result of perturbing our spacial awareness and sense of position in ways that are no more remarkable than perturbing our other senses like sight.
The reason that there are similar experiences across the whole discourse is pretty clear too. We all have, essentially, the same biological make up. Our experiences when our neural pathways are perturbed by anything from standard drugs used in medical procedures.... to procedures like defibrillation..... is therefore going to be essentially standard across the species too. With the variance that those experiences will then be parsed retrospectively differently related to the patients background, culture and education.
Sort of, but I can't verify it because I was never taken to the doctor, and I didn't see white lights or angels or anything.
This is kind of painful to write, but when I was four, I nearly drowned. What I remember is that it was excruciating, I mean that feeling of needing air just got worse and worse. I thought it would never end and then all of a sudden...it felt as if I got over a "hump." I don't know how to explain it better than that. It was like I sort of...got past the drowning, somehow.
I didn't "see" anything. But I felt the most amazing sense of peace I ever felt in my life. I don't think I felt like I was floating, exactly, but I couldn't feel my body at all. I had a thought but not really in words, more of a sense, that nothing bad was ever going to happen again. Ever. And I had this CLARITY. Like, no emotion, but not in a robot-way. More like I was beyond all that now.
Then I was brought to and my very first feeling was agony that now pain was going to begin again, I mean, all of a sudden the common ups and downs of life felt absolutely painful by comparison to what I had been feeling a moment ago.
Again, this was not medically verified. I really doubt that my heart stopped or anything like that. But I did have that momentary feeling and have always wondered what it was. I wonder if it was just sort of a physical "shut down."
Definitely no tunnel, no white light, no Great-Grandma greeting me with a beatific smile or anything like that, but again, I have no idea just how far "gone" I was.
That's the closest I've come...it somehow makes me fear the actual process of dying as much, for whatever reason, though I still have no clue about an "after" or if there is one.
I can relate to this, in 2011 I suffered a heart attack, I called 911, the EMT's arrived and found me on the floor of my apartment with no heart beat and not breathing. What I experienced was a blackness, there was no tunnel of light, no Jesus to welcome me, none of my parents were there, just a blackness. It was the most peaceful sensation I've ever had, a sense of calmness, there was nothing to be frightened of. Then I sensed a familiar presents, the next there was a flash of light and I was in the ambulance.
That sense of peacefulness and calmness had stayed with me throughout the years after this. I have absolutely no fear of dying, although I do enjoy my life today and have no intensions of leaving the is world at this time, there is no fear of the fate that awaits me.
I visited my grandmother a few days before she passed away. She was very weak, and sick, and it was almost time... On my last visit with her I changed the water in her flowers, and helped her get dressed for bed. She was always in and out of it - almost in a trance because she was on a lot of pain meds. She didn't remember who I was at times, it was sad.
Anyways, Before I left I said a few prayers and on my 3rd prayer she opened her eyes and looked at me. I said to her "hey grandma, if you see that bright light - don't be afraid to follow it. It's ok we all love you" she closed her eyes again and went back to sleep.
My mom visited her the next day. My grandmother told my mom that she had a dream that she was standing ontop of a roof and she was looking down at herself in the hospital bed. She said was on the roof with her parents, her brother, and sister (who are all deceased) and that they were all there together looking down at her...
Now i don't know if this was a dream, or maybe she actually passed on but came back to life?
She passed away a day or two after that visit with my mom, but I'll never forget that!! - It makes you think!
If you're interested, a really good book on the matter is "Proof of Heaven" by Eben Alexander. Dr. Alexander is a neurologist and had an NDE himself, which should have been physically impossible given the state of his brain at the time (meningitis). This is a well-respected doctor's account, which really makes it interesting. It's a good read.
does this book available on the net as PDF for reading ? I don't want to buy it.
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But I did have that momentary feeling and have always wondered what it was. I wonder if it was just sort of a physical "shut down."
