A recent study led by near-death researcher Sam Parnia of the consciousness of patients whose hearts have stopped provides more basic data on the circumstances in which many near-death experiences occur.
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A team from the NYU Grossman School of Medicine, working with 25 hospitals primarily in the United States and Britain, studied “lucid death experiences” that can occur when heart attack survivors are apparently unconscious. Of 567 patients, only 53 (9.3%) survived. Most of them were flat, meaning they had no brain activity at any given time. Sometimes brain activity was restored up to an hour later. Only 28 of them completed the interviews. According to the open-access study’s press release, “four out of ten surviving patients, however, recalled some degree of consciousness during CPR, not captured by standard measures.” THE study reports that “Using the near-death scale, 6/28 (21%) had a transcendent experience (median = 7, high = 18).
Memories from survivors include several like this:
“I remember a being of light… standing near me. She stood above me like a great tower of strength, but radiated nothing but warmth and love… I had a glimpse into my life and felt pride, love, joy and sadness, all flow into me. Each image was of me, but from the point of view of someone standing next to me or looking at me… I was shown the consequences of my life, of the thousands of people I had interacted with and felt what they felt for me, saw their lives and how I impacted them. Then I saw the consequences of my life and the influence of my actions. – Parnia S, Keshavarz Shirazi T, Patel J, Tran L, Sinha N et al, AWARENESS during Resuscitation – II: A multicenter study of consciousness and attention in cardiac arrest. Resuscitation. July 7, 2023: 109903. doi: 10.1016/j.resuscitation.2023.109903. PMID: 37423492.
The study describes a classic near-death experience, but in the press release the term used is “lucid death experiences.” The version offers an explanation for them:
The study authors hypothesize that the brain dying “flat” removes natural inhibitory (braking) systems. These processes, known collectively as disinhibition, can open access to “new dimensions of reality,” they say, including the lucid recall of all memories stored from early childhood until death, evaluated from the point of view of morality. – Elsevier, “New evidence indicates that patients remember experiences of death after cardiac arrest” ScienceDaily, September 14, 2023. The paper is freely accessible.
In the study himself, the authors conclude: “Although systematic studies have not been able to absolutely prove the reality or significance of patients’ experiences and claims of consciousness about death, it has been impossible to deny them either. The experience recalled around death now deserves a real, more in-depth empirical investigation, without prejudice.
Scientific American made no attempt to explain the results
The researchers might get their wish. There are perhaps less prejudices on the subject than in the past. The article in Scientific American The study falls curiously halfway, given that the article describes near-death experiences:
According to the conclusions published on September 14 in Resuscitation, The flattened brains of some cardiac arrest patients erupted into intense activity during CPR, even though their hearts had stopped beating for up to an hour. A small subset of study participants who survived were able to remember the experience, and one person was able to identify an audio stimulus played while doctors tried to resuscitate them. –Rachel Nuwer, “Some patients “died” But survivors report lucid ‘near-death experiences,’ says new study Scientific American, September 14, 2023
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No effort is made to explain the team’s findings. That said, the clumsiness of the contemporary scientific approach to these experiments is highlighted in this sentence from Elsevier Press release : “Although no one knows the evolutionary purpose of this phenomenon, it “opens the door to systematic exploration of what happens when a person dies.” But why would we need to establish an “evolutionary goal” for such experiments when people who are dying – apart from very advanced and recently developed medical techniques – and do not want to not transmit them? Clearly, the experiments reveal something that has nothing to do with the claims about evolution. But readers of scientific press releases and journal articles may expect a clap of the hat in the face of such claims.
Bad news for organ harvesting
But here’s one question raised by the study that could become quite controversial:
The findings also raise questions about the brain’s resilience to lack of oxygen. It could be, Parnia says, that some people traditionally thought incapable of saving could actually be revived. “The traditional thinking among doctors is that the brain, once deprived of oxygen for five to ten minutes, dies,” he says. “We were able to show that the brain is quite robust in terms of its ability to withstand oxygen deprivation for prolonged periods, which opens new avenues for finding treatments for brain injuries in the future.” – Nuwer, Scientific American
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Indeed, the authors note in the study that “our data support studies that indicate that consciousness may be present despite clinically undetectable consciousness.” This includes under anesthesia where implicit learning may occur without explicit recall and in patients thought to be in persistent vegetative states (PVS). That won’t be good news for people who want to harvest organs or “pull the plug”.
Why are so few jobs affected these days?
Parnia and her team stick closely to the research discipline so that whatever they discover is taken seriously. Even so, in the past one might have expected more efforts to refute or set aside their conclusions. If greater neutrality is a trend, it follows two other recent developments: Philosopher from Durham University Professor of Philosophy from Durham University Philippe Goff has a new book on fine tuning of the universe for life. Maybe because he is a panpsychist, he is treated respectfully where, for example, a Christian making the same arguments would be dismissed. Likewise, Dartmouth College theoretical physicist Marcelo Gleiser wrote a book praising human singularity, which – while obvious – is supposed, in many circles, to be somehow anti-science. Ah, but Gleiser takes care to link it to The need of environmentalism, so it seems to go unnoticed.
Slowly, people find ways to express misconceptions that are obviously true without being canceled. Time will tell if this lasts.
You may also like to read: Researchers: People in a coma may have “hidden consciousness” Claassen and Edlow found that the brain patterns of a woman who couldn’t physically respond to commands showed that she recognized them. They and other researchers want to identify and work with the 15 to 20 percent of coma patients who can recover if identified and treated early enough.