Huh. So that’s what the crappy ending to Lost, one of my favorite shows up until the last episode, was about.
Doctors believe that a burst of brain activity occurs just before death and this could account for vivid “spiritual” experiences reported by those who come back from the brink. The researchers suggest this surge could be why some patients who have been revived when close to death report sensations such as walking towards a bright light or a feeling that they are floating above their body.
“We think the near-death experiences could be caused by a surge of electrical energy released as the brain runs out of oxygen,” said Dr Lakhmir Chawla, an intensive care doctor at George Washington University medical centre in Washington.
“As blood flow slows down and oxygen levels fall, the brain cells fire one last electrical impulse. It starts in one part of the brain and spreads in a cascade and this may give people vivid mental sensations.”
[…]
In the research he used an electroencephalograph (EEG), a device that measures brain activity, to monitor seven terminally ill people. The medical purpose of the devices was to make sure that the patients, suffering from conditions such as cancer and heart failure, were sufficiently sedated to be out of pain. However, Dr Chawla noticed that moments before death the patients experienced a burst in brainwave activity lasting from 30 seconds to three minutes.The activity was similar to that seen in people who are fully conscious, even though the patients appeared asleep and had no blood pressure. Soon after the surge abated, they were pronounced dead.
Just more proof there isn’t a higher power
If the spiritual white light effect is all due to brain activity, I know a few people who will be surprisingly immune.
Or maybe the brain activity is the soul’s preparation for departure?
And why will my comment cause anger in you anti-religionists?
It’s your brain going off like a FLASH BULB !!!
“We think the near-death experiences could be caused by…”
This isn’t science. It’s pure speculation.
And it was refuted many years ago by Elizabeth Kubler-Ross. She reports that some people see things (and later, describe them correctly) during their near-death experience – things that it would have been impossible for them to see from their hospital bed.
An interesting statistic – about 1 in 5 people recall some kind of spiritual or out-of-body experience after cardiac arrest.
I’ve had one, only one, supernatural experience in my life and it was “out of body” my consciousness floating above me looking down at me. It lasted about 2-3 minutes and was not drug induced, but I assume it was some release of something in my brain.
This is an EXCELLENT exercise. Do you take “your experience” as a baseline to understand the world?? Then you are an idiot. As so many of you demonstrate.
“pure speculation”–pure?
“soul preparation”–to be expected.
Heh, heh. Insanity–doing the same thing and hoping for a different result. Whenever these contests are begun, rational science vs imaginary mental defect, the science has always won.
I doubt the report by Kubler Ross is accurate. Its only sugar for the toothless. Every such report I have seen cannot be verified.
And so it goes.
Since all thought processes are composed of chemical reactions and electrical pulses, why would this be any different?
Using the ‘white light’ experience to prove or disprove the religious or supernatural is pretty stupid.
#6
People see things all the time while they are asleep that that they couldn’t have seen from bed: dreams.
Why do you assume that people who are not religious are angry? My experience is that non-religious people tend not to replace the absent religiosity with anything else, including anger.
If I conclude that claiming knowledge of post-life states is ridiculous why would I feel animosity for people who do? Mild disdain certainly, but not anger.
I thought the white light was the taser being applied for the 5th time.
If I were to speculate, like this ‘research’ does, I would speculate that the reason materialists waste so much time trying to disprove the unverifed is that they want to deprive others of the psychological comfort they so lack. Kind of a poor reason to waste money on speculation.
It certainly would be interesting to hear what Adam Curry would have to say on this topic.
It does not explain the flowing robes, harps playing Bach and Morgan Freeman in a white suit.
I’m entirely unimpressed by this article and the doctors assertions.
I can find nothing except speculation on the doctors part on the cause and effect of the near death experience.
Now compare that with this research which is currently being performed. Take special note of “The second test”
http://today.msnbc.msn.com/id/33055601/ns/today-today_health/
Didn’t we just do this story a couple of weeks ago? I feel like I’m having deja vu … again.
Ah Yea. Shame on you. First for reading ANYthing published by MSNBC and, second, for finding something of value in the article. We’ve known for years that some people remember what happened to them during resuscitation. Some even imagine they were hovering overhead to watch. Amazing what the brain can conjure after watching the very thing happen over and over again on TV. I have no doubt that some people maintain a level of consciousness and that would include the sense of hearing. You hear the staff working on you, you envision a scene from ER and off you go to the NDE races. Your MSNBC article says nothing except they are beginning to try to understand it. Ho hum.
If you want to read something fascinating go google up some stories about people who wake up during surgery. Thems some horror stories.
As for NDEs – I think Gary said it best in #2.
Unfortunately this will probably be the most brain activity that the majority of people will ever have. This kind of ruins it for any thought of going to be with their imaginary friend after the big dirt nap.
#4 – Are you saying the soul needs to turn on all the lights before it leaves? That’s fucked up. Normally you turn the lights off when you leave. Obviously the soul could give a shit about electric bills.
/not anti-religious; anti-delusional, anti-evangelical, anti-money grubbing and anti-priest/young boy UFIA
This isn’t even a new theory/explanation I remember Carl Sagan commenting on the white light phenomena in the early ’80. His position was very similar to the one posited in the story
Gary…. thanks. Luckily I wasn’t taking a sip of coffee at the time. 🙂
Can’t really use this as an example of there being no “higher power”, as it could be argued that “God” built this into human beings to serve as a gateway for the “soul” to leave the body and ascend to “heaven”. That electrical discharge is the brain creating the gateway in preperation of death.
It could also be a defense mechanism built in to the brain that reacts to trauma. In the case of most deaths, a lack of blood and oxygen causing brain cells to start dying in mass. By giving the brain a huge shot of activity, it hopes that it will be enough to allow the body to get out of harms way and recover.
I’ve always suspects that LSD is simply a poison that targets brain cells. And that the “trip” it gives is simply the brain’s reaction to this trauma. Sort of like “Death Light”. Same for mushrooms and other hallucinogenics.
What if, there is a spiritual dimension to the universe. What if when you die, your spirit goes to that dimension with the spiritual values it was capable of acquiring while here. Since no one that’s ever been undeniably and verifiably dead for a reasonable amount of time has ever come back… The rational mind will accept nothing less than proof, and anytime you try to rationalize something spiritual it comes out sounding like superstition or philosophy.
What if the spiritual dimension is as antagonistic to the rational as the rational is to the spiritual. Maybe it’d be a good idea to work both aspects, not in preparation for some theoretical afterlife, but just to be a more rounded and complete individual.
This sensation also often occurs to people who have near death experiences, which means not everyone who experiences this dies afterwards. You have to question why an all knowing god would have someone experience this if he knew they weren’t going to die. Also, the scientific explanation has evidence to back it up, whereas your explanation has no proof. Why must we accept a theory that doesn’t have any proof of any kind to support it?
# 20 Grey said, “…it could be argued that “God” built this into human beings…”
As I’ve said before, you cannot have a logical discussion when one side’s answer to the tough questions is: Then a miracle happens.
OK maybe it’s just me, but “researchers suggest”, doesn’t sound like hard science to me. “researchers suggest”, sounds like they are asking me to believe them, because; it seems plausible.
Where is the experimental validation?? That’s what science is about, experiential validation; so where is it?
Wow, so somebody actually spent money to duplicate research that came to the exact same conclusion in the early 1970’s… Way to go. In the mean-time, real people are out of work. Maybe it will make them feel better to be told again that there is no God.
Sure, this is perhaps unknowable, but the existence of an afterlife is one of the “biggest of the big” questions and you begrudge a scientist trying to take a crack at it? Through time, many things have been considered unknowable. I hate to think that scientists should avoid everything that the consensus believes to be unknowable, because it makes the consensus uncomfortable.
Are those of you who take the near-death experiences at face value so thin-skinned and insecure that you think funding should be pulled on such research? If your beliefs are so fragile that they are threatened by a small study- perhaps you need more robust beliefs.
This guy, based on what little I could find, did not seem Hell-bent (pardon the pun) on disproving the existence of God.
A lot of people firmly, firmly believed that the Earth was the center of Universe at one time. I suppose we shouldn’t have shaken their faith and even have tried to explain an alternative.
And, oh yes, many Christians believe that God only created Man here. On Earth. We must be kind and respect their faith and not entertain any of this Alien nonsense.
You liked Lost UNTIL the final episode? You don’t like resolution of your stories? I suppose you just hated the end of Murder She Wrote or any other mysteries. And when Keyser Soze is revealed at the end, that just made you hate the movie.
#27 MikeN
Tell me you didn’t just throw one of my favorite movies in with those crappy TV series!
This research doesn’t explain why so many millions of people around the world have spiritual experiences every day including telepathy, pre-cognitive dreams and seeing visions of those who are apparently dead. The people who are seeing these things are in good health and nowhere near death. How do these scientific atheists explain this.
I believe this research is conducted by those who have an active agenda of promoting their atheistic beliefs and so they will filter all evidence through that prism. There seems to be an underlying attempt here to destroy humanity’s belief in their spiritual experiences and in G-d and religion.
I take their findings with a large grain of salt.
There are always going to be things that are unknown to us. However, god is not the default explanation to everything that we don’t know. If we just decided that god is the explanation for everything and didn’t question it, we would still believe that the earth is at the center of the universe. Religion raises many more questions than it solves, which is something you should look into.
# 29 shoolaroon said, “…spiritual experiences every day including telepathy, pre-cognitive dreams and seeing visions of those who are apparently dead.”
You left out female orgasm.
#28, both are deserving of being on par, particularly Murder She Wrote. It was written by the same guy who did Babylon 5, and he made a point of making the mysteries solvable by an observant watcher.