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TagNear-death experiences

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blue sky ocean

Are Near-Death Experiences Just Another Branch of Research Now?

We should hope so because there are a number of interesting allied research areas that would be better studied without preexisting prejudice against NDEs
In a discussion at Psychology Today, a philosopher notes that her dissertation supporting the reality of near-death experiences was received without hostility. Read More ›
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light at the end of the tunnel with silhouette of man

Gary Habermas on Near-Death Experiences

What is the evidence and how many reports of this phenomenon do we have?

In October of this past year, Angel Studios released a documentary about near-death experiences (NDEs) called After Death, regarding people who reported a postmortem perception of the world and functioning consciousness after being physically declared dead. The synopsis on the site reads, After Death is a gripping feature film that explores the afterlife based on real near-death experiences, conveyed by scientists, authors, and survivors. From the New York Times bestselling authors who brought you titles like 90 Minutes in Heaven, Imagine Heaven, and To Heaven and Back, emerges a cinematic peek beyond the veil that examines the spiritual and scientific dimensions of mortality, inviting viewers to contemplate the possibility of life after death. After Death (2023) | Official Website | Now Streaming on Angel Read More ›

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Expérience de mort imminente ou EMI, near death experience

Gary Habermas on the Scientific Evidence for Near-Death Experiences

Is there strong scientific evidence for near-death experiences? On this episode of Mind Matters, we’re happy to share host Andrew McDiarmid’s recent ID The Future conversation with Dr. Gary Habermas about his chapter evaluating the evidence for near-death experiences in the recent book Minding the Brain. As Dr. Habermas explains, most near-death accounts contain both objective and subjective elements. While personal testimony about other Read More ›

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Photo taken of a heartbeat on the monitor

Yes, the Film on Near-Death Experiences Is Another “Hated Hit”

As with Sound of Freedom, critics trashed After Death but audiences loved it. And the critics just aren’t keeping up with the science
When even science mags are not trashing near-death researchers, critics who just assume it’s all bunk should really just get out more. Read More ›
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Doctor Defibrillating Critical Patient In Hospital

Near-Death Experience Study: Brain Is Active After Death

Science media are making surprisingly few efforts to attack or explain away the team’s findings
In their Discussion, the authors conclude, “The recalled experience surrounding death now merits further genuine empirical investigation without prejudice.” Read More ›
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Butterfly on a glass ball on the beach refecting the lake and sky

Physicist: Life After Death Is Incompatible With Physics

In 2011, Sean Carroll wrote an essay for Scientific American on why — from a science perspective — our minds must be extinguished at death

Back in 2011, particle physicist Sean M. Carroll wrote a guest blog at Scientific American, dismissing the idea of life after death or the immortality of the soul. He began by responding to astrophysicist Adam Frank’s reflections at NPR: For myself I remain fully and firmly agnostic on the question. If ever there was a place where firm convictions seem misplaced this is it. There simply is no controlled, experimental verifiable information to support either the “you rot” vs. “you go on” positions. In the absence of said information we are all free to believe as we like but, I would argue, it behooves us to remember that truly “public” knowledge on the subject — the kind science exemplifies — Read More ›

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Near death experience ascend up towards the light in the dark tunnel

Study: 1 in 5 Cardiac Patients May Have Near-Death Experience

The researchers found spikes of brain activity, including so-called gamma, delta, theta, alpha, and beta waves up to an hour into CPR

Recent research shows that one in five people who survive cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR) after a heart attack ‘may describe lucid experiences of death that occurred while they were seemingly unconscious and on the brink of death”: Led by researchers at NYU Grossman School of Medicine and elsewhere, the study involved 567 men and women whose hearts stopped beating while hospitalized and who received CPR between May 2017 and March 2020 in the United States and United Kingdom. Despite immediate treatment, fewer than 10% recovered sufficiently to be discharged from hospital. Survivors reported having unique lucid experiences, including a perception of separation from the body, observing events without pain or distress, and a meaningful evaluation of life, including of their actions, Read More ›

A man going through the dark old tunnel. Tunnel with traffic lights and a silhouette of a man

Remember When Near-Death Experiencers Were Mental Cases?

Scientists “knew” it wasn’t true. Then modern medicine started bringing people back from the dead…

Here’s ScienceDaily’s writeup of the near-death experiences paper published at the New York Academy of Sciences. It didn’t used to be the case that near-death experiences got written up anywhere except in a psychiatrist’s notebook. Something is changing: “Cardiac arrest is not a heart attack, but represents the final stage of a disease or event that causes a person to die,” lead author Parnia explains. “The advent of cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR) showed us that death is not an absolute state, rather, it’s a process that could potentially be reversed in some people even after it has started. “What has enabled the scientific study of death,” he continues, “is that brain cells do not become irreversibly damaged within minutes of oxygen Read More ›

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tunnel of light

Neuroscientists: Near-death perceptions not just hallucinations

Published in the Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences

One of the authors, Sam Parnia is a well-known researcher in this area: Due to advances in resuscitation and critical care, many people are surviving near-death experiences. Survivors’ recalled experiences are not consistent with hallucinations, but instead, follow a specific narrative arc involving perception. Scientific advances in the 20th and 21st centuries have led to a major evolution in the understanding of death. At the same time, for decades, people who have survived an encounter with death have recalled unexplained lucid episodes involving heightened consciousness and awareness. These have been reported using the popular—yet scientifically ill-defined—term “near-death experiences”. A multidisciplinary team of national and international leaders, led by Sam Parnia, MD, Ph.D., director of Critical Care and Resuscitation Research at Read More ›

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2d illustration Human Male Muscle Body

Discussing Consciousness and the Mind-Body Problem

What does it even mean to be aware of something, to be conscious? Why do the vast majority of people only have one consciousness? Will computers ever experience consciousness? On this Bingecast, Dr. Robert J. Marks and Dr. Angus Menuge discuss these questions and more. Show Notes 00:01:36 | Introducing Dr. Angus Menuge 00:07:02 | Near-death experiences 00:10:32 | The Read More ›

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3d rendering of human  brain on technology background

Neuroscience, Quantum Physics, and the Nature of Reality

Dr. Michael Egnor and Dr. Bruce Gordon discuss quantum mechanics, the nature of reality, idealism and how to interpret the finding of modern neuroscience. Prepare to cover a lot of ground on this Mind Matter News Bingecast. Show Notes 00:00:43 | Introducing Dr. Bruce Gordon 00:02:00 | Idealism 00:03:37 | Plato’s theory of forms 00:05:08 | Kantian idealism 00:09:17 | Read More ›

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Beautiful night sky, the Milky Way, moon and the trees. Elements of this image furnished by NASA.

“If Nobody Looks at the Moon, Does It Exist?” and Other Metaphysical Questions

If no one is looking at the moon, does it exist? Why has materialism been around for so long? Will computers ever be conscious? What happens to our consciousness after we die? Bernardo Kastrup tackles these questions and more with Michael Egnor in another bingecast! Show Notes 0:00:28 | Introducing Dr. Bernardo Kastrup 0:01:22 | How quantum mechanics points to Read More ›

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Underpass near the subway in the city in the late evening

Do Only Western Religious People Have Near-Death Experiences?

Even famous atheist philosopher A. J. Ayer had a near-death experience

Gregory Shushan, author of Near-Death Experience in Indigenous Religions (2018) notes in a recent article at Psyche that near-death experiences are not a new discovery: NDEs have been popularly recognised in the West since the mid-1970s, but people from the largest empires to the smallest hunter-gatherer societies have been having them throughout history. Accounts are found in ancient sacred texts, historical documents, the journals of explorers and missionaries, and the ethnographic reports of anthropologists. Among the hundreds I’ve collected are those of a 7th-century BCE Chinese provincial ruler, a 4th-century BCE Greek soldier, a 12th-century Belgian saint, a 15th-century Mexica princess, an 18th-century British admiral, a 19th-century Ghanaian victim of human sacrifice, and a Soviet man who’d apparently killed himself Read More ›

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Looking through glasses to bleach nature landscape - tulips field. Color blindness. World perception during depression. Medical condition. Health and disease concept.

Dr. Angus Menuge: Models of Consciousness (Part II)

What is it like to see a red rose? To smell a red rose? To feel pain? In this week’s podcast, Dr. Robert J. Marks and Dr. Angus Menuge continue their discussion on philosophies of the mind, delving into competing definitions of consciousness. Show Notes 00:26 | Introducing Dr. Angus Menuge 01:01 | Phenomenal consciousness and qualia 07:25 | Experiencing Read More ›

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Chicken eggs in hands. Selective focus.

Dr. Angus Menuge: The Mind-Body Problem (Part I)

The mind-body problem is much like the chicken-and-egg dilemma: Which came first? In today’s episode, Dr. Robert J. Marks sits down with Dr. Angus Menuge to discuss the basics of the mind-body problem, its philosophical history, and whether artificial intelligence ever has a chance at truly replicating the human mind. Show Notes 01:12 | Introducing Dr. Angus Menuge, professor and Read More ›

Creative background, the human brain on a blue background, the hemisphere is responsible for logic, and responsible for creativity. different hemispheres of the brain, 3D illustration, 3D render
Creative background, the human brain on a blue background, the hemisphere is responsible for logic, and responsible for creativity. different hemispheres of the brain, 3D illustration, 3D render

Bruce Gordon on the Meaning of Neuroscience (Part III)

In this third and final episode with Dr. Bruce Gordon, host Michael Egnor picks Gordon’s brain on the overlaps between historical metaphysical perspectives and modern neuroscience. What does St. Thomas Aquinas have to say about metaphysical realities, and how does that compare to Plato’s idealism? Who is right? And what can near-death experiences and other phenomena tell us about the Read More ›

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Field of poppies

Does Freezing the Brain’s “Connectome” Offer Hope of Immortality?

Some cryogenics researchers are looking at methods of freezing the brain’s memory apparatus in the hope of reviving it one day and saving it as an artificial intelligence

According to Philip Jaekl, a writer with neuroscience training, the connectome is the “ complete network of neurons and all the connections between them, called synapses.” Taking a leaf from Sebastian Seung’s book, Connectome: How the Brain’s Wiring Makes Us Who We Are, he argues, “You are your connectome.” In that case, Seung’s “you” is very complex. Many types of memory are mediated through the connectome. Jaekl writes, Thus, a key to unlocking the correspondence between the connectome and memory is to elucidate the entire circuitry of the brain. Tracing the wiring at this scale is no easy task when considering the sheer complexity involved. A mere cubic millimetre of brain tissue contains around 50,000 neurons, with an astonishing total Read More ›

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light at the end of the tunnel

The MD Who Studies Near Death Experiences Is NOT Religious

Greyson was motivated by a desire to understand experiences that materialist approaches have simply not explained satisfactorily

Last week, we talked about psychiatrist Bruce Greyson and his new book, After (2021), discussing near-death experiences (NDEs). The Guardian ran an interview with Greyson the same day, in which he offers some perspectives that may be useful in trying to sort out the issues: ● Modern neuroscience does not have a simple answer that dismisses NDEs. When I ask Greyson why he decided to publish After now, after all these years, he explains that “we had to wait until we had enough knowledge about near-death experiences to be able to understand what was going on,” by which he means not that we know what NDEs are, but that advances in science have allowed us to rule out a heap Read More ›

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Near death experience

Physician Explains Why He Takes Near-Death Experiences Seriously

Near-death experiences don’t fit easily into traditional science categories because they occur — often with life-changing effects — when the brain is damaged or unconscious

Health and science writer Markham Heid recounts a story from psychiatrist Bruce Greyson’s book After (2021) that typifies the near-death experiences (NDEs) that have excited research interest: The truck driver’s story sounded far-fetched. The man claimed that in the middle of his quadruple bypass heart surgery — during which he was fully anesthetized and his eyes were taped shut — he had “come to” and found that he was looking down at his own body and the doctors preparing to operate on it. He described the scene in detail, and he recalled that his surgeon had waved his elbows in the air as if he were mimicking a bird flapping its wings. Later, when asked about his patient’s peculiar account, Read More ›

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Charting Consciousness.

Michael Egnor: What Happens to Our Consciousness After We Die?

Computer programmer and philosopher Bernardo Kastrup provides a surprising answer

In this week’s podcast, “Can Computers Think?”, Michael Egnor continued his discussion with philosopher and computer programmer Bernardo Kastrup. As a scientist, Bernardo has worked for The European Organization for Nuclear Research and for Phillips Research Laboratories, and has authored many academic papers and books. This week, they look at a big question, “Will computers ever be conscious?”. But Egnor brought up an even bigger one: “What happens to our consciousness after we die?” As a scientist, Kastrup has worked for The European Organization for Nuclear Research and for Phillips Research Laboratories and has authored many academic papers and books. He is a leading advocate of cosmopsychism, the idea that intelligence did not randomly evolve somehow to help life forms Read More ›