Wednesday 14 September 2011

NEAR DEATH EXPERIENCES `EXPLAINED` BY SCIENCE

A vision of a light at the end of a dark tunnel is sometimes reported by people who have near-death experiences, but studies suggest the sight may be the result of oxygen deprivation.
CREDIT: VinnyPrime, Stock.xchng
Near-death experiences are often thought of as mystical phenomena, but research is now revealing scientific explanations for virtually all of their common features. The details of what happens in near-death experiences are now known widely—a sense of being dead, a feeling that one's "soul" has left the body, a voyage toward a bright light, and a departure to another reality where love and bliss are all-encompassing.

Approximately 3 percent of the U.S. population says they have had a near-death experience, according to a Gallup poll. Near-death experiences are reported across cultures, with written records of them dating back to ancient Greece. Not all of these experiences actually coincide with brushes with death—one study of 58 patients who recounted near-death experiences found 30 were not actually in danger of dying, although most of them thought they were.

Recently, a host of studies has revealed potential underpinnings for all the elements of such experiences. "Many of the phenomena associated with near-death experiences can be biologically explained," says neuroscientist Dean Mobbs, at the University of Cambridge's Medical Research Council Cognition and Brain Sciences Unit. Mobbs and Caroline Watt at the University of Edinburgh detailed this research online August 17 in Trends in Cognitive Sciences.

For instance, the feeling of being dead is not limited to near-death experiences—patients with Cotard or "walking corpse" syndrome hold the delusional belief that they are deceased. This disorder has occurred following trauma, such as during advanced stages of typhoid and multiple sclerosis, and has been linked with brain regions such as the parietal cortex and the prefrontal cortex—"the parietal cortex is typically involved in attentional processes, and the prefrontal cortex is involved in delusions observed in psychiatric conditions such as schizophrenia," Mobbs explains. Although the mechanism behind the syndrome remains unknown, one possible explanation is that patients are trying to make sense of the strange experiences they are having.
Out-of-body experiences are also now known to be common during interrupted sleep patterns that immediately precede sleeping or waking. For instance, sleep paralysis, or the experience of feeling paralyzed while still aware of the outside world, is reported in up to 40 percent of all people and is linked with vivid dreamlike hallucinations that can result in the sensation of floating above one's body. A 2005 study found that out-of-body experiences can be artificially triggered by stimulating the right temporoparietal junction in the brain, suggesting that confusion regarding sensory information can radically alter how one experiences one's body.

A variety of explanations might also account for reports by those dying of meeting the deceased. Parkinson's disease patients, for example, have reported visions of ghosts, even monsters. The explanation? Parkinson's involves abnormal functioning of dopamine, a neurotransmitter that can evoke hallucinations. And when it comes to the common experience of reliving moments from one's life, one culprit might be the locus coeruleus, a midbrain region that releases noradrenaline, a stress hormone one would expect to be released in high levels during trauma. The locus coeruleus is highly connected with brain regions that mediate emotion and memory, such as the amygdala and hypothalamus.

In addition, research now shows that a number of medicinal and recreational drugs can mirror the euphoria often felt in near-death experiences, such as the anesthetic ketamine, which can also trigger out-of-body experiences and hallucinations. Ketamine affects the brain's opioid system, which can naturally become active even without drugs when animals are under attack, suggesting trauma might set off this aspect of near-death experiences, Mobbs explains.

Finally, one of the most famous aspects of near-death hallucinations is moving through a tunnel toward a bright light. Although the specific causes of this part of near-death experiences remain unclear, tunnel vision can occur when blood and oxygen flow is depleted to the eye, as can happen with the extreme fear and oxygen loss that are both common to dying.
Altogether, scientific evidence suggests that all features of the near-death experience have some basis in normal brain function gone awry. Moreover, the very knowledge of the lore regarding near-death episodes might play a crucial role in experiencing them—a self-fulfilling prophecy. Such findings "provide scientific evidence for something that has always been in the realm of paranormality," Mobbs says. "I personally believe that understanding the process of dying can help us come to terms with this inevitable part of life."
One potential obstacle to further research on near-death experiences will be analyzing them experimentally, says cognitive neuroscientist Olaf Blanke at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Lausanne in Switzerland, who has investigated out-of-body experiences. Still, "our work has shown that this can be done for out-of-body experiences, so why not for near-death-experience-associated sensations?"
Source: Live Science

My view:


This is another example of scientists attempting to explain away the paranormal by comparing effects experienced to N.D.E`s to known chemical or psychological causatives.
BUT like all good scientists, they really cannot say categorically that N.D.E`s are explainable with hard scientific facts, because there are none. And to indicate this, I`ve shown in bold type where they actually admit this, and predictably try to hypothesise in `psycho-babble` why they think they are right. 
In reality they are offering an opinion, nothing more and nothing less. 
Science in practical applications has advanced human civilisation from the Dark Ages to the present century.
Without science, we would still be hunting with bows and clubs.
However, when scientists attempt to disprove spirituality they invariably fall on their own swords and this `research` is nothing short of that.
There are no facts, just comparisons and opinions.


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6 comments:

  1. I agree with your point of view Chris.
    When I became that ill that I couldn't go work outside anymore than I had to hear so many times that I was too lazy to work...and much more.
    Doctors did'nt know what was wrong and finally I arrived at a psyhiatrist (which after a long time seemed to have had lessons during 6y from 2 of my fahters' cousins and he had an uncle who was friend of those cousins = SYNCHRONICITY...LOL).
    He could'nt help me... said that I was not an example of depression, but I did stay in contact with him because I needed documents of being ill for the institution for which I worked. A few years later I tried to manipulate the psychiatrist to write something as, that I had some kind of mental disease. But I did'nt succeed. One moment I just asked him to put on paper that I was insane one way or another. I still see his face for my eyes when he said : why you will me to put on paper that you have a mental disease ? I cannot make that ! If I say to someone that he or she has a mental disease than they deny it and you are the contrary, you have not such a disease and you want me to say and to write that you do have !
    I said : yes you can, because I told you about some of my experiences with the other world or other realms.
    He again : that doesn't mean that you have a mental disease. You just have mystical experiences.
    I again : I just want to have a label so they cannot tell anymore that I am too lazy to work...

    That man believed in the paranormal.

    About the light tunnel experience, I cannot say anything about it because when I was in other realms I did'nt have that experience.
    But for me, maybe, the light tunnel is the spine and the light that is seen before they come in a place of peace is the crown chakra (I think this because when I was out than I entered by the opposite way and the warmth was coming into my body from top silently towards the fingers and feet).

    If someone is dying, the spirit (which is our essence) is leaving the body that way. If you want to know when someone is dying how far the proces is than feel the feet and the legs and so on... if the persons is still breathing and feels warm but for example his body is cold from the feet till above the knees, than you know that silently the soul is leaving the body.

    But that are just part of my experiences and my thoughts about it and I think that everyone will experience it in a different way because everyone is unique. I cannot say that it I am right and that this is the rule. Contrary, everyone has his own truth.
    The only thing I think that is right is that we people with our brain that is only more or less for 10 percent active that we cannot understand it with the brain, even if we are scientists. And this means that we cannot give defenitions and securities about that all.

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  2. Beautiful painting !

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  3. This comment has been removed by the author.

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  4. (Sorry Chris, had to re-post - as I had some editing in a paragraph that I needed to do.)...

    Wonderful and very interesting article Chris! I will completely and totally agree with you when you said, "In reality they are offering an opinion, nothing more and nothing less."

    I want to share a story - something that I will always remember....

    A while back, my father had a very serious heart arrhythmia that was caused by a birth defect within/around his heart. He got very sick, at one point, due to this arrhythmia. (This was before we knew what was wrong.)

    He went to lie down to rest, and when he did, my mother who had been by his side and taking his pulse, yelled out, "He doesn't have a pulse!" (Imagine the fear that struck through us 3 children - my younger brother, younger sister, and I - as we stood by the bed, unsure if our dad would wake up again.)

    Luckily, he did get his pulse back shortly afterwards - I would say no more than 20 seconds after my mom yelled, "He doesn't have a pulse!"

    My dad recovered fortunately, and then told us of a tunnel he had been through ("blacker than black" as he described it), went towards a light at the end of this tunnel, and then on the other side of this tunnel, saw a large gate with lock around it. (He said when he saw this, he understood it wasn't "his time" to go yet.)

    My dad went to the hospital soon after this episode happened and this is where we found out about this birth defect that caused him to have this problem. (They ended up doing surgery to fix the issues - and I'm happy to say that he's alive and kicking today.)

    Because I have been close to someone who has actually had a near-death experience - never will these scientists ever convince me that the near-death-experience/out-of-body experience is nothing more than the brain's and/or body's way of dealing with death in a physical sense. Never will they ever convince me that the tunnel and the light that people often report seeing is a result of blood and oxygen flow depletion to the eye!...Never will they convince me that what my dad experienced/saw was nothing more than a "hallucination" - because he's a good, honest man and would not have any reason in this world to make up a story like that!...

    Nor, will these scientists ever be able convince the millions of other people, from ALL AROUND THE WORLD, that their experiences can be "explained away" by their faulty and baseless theories and opinions...

    http://iands.org/home.html

    Science is great, when it's used for the right reasons. (But there have been many times when it's been abused and misused for the wrong reasons - and trying to "explain away" the near-death experience and all that surrounds it, is one of those wrong reasons, in my humble opinion.)

    AHEM. Sorry. Rant done. ;-D

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  5. A great documentary done by the BBC...

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u1vWoUoiaP4

    (Unfortunately, word/rumor has it that this documentary was only shown on tv for a little while, until it was pulled off the air waves. This proves that there are some very small/simple-minded people out there, that will not accept nor see anything beyond what their [physical] eyes can see!)

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  6. Sorry Chris, one more -

    Everyone, please watch *and* listen to this very carefully...

    http://youtu.be/gVjfhsBaups

    How come something have such a profound effect - if it was not something as spectacular as a near-death experience??

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