People Experience 'New Dimensions of Reality' When Dying, Groundbreaking Study Reports (vice.com) 110
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Motherboard: Scientists have witnessed brain patterns in dying patients that may correlate to commonly reported "near-death" experiences (NDEs) such as lucid visions, out-of-body sensations, a review of one's own life, and other "dimensions of reality," reports a new study. The results offer the first comprehensive evidence that patient recollections and brain waves point to universal elements of NDEs. During an expansive multi-year study led by Sam Parnia, an intensive care doctor and an associate professor in the department of medicine at NYU Langone Health, researchers observed 567 patients in 25 hospitals around the world as they underwent cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR) after suffering cardiac arrest, most of which were fatal.
Electroencephalogram (EEG) brain signals captured from dozens of the patients revealed that episodes of heightened consciousness occurred up to an hour after cardiac arrest. Though most of the patients in the study were sadly not resuscitated by CPR, 53 patients were brought back to life. Of the survivors, 11 patients reported a sense of awareness during CPR and six reported a near-death experience. Parnia and his colleagues suggest that the transition from life to death can trigger a state of disinhibition in the brain that "appears to facilitate lucid understanding of new dimensions of reality -- including people's deeper consciousness -- all memories, thoughts, intentions and actions towards others from a moral and ethical perspective," a finding with profound implications for CPR research, end-of-life care, and consciousness, among other fields, according to a new study published in Resuscitation. [...]
"One of the things that was unique about this project is that this was the first time ever where scientists had put together a method to examine for signs of lucidity and consciousness in people as they're being revived by looking for brain markers, or brain signatures of consciousness, using an EEG device as well as a brain oxygen monitor," Parnia explained. "Most doctors are taught and believe that the brain dies after about five or 10 minutes of oxygen deprivation," Parnia said. "One of the key points that comes out of this study is that that is actually not true. Although the brain flatlines after the heart stops, and that happens within seconds, it doesn't mean that it's permanently damaged and [has] died. It's just hibernating. What we were able to show is that actually, the brain can respond and restore function again, even after an hour later, which opens up a whole window of opportunity for doctors to start new treatments." Indeed, the study reports that "near-normal/physiological EEG activity (delta, theta, alpha, beta rhythms) consistent with consciousness and a possible resumption of a network-level of cognitive and neuronal activity emerged up to 35-60 minutes into CPR. This is the first report of biomarkers of consciousness during CA/CPR."
Electroencephalogram (EEG) brain signals captured from dozens of the patients revealed that episodes of heightened consciousness occurred up to an hour after cardiac arrest. Though most of the patients in the study were sadly not resuscitated by CPR, 53 patients were brought back to life. Of the survivors, 11 patients reported a sense of awareness during CPR and six reported a near-death experience. Parnia and his colleagues suggest that the transition from life to death can trigger a state of disinhibition in the brain that "appears to facilitate lucid understanding of new dimensions of reality -- including people's deeper consciousness -- all memories, thoughts, intentions and actions towards others from a moral and ethical perspective," a finding with profound implications for CPR research, end-of-life care, and consciousness, among other fields, according to a new study published in Resuscitation. [...]
"One of the things that was unique about this project is that this was the first time ever where scientists had put together a method to examine for signs of lucidity and consciousness in people as they're being revived by looking for brain markers, or brain signatures of consciousness, using an EEG device as well as a brain oxygen monitor," Parnia explained. "Most doctors are taught and believe that the brain dies after about five or 10 minutes of oxygen deprivation," Parnia said. "One of the key points that comes out of this study is that that is actually not true. Although the brain flatlines after the heart stops, and that happens within seconds, it doesn't mean that it's permanently damaged and [has] died. It's just hibernating. What we were able to show is that actually, the brain can respond and restore function again, even after an hour later, which opens up a whole window of opportunity for doctors to start new treatments." Indeed, the study reports that "near-normal/physiological EEG activity (delta, theta, alpha, beta rhythms) consistent with consciousness and a possible resumption of a network-level of cognitive and neuronal activity emerged up to 35-60 minutes into CPR. This is the first report of biomarkers of consciousness during CA/CPR."
Do you want to be resuscitated after an hour? (Score:5, Insightful)
I'd imagine there is pretty good evidence that after an hour of oxygen depravation, your brain might be recoverable, but it's also going to have a very high chance of being severely damaged at the higher function level.
It also doesn't seem surprising that the effects of your brain progressively failing are not dissimilar to those from taking drugs that are designed to mess up the balance of brain systems.
Re:Do you want to be resuscitated after an hour? (Score:4, Interesting)
Indeed. I have no desire for "therapies" that leave me profoundly brain damaged, because some level of function is restored. As it is I think they save people at times, such as after a significant cardiac event, who never really recover. Our fear of death drives us to intervene when it really would be better to let nature take its course.
Re:Do you want to be resuscitated after an hour? (Score:5, Informative)
Indeed. I have no desire for "therapies" that leave me profoundly brain damaged, because some level of function is restored. As it is I think they save people at times, such as after a significant cardiac event, who never really recover. Our fear of death drives us to intervene when it really would be better to let nature take its course.
If CPR can be started as soon as a person's heart fails (i.e within seconds of a person falling to the ground) and it can be done correctly then a person's life can be saved and they won't suffer any loss of cognitive function. There are thousands of these people living their lives today thanks to pacemakers.
The biggest obstacle they face in recovery is that part of their heart muscle dies, not brain damage. That can never be fixed unless the entire heart is replaced.
Muscle is never repaired. If you're young enough you can grow new muscles in your limbs, but you can't ever sew muslces back together, nor do they "heal". They might stop bleeding but they don't join up together again.
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Somebody's been feeding you a line.
If you've had a heart attack. Damage done.
CPR simply maintains you at a minimal rate for a short period. You're still running low oxygen, low blood flow compared to healthy operation.
And the brain can only live so long in such a state.
Gotten to QUICKLY, yes, you can recover.
This doesn't mean damage hasn't been done.
And you have no basis for your claims about loss of cognitive function.
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Or possibly an entirely new religion. I am fascinated by your friend's out of body experience, and would like to subscribe to his newsletter!
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There is a reason nitrogen narcosis is dangerous for divers (can start kicking in about 110-120 feet down), and other-than-nice-open-water-in-day environments - wreck diving, night diving, cave diving, etc - can compound the danger quickly.
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And I find it kind of funny
I find it kind of sad
The dreams in which I'm dying
are the best I've ever had.
source [youtube.com]
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Indeed, Indeed. I have DNR order on file that if I've going to be revived with any significant physical or mental impairment it will be time to move on.
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This sensibility has always struck me as incredibly patronizing.
Results vary, but I've been around people with traumatic brain injuries and cognitive diseases, and they seem happy enough. At least they aren't committing suicide en masse.
Yours strikes me as a fear of getting old.
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These people were manually pumping the patients' lungs and heart to the beat of Staying Alive for over 30 minutes. Oxygen deprivation didn't enter into it.
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These people were manually pumping the patients' lungs and heart to the beat of Staying Alive for over 30 minutes.
They should have tried "Holiday in Cambodia" for 10 minutes.
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I'd imagine there is pretty good evidence that after an hour of oxygen depravation, your brain might be recoverable, but it's also going to have a very high chance of being severely damaged at the higher function level.
It also doesn't seem surprising that the effects of your brain progressively failing are not dissimilar to those from taking drugs that are designed to mess up the balance of brain systems.
Damn good evidence! FTA: Despite immediate treatment, less than 10 percent of the 567 patients studied, who received CPR in the hospital, recovered sufficiently to be discharged.
Jezzuz! At some point, modern medicine is indistinguishable from torture. So I might be dead if it was a normal world, while my doctors decide to extend the process while leaving me more messed up than I was before I "died" the first time.
Eke out a few more weeks of my carcass twitching, but more money for the hospital I suppos
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Damn good evidence! FTA: Despite immediate treatment, less than 10 percent of the 567 patients studied, who received CPR in the hospital, recovered sufficiently to be discharged.
Jezzuz! At some point, modern medicine is indistinguishable from torture. So I might be dead if it was a normal world, while my doctors decide to extend the process while leaving me more messed up than I was before I "died" the first time.
Eke out a few more weeks of my carcass twitching, but more money for the hospital I suppose.
There's lots of pertient information that's not presented in TFA. The story might as well read "10% of 567 laptops that failed to boot were recovered."
The most important metric that's missing from TFA is a breakdown of response time - how long was it between the heart stopping before CPR was started. Other important metrics would be age and general condition of the person in question (ie. what % were obese.)
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This is what they don't tell you in CPR class. CPR's great on drowning and electrocution victims, but for people who have heart attacks severe enough to warrant CPR, it raises the survival rate from about 7.6% to 10%. In-hospital CPR survival rate for heart attacks is about 17%.
CPR doesn't *fix* anything. It keeps things running so you can get a more advanced intervention. Sometimes it can be a bridge between probable death and a full recovery, but in cases where there is an underlying problem that can'
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This is what they don't tell you in CPR class. CPR's great on drowning and electrocution victims, but for people who have heart attacks severe enough to warrant CPR, it raises the survival rate from about 7.6% to 10%. In-hospital CPR survival rate for heart attacks is about 17%.
This. I have CPR certification, and the one instructor told me the same thing offline. They don't tell you in the classes, probably because they want people to believe they are doing something good for someone.
It can even cause something called "CPR induced consiciousness", which is not a good thing at all.
Oh shit. Oh shit. That has to be seriously traumatic for the person performing CPR, and any bystanders. Especially non-professionals. A somewhat conscious person that you might have to abandon the CPR. Damn, that's nightmare fuel.
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Eke out a few more weeks of my carcass twitching, but more money for the hospital I suppose.
Welcome to TrumpCare, sucker!
I've felt that way my entire adult life, has nothing to do with healthcare.
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Of course you don't want to suffer catastrophic heart failure and loss of brain function!
But once upon a time, diabetes was a effectively a death sentence. So were heart attacks.
We've just gone from "we used to be sure everyone was dead in 10 minutes" to "for up to an hour, we can get 10% survival, 40% recovery of those, and we now have tools to detect in real time whether or not the patient will make it."
Don't have a heart attack for a few more years. Let's see how far the science can take us.
Near death (Score:4, Insightful)
>"53 patients were brought back to life"
Nobody is brought back to life from death. By definition, death is a permanent state in which you cannot survive (or be resuscitated). 53 patients were brought back from near death. Yes, it might be very difficult to define exactly at what point "death" is and we might never be able to do so. It is especially difficult since our resuscitation ability moves with technological progress, but let's get real about reasonable wording choices. At a minimum, one could say "brought back from clinical death", but even that is pretty mushy.
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It's in the sense that most of the physical infrastructure wasn't operating normally, yet people say they experienced higher levels of perception.
There's a few books by an academic neurosurgeon which explain the problem. He happened to suffer a severe bacterial infection on his brain, to a very serious degree, coma and near death, and according to his knowledge of how the brain works, all he should have been capable of hallucinating was a sick confused delerium, but instead his hallucinations were highly or
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>"Anyway, it all has to be researched, but we'll never learn anything if the topic is instantly dismissed."
Oh, I am not at all trying to dismiss the topic of near death experiences. It is very interesting and very much should be explored. I just oppose the silly notion that people are brought back from "death" or that such people are relaying experiences from being actually "dead." We need to be scientific and not metaphysical about the descriptions of things like alive, dead, and near-death.
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Yes, sorry, indeed it may cause a redefinition of "death".
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I read a book once, but it brought up a good point. What will happen to our society after we finally figure out what happens to us after death. I know it sounds ridiculous now but a few hundred years ago, going to the moon was ridiculous.
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Yes, very interesting issue. Either way. If death is final, that gets into some quite negative conclusions, like the unbearable lightness of being. But if it isn't, that kinda ruins the game, like, don't have to take everything so seriously.
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And a sick brain can't imagine that sort of thing.
Your anecdote supports the opposite argument, that a "sick brain" can imagine that sort of thing.
And... "sick brain?" What a weird and useless dichotomy.
Factual data. (Score:2)
How many did they kill?
How many did they give back life after one day?
None?
Then, they were hallucinating. Too much "isekai" reading.
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How many did they kill?
How many did they give back life after one day?
It seems that a few posters, like yourself, are treating this research as if it were a group of medical students re-inacting scenes from the movie "Flatliners."
TFA does not suggest that people were experimented on or invited to have a heart attack, rather it shares observations of 567 such events from 25 hospitals. To me the story raeds like it is about research involving observations made from dealing with real-world emergencies, not contrived situations.
Sounds like hallucinogens (Score:2)
"appears to facilitate lucid understanding of new dimensions of reality -- including people's deeper consciousness -- all memories, thoughts, intentions and actions towards others from a moral and ethical perspective,"
Sounds a lot like being high on certain hallucinogens. It would be interesting to compare these biomarkers with those.
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Actually in the NYU Langone article and video they say it's different from hallucinations but I'd love to know more about that. They seem to write off hallucinations as imaginary but they can also be rooted in memory.
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Part of the problem is people using the word "hallucination" to describe many different phenomenon, and "hallucinogen" to describe vastly different drugs with differing effects. This both reflects, and reinforces, the lack of understanding among the general public and much of the medical establishment.
Linguistically, the way we use the word "hallucination" parallels the historical tendency to lump every illness (physical and mental) together as types of demonic possession. "Influenza" is derived from the sa
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As for the study in the article though, it doesn't sound like much. I'm surprised that "hook a dying brain to an EEG and oxygen monitor" hadn't already been done. I'm thinking Neuralink-level tech (and beyond) could unlock some actual new insights.
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but the lines of inquiry now are following a formula of "Use drug X to treat DSM-V-recognized mental disorder Y"
In Oregon we've legalized psilocybin therapy (centers are accepting applications now) without any need for a specific diagnosis. It is entirely up to the licensed therapist to decide if a prospective patient might benefit from the treatment, in which case they can be enrolled.
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How much does it cost? I'd be surprised if it's affordable to normal people.
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normal people
Now look up median income.
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Like Psilocybin maybe.
It could be a chemical reaction of the brain reacting to oxygen deprivation, a programmed last ditch to revive itself and try to perhaps 'restart' the body. Experiences could be a side-effect.
Kinda "expensive" (Score:3)
Sounds like some hallucinogenic drugs could have the same effect with fewer dangerous side effects.
OC (Score:1)
That's what I was thinking. The body maybe turns the voltage up and adds some chemicals and you get increased function as a way to increase survival chance.
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Yes, a DMT dump (maybe from the pineal gland) helps preserve the brain oxygenation.
And, separately, rocket people out of their body.
Try the exogenous option some day, safely, and compare for yourself. Almost everybody is surprised.
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https://youtu.be/37OWL7AzvHo [youtu.be]
Dualist? (Score:5, Interesting)
Wikipedia [wikipedia.org] says he believes that the mind is "mediated by" but not "produced by" the brain. And that he advocates renaming "near death experience" to "actual death experience".
I'll go out on a limb and guess that he believes in life after death.
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I'll go out on a limb and guess that he believes in life after death.
Parnia is just another poshlost, like Chichikov in "Dead Souls".
If you don't know the book, just gogol it.
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Ah, so he's an idiot.
Re:Dualist? (Score:4, Insightful)
The notion of a "non-embodied mind" is an easy conclusion to jump to. It instantly resolves scientific questions about how the observed behaviors of subatomic particles could give rise to the phenomenon of "experience." (see: qualia [wikipedia.org] for greater clarity on what is meant here). It also neatly facilitates ideas of a possible afterlife (thus abating our instinctual fear of death).
But all of these are reasons why we would prefer the existence of mind separate from body. Nothing here gives any kind of evidence.
Our best observations of the world, collected over centuries of rigorous experimentation, show us nothing but matter and energy everywhere we look. It's physics all the way down! Furthermore, we have plenty of very strong evidence that all human behavior, including such acts as conversation, cognition, and perception, all happen right in the brain. Literally everything that is falsifiable points to this simple conclusion: the "mind" is what the brain does.
But this does not mean that consciousness is somehow not real (as Daniel Dennett famously proposed with books full of specious reasoning). The humbling but inarguable fact is that our science is limited to what we can observe. These subatomic particles are so tiny that we can not observe them directly. We build specialized machines that allow us to see their effects, so we can make reasonable inferences about them. That's the best we can do. It's pretty good, but it leaves open the glaring fact that there may be more to these subatomic particles than we know. Our models of them are limited to what we can observe about them, and there is no reason to expect that we can observe everything there is to observe about them. There is every reason to believe that there is unexplored territory here, and possibly even unexplorable territory here.
That does not mean that we have somehow gathered evidence that our ordinary experience of mind is the result of unobserved behavior of matter, but it does mean that such a hypothesis would be entirely consistent with physics, and would be more consistent with how literally everything else in the observed world works. (See Russelian Monism [stanford.edu] for some clarity on this idea).
We gain an answer to the hard problem of consciousness [utm.edu] that is maximally compatible with the best science of our day, making smaller and more modest assumptions than any disembodied mind theory does. But we lose our popular conception of the afterlife. Under such a model, the destruction of the brain IS the destruction of the person. Consciousness ends when the brains ceases. Oh, how horrible! But there is a saving grace....the constituents of consciousness (that is to say, the particles involved) continue to exist (the atoms in the brain continue to exist after it has decayed, they just change form. Same with whatever electrons used to be zipping around in it, and so on. And therefore, same with the unobserved aspects of these particles that have consciousness-producing potential). Everything that we actually are continues to exist, it merely changes form, recombines into something new (and conscious) in the future.
In short: we give up our notion of an immortal identity. But we gain an understanding of self that is consistent with science and experience (and, amusingly enough, consistent with Buddhist notions of "anatta" or "no-self").
So, I consider the notion of a magical separate mind substance to be lazy philosophy. It's more convenient and more pandering to our emotions. But less consistent with everything we have learned.
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I consider the notion of a magical separate mind substance to be lazy philosophy.
With apologies that the only reference to this of which I can immediately think is the novel "Software" by Rudy Rucker - an immortal identity, and indeed immortal consciousness, seems to be entirely compatible with physics. If we agree (and I think we do, from your post) that the self (in a frozen snapshot state) is represented by the informational content of the arrangement of a group of subatomic particles, we can then state that consciousness, the act of experiencing cognition, is a series of transitions
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Everything that we actually are continues to exist, it merely changes form, recombines into something new (and conscious) in the future.
Consciousness takes place within Reality only through organized energy. When the physical particles involved in the organization of that energy are dissipated, unless there is a structure for the organized energy to go to, that organization of energy is lost. Which means you are no longer existing within this Reality.
There could be higher realities... there might not be. Does it matter? All concerns from this Reality are washed away by Death.
Re: Dualist? (Score:5, Insightful)
There is no evidence to suggest there is an afterlife.
Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.
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For some reason, the only evidence we have is afterbirth.
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There is no evidence to suggest there is an afterlife.
Well then we will make our afterlife, with blackjack and hookers!
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Sounds better than sitting on clouds listening to harps all day.
Does Heaven even have a day? If there wasn't a sun, moon and stars until day 4 and earth and plants were on day 3 then I'm thinking heaven existed on day zero and doesn't have a day/night cycle. Just a random thought.
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There's plenty of evidence that memories are stored in the brain
An afterlife without your brain wouldn't be much of an afterlife. You wouldn't be "you" in any meaningful sense.
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Who cares? There's no evidence to suggest that there isn't an afterlife.
The meaninglessness of existence is absolute proof that there is no afterlife. YMMV.
New age nonsense (Score:2, Interesting)
Like an explosion after a machine malfunction does not signify a different operating state, there is absolutely no evidence that any of the measurements point to something that could be called an "understanding" of anything, let alone something profound. What it does show is that humans will invent a religion, even if they're not brought up with one.
Re:New age nonsense (Score:5, Insightful)
The summary is packed full of terminology abuse, such as:
"dimensions of reality" - how are sensations and memories "dimensions of reality"? ...:" - NOT A FINDING ... biomarkers of consciousness ..." - They know they are lying, they're using more correct terminology here.
"EEG brain signals captured from dozens of the patients revealed " - EEG signals were observed, they didn't reveal anything other than their existence
"episodes of heightened consciousness" - why "heightened"? What evidence of consciousness was even known?
"brought back to life" - as others have said, the patients were not dead, therefore where not "brought back"
"appears to facilitate lucid understanding of new dimensions of reality" - again with the nonsense "dimensions of reality"
"including people's deeper consciousness" - why "deeper"? perhaps it is just spurious signals not related to consciousness at all
"all memories, thoughts, intentions and actions towards others from a moral and ethical perspective" - ALL? Moral? Ethical? It would be impossible to test this.
"a finding with profound implications for
"looking for brain markers" - markers are not proof
"It's just hibernating" - HIBERNATING? So many things wrong with this.
"...consistent with consciousness
They noticed some interesting EEG signal in near-death patients. Is that surprising? Or is that a way to seek funding from people with an agenda, say the superstitious or religious.
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Thank you! I was going to post something similar.
This is hocus pocus nonsense talk.
I find it particularly annoying when people infuse their own religious or magic beliefs into brain science as this is my field of study.
What they found is when dying and things start shutting down the brain loses its normal control mechanisms and goes off the rails into la la land. Not surprising and nothing more to it. Multidimensional awareness? I need to throw up.
Re: New age nonsense (Score:1)
Re: New age nonsense (Score:4, Interesting)
Yes, for some people but you don't know if you'll be one of the very few who fully recovers or your brain is mush. I wouldn't take those odds. There are some things worse than death.
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Yes, for some people but you don't know if you'll be one of the very few who fully recovers or your brain is mush. I wouldn't take those odds. There are some things worse than death.
This. Having lost a step-brother to a series of strokes, and now watching my mother's massive cognitive decline due to Alzheimers (albeit at 96yo), death is not what I fear most. The vegetative state for an indeterminate amount of time with no chance of recovery before dying is much scarier.
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My mom isn't 96 yet but she's working at it. I can see the clear decline in her 80s from only a few years ago.
It isn't immortality I crave but healthy immortality.
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What they found is when dying and things start shutting down the brain loses its normal control mechanisms and goes off the rails into la la land
Which has already been known for a long long time. Also the similarity of experience between different subjects... though they all tend to interpret it in terms of their own personal religious beliefs.
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True but I'll give them some credit for doing measurements of a large batch of people even if their conclusions are silly.
Maybe someone else later will apply science to their results. One can only hope.
Re: New age nonsense (Score:1)
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Lots of medical journals will let you write all sorts of weird stuff. They like the learned physician-philosopher zeitgeist.
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I'd be concerned that anything more than their raw data was tainted.
It would be interesting... (Score:3)
... to know what people who talk of "new dimensions of reality" think the old dimensions are.
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... to know what people who talk of "new dimensions of reality" think the old dimensions are.
And if it's a generalized thing or specific to the individual. It also probably depends on their current perceptions of reality. Like would Trump's new dimensions of reality be that the size of his NY apartment in Trump Tower is actually the 11,000 sq.ft. it is rather than the 30,000 sq.ft. he imagines it to be? Not sure he'd want to wake up from that... :-)
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new dimensions are 8x12, not counting the bars on the windows and one wall. :)
hawk
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The "old" dimensions are whichever ones you're experiencing already, now.
wat (Score:5, Interesting)
Electroencephalogram (EEG) brain signals captured from dozens of the patients revealed that episodes of heightened consciousness occurred
EEGs measure electrical activity, not states of consciousness. They can't detect whether you've unlocked godmode. And since your own experience is subjective the value of a report when your brain is functioning in a way you're not used to is not all that valuable. There's a part of the brain which, when stimulated, gives a mystical experience people have describes as like meeting god, but that doesn't mean god exists. In fact it's a stronger indicator that he doesn't, and it's all just in our heads.
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God mode, indeed. It's a bunch of crap. They're more likely to enter God mode with "ABAB, Up, Down, Left, Right".
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I've always thought that it was silly to claim that when a person's brain hardware is under extreme physical stress, that it finally reveals some kind of "higher truth".
It's like asserting that I can reveal the "true balance" of my bank account if I run QuickBooks on my PC and then aim a heat gun at the CPU until I see different numbers.
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Over 20 years ago here on slashdot we were discussing articles about research describing how different types of thought produce different (and measurable) brainwaves... and various related technologies.
Just goes in one ear and out the other, eh? Or, in one eyeball and out the back of the head, as the case may be.
people have describes as like meeting god, but that doesn't mean god exists. In fact it's a stronger indicator that he doesn't
So far, that's the fundamentally stupidest thing posted in the comments. Subjective experiences in a reduced mental state can not provide an indicator for or against any hypothesis about external ev
A test (Score:1)
So, you trip when your brain cells start to die (Score:4, Insightful)
All well and good that this gets researched, but to me it does not really sound like a surprise. When I was in middle school, I had a TI-34 calculator with a photovoltaic cell as a power source. One of my tricks when I got bored was to fill the display with 8's, "8888888888". Then cover the PV with my hand and saw the digits fading. If I removed my hand *just* right, I was able to get some funny patterns, some of which were not numbers at all - just random segments lighting up. If I kept the PV covered for too long, the calculator just reset. My guess is that the RAM got partially corrupted and resulted in that funky display.
Really don't see that much of a difference. I've had a work colleague who got a blood clot in his brain - he noticed that suddenly he could not stand up from his chair. Well, he got better at the hospital where they dissolved the clot and all was well - but afterwards he told us that before they started treatment, he had started seeing some really psychedelic colors in the plain white hospital walls.
So shouldn't come as a surprise that if you are getting massive damage to your brain cells (typically at the end of your life), then the experience is going to be somewhat weird.
breaking things is always an upgrade (Score:3)
it's like when an old tv dies, and you can only see things from the snow dimension because it's locked into messages from a higher plane.
"New dimensions of reality" (Score:2)
Pathetic.
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Subject: "New dimensions of reality"
Oh look, a non-scientist incorrectly using scientific words in an attempt to appear scientific.
You thought "dimensions" was an exclusively scientific jargon word? Maybe you should hold off on criticizing people's English until you learn a little more?
And "reality" isn't a scientific word at all, it has no scientific meaning. When scientists use the word, it is only when trying to describe a hypothesis, theory, or experimental result using common language. A results supports the hypothesis, or it doesn't. "Reality" is meta-physics, not physics.
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The fact that your could not comprehend that suggests that it is best for you to stay out of this discussion and stick to the fluffy bullshitting you appear to enjoy.
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Oh look, a non-scientist incorrectly using scientific words in an attempt to appear scientific.
Pathetic.
Yeah, even an old electronic poet can do better than that claptrap...
An eagle flies high, it flies higher than a sea gull
But the crow wings rapidly from tree to bush to hedge
The same can be true of life and of death
Sometimes life flies high, sometimes death wings rapidly
Sometimes it is spoken
That death wings from tree to bush to hedge
Sometimes it does not
Racter - 1984.
So many Red Flags (Score:2)
in which some survivors of cardiac arrest described lucid death experiences that occurred while they were seemingly unconscious
I have experiences all the time when I'm unconscious, it's called dreaming.
Either way, were they unconscious? Seemingly brain dead? If so, what's the evidence they had experiences during these periods? I saw something in the abstract about giving them headphones so maybe there was some recall testing.
The study authors hypothesize that the “flatlined,” dying brain removes
Re: (Score:2)
They have strong memories that are formed without brain activity.
The idea that a brain creates consciousness is equivalent to the idea that a radio creates a newscast.
From one perspective does it - but it's not the base reality.
Giant advances in science always seem extremely odd to those most steeped in the art.
Einstein didn't believe the Copenhagen Interpretation and it wasn't until 2015 that Bohm was shown to be mostly right. Still, even Bohm came to profess Copenhagen because his focus was slightly too
Re: (Score:2)
They have strong memories that are formed without brain activity.
What's the evidence for that?
The idea that a brain creates consciousness is equivalent to the idea that a radio creates a newscast.
That's testable.
By mucking with the radio can you change the content of the newscast? You can change the station, and you can lose quality of the newscast, but you can't actually change the content of the newscast.
But by mucking with the brain you can significantly change the output of the consciousness. You can decrease the intelligence, you can change the personality, you can even induce behaviours.
This is a huge way in which the brain is different from the radio, and is posit
Re: (Score:2)
The idea that a brain creates consciousness is equivalent to the idea that a radio creates a newscast.
Close, but that doesn't really get to the problem.
The idea that having a memory includes knowledge of when the memory is formed is equivalent to the idea that having a recording of a radio broadcast tells you when the broadcast happened.
Ultimately, the memory might have been formed in a few microseconds as/after consciousness returned. There is no way to distinguish that using a subjective experience that doesn't include any sort of time-related metadata.
Kinda reaching for the unprovable there (Score:2)
Unlikely (Score:2)
I interviewed quite a number of dead people at my local cemetery, and without exception 100% of them did not agree with the study's conclusions.
TL;DR Hell is real if you believe in it (Score:2)
I've often wondered about this, the brain's last ditch effort to stay afloat like a drowning man, and then thought about time dilation in dreams. Who's to say that hour doesn't last nearly an eternity in the mind of the dying?
So start thinking happy thoughts folks, because that's what you may get when you die. Cynics beware.
The spirit molecule (Score:2)
It's just base fight or flight response (Score:2)
Except the brain doesn't have a solution to the problem (of dying). So it tries to find a solution, which requires hallucination.
That's what I think.
I didn't read the article of course, but I did read the comments about it...
DMT protects neurons from hypoxia (Score:1)
More info including a link to the paper if you want to do some interesting reading: https://thedrugclassroom.com/s... [thedrugclassroom.com]
Hallucinations (Score:2)
scientific proof (Score:2)
Shut up (Score:1)
CPR ONLY EVER 4 recussitating the young and healty (Score:2)
https://www.newyorker.com/news... [newyorker.com]
Survey says (Score:1)
OOS (Score:2)
See amazing shapes and colours by pressing on your eyes. It's almost as though signals from the body's sensors are corrupted when operating out of spec,
I don't know "what" it was... (Score:1)
This won't convince anyone of anything, and I'll probably get down-modded to the ground for this, but I had an NDE (resuscitated, the whole nine yards) during a very traumatic surgery in the late 70's that I should not have survived. What I experienced was unlike anything else in my life before, or after.
I'm not going to go into the content I saw for reasons of anonymity. Even if this was a "dream/hallucination" then that's totally fine because due to it, I've lived for well over 50 years with no fear of