by Sam Parnia practices resuscitation medicine. In other words, he helps bring people back from the dead — and some return with stories. Their tales could help save lives, and even challenge traditional scientific ideas about the nature of consciousness.
“The evidence we have so far is that human consciousness does not become annihilated,” said Parnia, a doctor at Stony Brook University Hospital and director of the school’s resuscitation research program. “It continues for a few hours after death, albeit in a hibernated state we cannot see from the outside.”
Resuscitation medicine grew out of the mid-twentieth century discovery of CPR, the medical procedure by which hearts that have stopped beating are revived. Originally effective for a few minutes after cardiac arrest, advances in CPR have pushed that time to a half-hour or more.
New techniques promise to even further extend the boundary between life and death. At the same time, experiences reported by resuscitated people sometimes defy what’s thought to be possible. They claim to have seen and heard things, though activity in their brains appears to have stopped.
Full article here
Normally I ignore these articles but Wired did this one so I took a look at it. The lingering question I always have (read the section in the article about the chicken or the egg) is the concussion aspect of consciousness. Why don't people experience NDEs after concussions? Also, I haven't found how those who hold this (mind beyond matter) position respond to the fact that NDEs can be recreated in controlled situations or that not one person as actually read a single AWARE sign in the OR after they "died".
