I'm sure you can rationalize a belief in the afterlife with what we currently know about the topic (which is very little).

But who cares? What I'm interested in is whether or not this idea looks like it has the potential to enter our mainstream scientific knowledge. Does anyone out there seriously believe that in 30 years time "after death consciousness" will be a basic biology concept? If so, then why? Please map out the what research you expect to be done in the future, and what future findings will validate your idea. More importantly, what results would either falsify your theory, or force you to make slight changes to the idea.

I don't understand the obsession with people trying to prove their viewpoint "isn't as irrational as you may think". You can rationalize just about any belief into reality, it doesn't prove anything.

On the “dead brain” issue.

So we have concluded that nobody here is a neuroscientist.

Well, Bruce Grayson bloody well is, (a professor of psychiatry at the university of Virginia) and says:
"The brain isn't functioning. It's not there. It's destroyed. It's abnormal. But, yet, it can produce these very clear experiences ... an unconscious state is when the brain ceases to function. For example, if you faint, you fall to the floor, you don't know what's happening and the brain isn't working. The memory systems are particularly sensitive to unconsciousness. So, you won't remember anything. But, yet, after one of these experiences [a NDE], you come out with clear, lucid memories ... This is a real puzzle for science. I have not yet seen any good scientific explanation which can explain that fact."
Dr. Eban Alexander also bloody well is - he has been an academic neurosurgeon for more than 25 years, including 15 years at Harvard Medical School in Boston. After having described his own NDE during meningococcal meningitis, he discusses how on earth a brain “soaking in pus” could produce a “hyper-real” conscious experience:

“In fact, one of the hypotheses that I entertained about all this was because the experience that seemed very hyper-real and extremely crisp and vivid, much more real and interactive than sitting here and talking with you right now. I mean, it was extraordinary. That is something that is often described in near-death experiences and of course one of my early hypotheses was well, maybe there’s some differential effect against inhibitory neuronal networks that allowed over-expression of excitatory neural networks and gave this illusion of kind of a hyper-real situation. One of my early hypotheses was that maybe there’s some differential effect against inhibitory neuronal networks that allowed over-expression of excitatory neural networks and gave this illusion of kind of a hyper-real situation. In fact, I never found an anatomic distribution that would support that over-activity of excitatory pathways.”

Come on guys. These people are not telling us “I have found God and he has told me to pray seven times a day standing on one leg”. These people have no agenda, religious or other. They know the issue inside out, some have studied it for 10, 15 or 20 years, and are simply telling us that a non-functioning brain produces a highly organised conscious experience, and that we have to come to some kind of term with that.

NDE in children:

Morse, M. and Perry, P. (1990). Parting Visions. London: PIkarus Books

There are relatively few young children who have gone through the process of cardiac arrest followed by resuscitation. Combing through 10 years of medical records the authors found 12 who fit the criteria. Eight of the 12 reported the experience of living the bodies and travelling to other realms which our features of adult NDE. By contrast, none of a control group of 121 children who had been very sick but not near death reported NDE experiences. In addition a further 37 children treated during the illnesses with "almost every kind of mind altering medication known to pharmacology" reported no incidence NDE's, which indicates that medically administered drugs do not in themselves give rise to the experience. This study also had further to the evidence that whatever else they may be, NDEs are not imaginary experience prompted by expectation based upon previous knowledge.


Old, tired explanations:

Fenwick, P., & Fenwick, E. (1995). The Truth in the Light. London: BCA Books.

The authors review 300 NDE cases and arrive at the same conclusions of the Van Lommel study quoted in the previous post. Only 14% of the sample was receiving drugs at the time of their NDE, and in any case the hallucinations experienced by patients losing consciousness due to drugs are reported as chaotic and the is organised, whereas NDEs are vivid and coherent. In dismissing anoxia, the authors point out that the condition is regularly induced in airline pilots as part of their training and at one time was also a feature of the training of medical students, yet none of those concerned appears to have reported an NDE. In addition anoxia, like drugs, leads to bring these orientation and confusion.

A popular - amongst the best informed sceptics – paper links hypercarbia with dreamlike experiences that sounds similar to NDE's. No intensive care unit would allow hypercarbia to occur in the blood of those they care for. In addition, hypercarbia produces convulsive muscle movements, which is never reported during NDEs.

The authors also dismiss the theory that NDE's are simply hallucinations brought on by the patient's medical condition. They point out that NDE subjects all have very similar experiences whatever the medical condition, whereas the hallucinations that occur during physical illness are typically highly personal.

Endorphins have also been called into question to explain NDE's, as they can lead to a feeling of bliss and calm, but many groups of people experiencing high, sustained levels of endorphins do not report NDE's. Furthermore, endorphins do not appear to be potent hallucinogens.

Finally, stimulating certain parts of the brain with weak electrical currents can also produce mystical – type experiences. These however tentatively fragmentary and disorganised. By contrast, the NDE as a whole is an integrated experience that typically makes good sense to the patient both while it is happening and for years afterwards. Furthermore, those reporting NDE's have not been subjected to brain stimulation this way.

Thanks doc, but is there any chance you could skip to the peer-reviewed evidence? We are very keen to get a look at it. If it's true, I expect the Nobel commitee will be interested too.

Fenrir wrote:....

Apparently what you do in the afterlife is float around making weird lights and noises and mysteriously exposing photographic film.

Well if I was a free floating light I'm off towards the Eta Carinae system and wait for it to go supernova. Now that would be an awesome rush as a massive amount of matter smashes through the nebula.

We should work out a way of meeting up and have a party there in how many millions of years time.

Does anyone know when we are dead if we are constrained by relativity or can we travel at superluminal speeds ?

DrParisetti wrote:
Come on guys. These people are not telling us “I have found God and he has told me to pray seven times a day standing on one leg”. These people have no agenda, religious or other. They know the issue inside out, some have studied it for 10, 15 or 20 years, and are simply telling us that a non-functioning brain produces a highly organised conscious experience, and that we have to come to some kind of term with that.

Highlighted by me. So - and it pains me to ask, because I shouldn't have to - but are you saying that all you are saying is that the physical brain as-is, is still functioning (as a material 'thing' only) after it has seized functioning as science currently understands brain function? Because that would be very strange in light of this whole discussion being about an 'afterlife'. Unless we should start preparing for a zombie invasion.

trubble76 wrote:Thanks doc, but is there any chance you could skip to the peer-reviewed evidence? We are very keen to get a look at it. If it's true, I expect the Nobel commitee will be interested too.

That argument he claimed to have back on page one might help too. It's kind of page eight now.

DrParisetti wrote:Come on guys. These people are not telling us “I have found God and he has told me to pray seven times a day standing on one leg”. These people have no agenda, religious or other. They know the issue inside out, some have studied it for 10, 15 or 20 years, and are simply telling us that a non-functioning brain produces a highly organised conscious experience, and that we have to come to some kind of term with that.

And I would say again, how is it that you know these claimed memories of a conscious experience are produced whilst the brain is non-functional?

Nicko wrote:

DrParisetti wrote:Come on guys. These people are not telling us “I have found God and he has told me to pray seven times a day standing on one leg”. These people have no agenda, religious or other. They know the issue inside out, some have studied it for 10, 15 or 20 years, and are simply telling us that a non-functioning brain produces a highly organised conscious experience, and that we have to come to some kind of term with that.

And I would say again, how is it that you know these claimed memories of a conscious experience are produced whilst the brain is non-functional?

Exactly; and read Shrunk's objection here. Just prior to a cessation of brain activity, and just after resuscitation, there will of course be brain activity.

Sorry, still trawling through the thread, but this seems to continue to come up:

DrParisetti wrote:This data also accounts for the fact that the NDE occurs WHEN the brain is not functioning, and not before or after.

How do you know this?

DrParisetti wrote:On the “dead brain” issue.

So we have concluded that nobody here is a neuroscientist.

Well, Bruce Grayson bloody well is, (a professor of psychiatry at the university of Virginia) and says:
"The brain isn't functioning. It's not there. It's destroyed. It's abnormal. But, yet, it can produce these very clear experiences ... an unconscious state is when the brain ceases to function. For example, if you faint, you fall to the floor, you don't know what's happening and the brain isn't working. The memory systems are particularly sensitive to unconsciousness. So, you won't remember anything. But, yet, after one of these experiences [a NDE], you come out with clear, lucid memories ... This is a real puzzle for science. I have not yet seen any good scientific explanation which can explain that fact."

Oh, I'm sorry. I didn't realize psychiatrists qualified as "neuroscientists" here. I guess that means I bloody well am a neuroscientist, as well. And this bloody-well-qualified neuroscientist is still waiting for the first scrap of evidence that a non-functioning brain can have experiences and create memories.

Dr. Eban Alexander also bloody well is - he has been an academic neurosurgeon for more than 25 years, including 15 years at Harvard Medical School in Boston. After having described his own NDE during meningococcal meningitis, he discusses how on earth a brain “soaking in pus” could produce a “hyper-real” conscious experience:

“In fact, one of the hypotheses that I entertained about all this was because the experience that seemed very hyper-real and extremely crisp and vivid, much more real and interactive than sitting here and talking with you right now. I mean, it was extraordinary. That is something that is often described in near-death experiences and of course one of my early hypotheses was well, maybe there’s some differential effect against inhibitory neuronal networks that allowed over-expression of excitatory neural networks and gave this illusion of kind of a hyper-real situation. One of my early hypotheses was that maybe there’s some differential effect against inhibitory neuronal networks that allowed over-expression of excitatory neural networks and gave this illusion of kind of a hyper-real situation. In fact, I never found an anatomic distribution that would support that over-activity of excitatory pathways.”

Again, we have no evidence that his brain was "soaking in pus" at the time this experience supposedly occurred. All we know is that a memory exists of this "hyper-real" experience at a time his brain is functioning perfectly well. But that is not evidence that the experience actually occurred or ever existed as anything other than that memory.

Come on guys. These people are not telling us “I have found God and he has told me to pray seven times a day standing on one leg”. These people have no agenda, religious or other. They know the issue inside out, some have studied it for 10, 15 or 20 years, and are simply telling us that a non-functioning brain produces a highly organised conscious experience, and that we have to come to some kind of term with that.

So, again, the evidence that a non-functioning brain does this is....?

jerome wrote:I think Dr Pariseti needs to concentrate on presenting decent papers rather than an overview of the entire issue, but his choice not mine. I simply think it is wrong headed to dismiss him without examining the actual science.

I'd just like to say that I certainly haven't done ay such thing. What I have done is to assess his performance in his posts as utterly lacking in substance. If he provides some, I will happily relent. I'm not an unreasonable man, as well you know. I'm happy to examine the evidence that the MD who thinks that hearts are useful tools for assessment (I must get his surgery address, because this is not somebody I would want to be in the position of requiring medical care from) feels is sufficient to establish his assertion that it is rational to believe in an afterlife, but I have no intention of doing his legwork. His performance thus far has been little better than that of one of Kalamity Kraig's fanboiz (unless it's improved after the post I'm quoting), and is particularly poor for an academic.

DrParisetti wrote:On the “dead brain” issue.

So we have concluded that nobody here is a neuroscientist.

Well, Bruce Grayson bloody well is, (a professor of psychiatry at the university of Virginia) and says:
"The brain isn't functioning. It's not there. It's destroyed. It's abnormal. But, yet, it can produce these very clear experiences ... an unconscious state is when the brain ceases to function. For example, if you faint, you fall to the floor, you don't know what's happening and the brain isn't working. The memory systems are particularly sensitive to unconsciousness. So, you won't remember anything. But, yet, after one of these experiences [a NDE], you come out with clear, lucid memories ... This is a real puzzle for science. I have not yet seen any good scientific explanation which can explain that fact."
Dr. Eban Alexander also bloody well is - he has been an academic neurosurgeon for more than 25 years, including 15 years at Harvard Medical School in Boston. After having described his own NDE during meningococcal meningitis, he discusses how on earth a brain “soaking in pus” could produce a “hyper-real” conscious experience:

“In fact, one of the hypotheses that I entertained about all this was because the experience that seemed very hyper-real and extremely crisp and vivid, much more real and interactive than sitting here and talking with you right now. I mean, it was extraordinary. That is something that is often described in near-death experiences and of course one of my early hypotheses was well, maybe there’s some differential effect against inhibitory neuronal networks that allowed over-expression of excitatory neural networks and gave this illusion of kind of a hyper-real situation. One of my early hypotheses was that maybe there’s some differential effect against inhibitory neuronal networks that allowed over-expression of excitatory neural networks and gave this illusion of kind of a hyper-real situation. In fact, I never found an anatomic distribution that would support that over-activity of excitatory pathways.”

Come on guys. These people are not telling us “I have found God and he has told me to pray seven times a day standing on one leg”. These people have no agenda, religious or other. They know the issue inside out, some have studied it for 10, 15 or 20 years, and are simply telling us that a non-functioning brain produces a highly organised conscious experience, and that we have to come to some kind of term with that.

Where do these gentlemen make these statements? Can we have the quotes in full, in context? (I note the ellipses)

DrParisetti wrote:NDE in children:

Morse, M. and Perry, P. (1990). Parting Visions. London: PIkarus Books

There are relatively few young children who have gone through the process of cardiac arrest followed by resuscitation...

I'm just wondering, what proportion of NDEs occur with cardiac arrest? How many with severe head trauma or any case where the brain is hit first?

If the brain is generating the experience then NDE might be much less frequent in cases where brain function fails before blood supply to the brain.

If NDE are not generated by the brain then brain-first events should be just as likely to feature NDEs.

Maybe.

And Bruce Grayson's experience with dead people is..?

You really do love your argumentum ad verecundiam, don't you?

Incidentally, the only qualifications I can find listed for him are in psychiatry, so not a neuroscientist.

Now, any chance of getting to the fucking evidence, or is it your intention to simply spam us with anecdotes from people who have no experience with dead people?

hackenslash wrote:And Bruce Grayson's experience with dead people is..?

You really do love your argumentum ad verecundiam, don't you?

Incidentally, the only qualifications I can find listed for him are in psychiatry, so not a neuroscientist.

Well, that was quick. It was still cool being an actual neuroscientist for a few minutes, at least. I felt a lot smarter.

Now, any chance of getting to the fucking evidence, or is it your intention to simply spam us with anecdotes from people who have no experience with dead people?

It's not looking good, is it? I don't know how many times we have to ask before we realize we're not getting an answer.

There are a number of other very good questions that have been left hanging here that one would expect to be dealt with by an academic expert in the topic. That's what happens with any actual medical expert I have dealt with: You ask a question, you get a good answer, usually with peer-reviewed evidence to back it up. Or you get an honest response that the answer to the question is not known, and that this presents a difficulty for the hypothesis the expert is following.

Not sure why we can't get the same from our self-professed expert in NDE's and the afterlife....

If you guys are waiting for a peer reviewed paper that explains the mechanism of how a brain with no detectable activity at all can still produce higher cognitive functions, then I think you'll have to wait for pigs to grow wings.
We're talking about an afterlife from the outset here, and as I alluded to, we're not talking about zombies. So - we're talking about the immaterial.

John P. M. wrote:If you guys are waiting for a peer reviewed paper that explains the mechanism of how a brain with no detectable activity at all can still produce higher cognitive functions, then I think you'll have to wait for pigs to grow wings.
We're talking about an afterlife from the outset here, and as I alluded to, we're not talking about zombies. So - we're talking about the immaterial.

But there is a potentially scientific claim being made here: That a person can have a completely non-functioning (i.e. dead) brain, and still have experiences and form memories. At the very least, DrParisetti is claiming that this is a finding supported by empiricial scientific evidence. And it is upon this claim that the rest of his argument largely rests. So I don't think it's unreasonable to ask that he provide that evidence, as opposed to endlessly asserting that it exists, and quoting other people endlessly asserting that it exists. After awhile, you start to suspect that maybe it doesn't exist, after all.

I'm not asking for a mechanism. I'm just asking for evidence that phenomenon even occurs at all.

BTW, I have found an article by a couple neuroscientists, who actually seem to be neuroscientists, and have a very different explanation for NDE's. I may be able to gain institutional access to it, but it is discussed here. A particularly pertinent passage:

Watt's research also busts another myth: that people have "returned from the dead" -- if by dead you mean clinical brain death.

No one has survived true clinical death (which is why the experiences are called near-death). Many people have been revived after their heart stopped for short periods of time -- around 20 minutes or more -- but anyone revived from brain death would be permanently and irreparably brain damaged and certainly unable to report their experiences.

"The idea of surviving clinical brain death is mythical," Watt said. "NDEs are sometimes reported after a person experiences some of the preliminary 'stages' of death -- for instance, when the heart stops beating for a while and the person is then revived. I think it's curious, however, that a survey has shown that 82 percent of individuals who have survived being actually near death do not report a near-death experience. That would seem to undermine the idea that these experiences give a glimpse into life after death."

Shrunk wrote:
But there is a potentially scientific claim being made here: That a person can have a completely non-functioning (i.e. dead) brain, and still have experiences and form memories. At the very least, DrParisetti is claiming that this is a finding supported by empiricial scientific evidence. And it is upon this claim that the rest of his argument largely rests. So I don't think it's unreasonable to ask that he provide that evidence, as opposed to endlessly asserting that it exists, and quoting other people endlessly asserting that it exists. After awhile, you start to suspect that maybe it doesn't exist, after all.

I'm not asking for a mechanism. I'm just asking for evidence that phenomenon even occurs at all.

Fine, but I'm kinda cutting to the chase here, not bothered to play around. We're going from a brain we can measure as functioning, to a brain we cannot measure as functioning, and yet the claim is really that there's no difference in function between the two(!). In fact, the 'dead' brain functions much better! It's just that... we can't measure it.

So how can there be anything but anecdotal evidence of this occurring? It's not supposed to be a natural mechanism, and I'm pretty sure the good Dr. would admit to that, unless he feels he has to keep that under a lid for a while longer.