Lots going on in the brain even when it appears dead

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/s...-death-after-eeg-study-research-a7620131.html

"In the case, doctors confirmed their patient was dead through a range of the normal observations, including the absence of a pulse and unreactive pupils. But tests showed that the patients’ brain appeared to keep working – experiencing the same kind of brain waves that are seen during deep sleep."​

In article they say they are detecting brainwaves in people consiidered dead by other criterion. That doesn't explain why people have NDEs when their EEG is flatlined and no brainwaves are detected.

And there are many cases of people having NDEs when they are not near death. But brain function doesn't explain how they can perceive things they could not perceive with their normal senses or why other people, caretakers or other people near death, sometimes share the same NDE.

http://ncu9nc.blogspot.com/2013/07/materialist-explanations-of-ndes-fail.html
 
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I find it hard to believe you can have accurate veridical hallucination and hyper real consciousness 1 minute into cardiac arrest. The fact is non of the materialist explanation have ever successfully induced an NDE with dramatic life change afterwards. And thinking there's a small amount of brain activity = NDEs explained, is like saying if a fried CPU is warm then the computer is working as normal.

I'm not saying NDEs must be real, but im really getting sick of these old materialist explanations that are spammed over and over again and have been addressed to death already. If materialism is right, NDEs must be a cocktail of unknown chemicals.
 
I find it hard to believe you can have accurate veridical hallucination and hyper real consciousness 1 minute into cardiac arrest. The fact is non of the materialist explanation have ever successfully induced an NDE with dramatic life change afterwards. And thinking there's a small amount of brain activity = NDEs explained, is like saying if a fried CPU is warm then the computer is working as normal.

I'm not saying NDEs must be real, but im really getting sick of these old materialist explanations that are spammed over and over again and have been addressed to death already. If materialism is right, NDEs must be a cocktail of unknown chemicals.

"If materialism is right, NDEs must be a cocktail of unknown chemicals."


Are you supporting or opposing this particular old materialist explanation that is spammed over and over again and has been addressed to death already?
 
Makes me think a lot of those stories regarding NDE's are just occurring in the brain and we simply don't know how , medically and scientifically ... yet.

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/s...-euroanaesthesia-geneva-a7769756.html#gallery

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/s...-death-after-eeg-study-research-a7620131.html
The thing is, people in an NDE typically report seeing their body from above, and are able to report what went on round them.

Even if we leave aside the requirement to relocate the viewpoint to somewhere near the ceiling, and assume the eyes are open, seeing needs the eye to focus and to have small movements that keep shifting the focus so that the image continues to be visible.

I find it hard to believe you can have accurate veridical hallucination and hyper real consciousness 1 minute into cardiac arrest. The fact is non of the materialist explanation have ever successfully induced an NDE with dramatic life change afterwards. And thinking there's a small amount of brain activity = NDEs explained, is like saying if a fried CPU is warm then the computer is working as normal.
Exactly right! I mean people can faint without even losing all blood supply to the brain - it is that critical.

Another fact to bear in mind, is that NDE's typically continue getting grander until the heart is started again - they don't fade out the further in you go.

On the hypothesis that our consciousness really does separate from the body at death, isn't it possible that this huge event disturbs the brain cells into a final burst of activity?

Some people suggest that brains put out a last burst of activity as they die because the nerves start to fire uncontrollably because of the release of excess glutamate. Maybe this is so, but does it make sense to suggest that uncontrolled firing of this sort could represent a nuanced event like an NDE!

David
 
"If materialism is right, NDEs must be a cocktail of unknown chemicals."

Are you supporting or opposing this particular old materialist explanation that is spammed over and over again and has been addressed to death already?

I'm saying if materialism turns out to be correct (I'm agnostic but leaning towards NDEs), it must be a variety of unknown chemicals working together and not some other explanation like anoxia/brain functioning during flat EEG. I've seen NDEs happen in enough situations to rule out all the usual materialist explanations, and rule out pure DMT/ketamine explanations. But I can't rule out some unknown chemicals together with aural information giving visual veridical perception either by chance, or faulty memory, or suggestive questioning, or simple fraud.

I'm 99% certain materialism is wrong, however the reality of afterlife is a different question since many current panpsychism beliefs do not have afterlife.
 
Hmmm..

Well, If anyone was hoping for a possible explanation of NDEs, I don't think they're going to find it there.
 
The thing is, people in an NDE typically report seeing their body from above, and are able to report what went on round them.

Even if we leave aside the requirement to relocate the viewpoint to somewhere near the ceiling, and assume the eyes are open, seeing needs the eye to focus and to have small movements that keep shifting the focus so that the image continues to be visible.


Exactly right! I mean people can faint without even losing all blood supply to the brain - it is that critical.

Another fact to bear in mind, is that NDE's typically continue getting grander until the heart is started again - they don't fade out the further in you go.

On the hypothesis that our consciousness really does separate from the body at death, isn't it possible that this huge event disturbs the brain cells into a final burst of activity?

Some people suggest that brains put out a last burst of activity as they die because the nerves start to fire uncontrollably because of the release of excess glutamate. Maybe this is so, but does it make sense to suggest that uncontrolled firing of this sort could represent a nuanced event like an NDE!

David

It's worth noting that the burst of activity has not been found in Humans, only rats.
 
Makes me think a lot of those stories regarding NDE's are just occurring in the brain and we simply don't know how , medically and scientifically ... yet.

Medically and scientifically we don't know how people appear to have experiences either... so it's certain that we won't know how people have NDE's, until we know how people have experiences. That I appear to share the external world as an experience with other people, so that things which I (and they) do become facts, is probably a clue that the 'how' is going to be shared as well.
 
Well if one isn't taking into account veridical information it is hard to say what's going on with NDEs if we don't know the relationship between the brain's structure/biology/etc and consciousness.

This is one of those wait-and-see situations AFAICTell?
 
It's worth noting that the burst of activity has not been found in Humans, only rats.

We've definitely seen activity in humans in cardiac arrest, its just that we haven't deliberately killed anybody yet whilst measuring their brain using iEEG.
 
Another fact to bear in mind, is that NDE's typically continue getting grander until the heart is started again - they don't fade out the further in you go.

That's not really true... localised objectivity (the OBE) certainly fades out to the NDE... and more rarely reappears again at the end. So if the OBE happens at all during an NDE, over time, it goes...

Time ---->

WAKEFULNESS -> OBE -> NDE -> ??? -> NDE -> OBE -> WAKEFULNESS

It's perfectly possible that the NDE fades out at the question marks....
 
That's not really true... localised objectivity (the OBE) certainly fades out to the NDE... and more rarely reappears again at the end. So if the OBE happens at all during an NDE, over time, it goes...

Time ---->

WAKEFULNESS -> OBE -> NDE -> ??? -> NDE -> OBE -> WAKEFULNESS

It's perfectly possible that the NDE fades out at the question marks....
Well not if you take a strict materialist stance. I mean the experience of meeting dead relatives, the life review, seeing the whole time line, etc needs a lot of neurons to fire in an organised way from the materialist perspective!

David
 
Well not if you take a strict materialist stance. I mean the experience of meeting dead relatives, the life review, seeing the whole time line, etc needs a lot of neurons to fire in an organised way from the materialist perspective!

David

Well if field effects are what binds the different aspects of consciousness we might have what we need to organize the observed electrical activity at the neuronal level. Jonjoe McFadden has such a theory, though he does note that if this information is preserved there could be life after death.

This need not be a materialist explanation, it could be a panpsychic or neutral monist one as well.
 
I remember Bruce Greyson amusingly pointing out that you can't say "There's all this stuff in the brain that comes together to produce consciousness" and then when NDEs happen say "Oh that tiny flicker of electricity is what's responsible."

And yet that's exactly what we may have to do... find a new way to reconcile both ideas.
 
Well not if you take a strict materialist stance. I mean the experience of meeting dead relatives, the life review, seeing the whole time line, etc needs a lot of neurons to fire in an organised way from the materialist perspective!

David

You said...

"Another fact to bear in mind, is that NDE's typically continue getting grander until the heart is started again - they don't fade out the further in you go."

You were stating it as a fact - an observation... it's not.
 
And yet that's exactly what we may have to do... find a new way to reconcile both ideas.

Well I'm up for the endogenous field theory, it just needs more research.

Though since what a field actually is remains mysterious I'm not sure what exactly would mean to attribute consciousness to field effects...
 
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