Word: nde
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...American who underwent brain surgery for an aneurysm in 1991. Preparation for Reynolds' operation included taping her eyes shut, blocking her ears and monitoring her EEG to ensure her brain was functioning at only the most basic level. Yet after coming around, Reynolds described not only a full-blown NDE but the bone saw that had been used to cut her skull...
...began a study that would encompass 344 survivors of cardiac arrest in 10 Dutch hospitals. Van Lommel and his co-authors wrote in The Lancet in 2001 that 18% of subjects reported some recollection of the time of clinical death, and 7% an experience that qualified as a deep NDE...
...years ago, Van Lommel retired from cardiology to concentrate on NDE research. "I'm lecturing all over the world," he says. "I know all the skeptical questions and I love to answer them." In trying to account for NDEs, he's challenged ideas residing in the bedrock of science, including that consciousness and memories are localized in the brain. As astounding as it may be, he argues, the implication of NDEs is that consciousness can be experienced in some alternative dimension without our body-linked concepts of time and space. "In my view, the brain is not producing consciousness...
...idea that the brain can be retuned to alternative states resonates with psychiatrist Jansen, who's written prolifically on how an NDE (or something closely resembling it) can be induced by an anesthetic drug, ketamine. That NDEs can be induced led him at first to suspect that the spontaneous type was similarly hallucinogenic. Now he's not so sure. Perhaps ketamine and brain stress simply make certain states more accessible. "All our realities are alternative realities," says Jansen. "Nobody sees the world in quite the same way as any other person...
...Outside of cardiac arrest and the injection of ketamine, NDE-type phenomena can occur in many circumstances, including fainting spells, serious disease and in the seconds before potentially catastrophic accidents, like falling off a cliff. While that doesn't suck the mystery from the phenomenon, it does suggest that NDEs are a flawed pointer to what might await us in death as opposed to the process of dying or a really hairy moment...