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Saturday 20 July 2013

Chapter Six. Reflections Part VI.



Chapter Six. 

Reflections Part VI. 








From the Ouija board Penn and Teller switch their–let’s say, somewhat cynical–attention to the phenomenon of NDEs - near death experiences, describing them as, “The trendiest way to enter the spirit world”. 

As we listen to a number of straightforward, fascinating and sincere accounts from some of those who claim to have experienced NDEs for themselves, Jillette (Penn) declares, “Proponents of life-after-death, site these accounts as proof of whatever their particular myth believes”.  

Enter psychology professor Barry Beyerstein who professes, “Near death experiences are generated by brain function, and they don’t prove there’s an after-life”. 
He goes on, “These are complex hallucinations; they’re taking place in the theatre of one’s own mind”.

Then comes the guaranteed, fail-safe formula by which to strip these “myth believers” of whatever credibility might be left to strip - by exposing those who write about this subject as profiteers, inferring that their books are little other than money making scams (I suppose presenting oneself as the arbiter of truth on a TV show doesn’t count!). 

But one such person seems to me to speak some of the most considered views of the entire program; introduced by Jillette as, “Then there’s this fucking guy”, Raymond Moody - who coined the acronym NDE - announces himself as: “MD, PHD and seeker of the truth”. 

The author of Life After Life, published in 1975, explains, “To the people that go through this experience it’s absolutely convincing that they saw the after-life. In their minds, that’s what it was. There’s no rational way that we can contradict what they’re saying”

Penn and Teller then illustrate that there is indeed a rational way to contradict those who they describe as, “Every nut with a story”, by citing evidence taken from centrifuge tests where pilots are spun around in a cockpit at the end of a long arm, creating a G-force of 9 and inducing a state known as G-LOC. Over twelve hundred pilots were tested under these conditions with a close track kept of their reactions. Many of the pilots frequently had “grey-out, black-out, tunnel vision and dreams” and what they describe as “out of body” experiences. 

Doctor James E. Whinnery who conducted this study also subjected himself to these same tests, going through “twenty or thirty times” what he describes as NDEs. The theory put forward is that in times of severe stress the brain has a natural way of protecting us by closing down our conscious mind and removing us, so to speak, from the position of trauma we are in. 

Whinnery’s work: ACCELERATION  INDUCED  LOSS  OF CONSCIOUSNESS  - A  REVIEW  OF  500 EPISODES – was published in 1988. 
The full report can be seen here: Induced loss of consciousness.

Whinnery, on the Penn and Teller show states, “It may well be part of how the brain handles that threatening situation”.

Jillette adds, “So near-death experiences have a 'real life' explanation; cut off the blood of the brain and nearly 18% of us have an NDE. Kinda makes the thought of dying, or better yet - pulling 9-Gs, well … kind of exciting”.    

But how briefly “cutting off the blood of the brain” correlates with the findings of researchers and doctors who clearly state that at the point that a great many of these well documented cases of NDEs occur, absolutely no brain activity whatsoever is taking place, I’m unsure. 

The periods of unconsciousness experienced by the subjects in Doctor Whinnery’s G-LOC tests lasted only seconds, and were monitored by visual and audio contact. Therefore, as far as I can detect, no EEG (Electroencephalography) was employed to record brain activity during these tests. 

Contrast this with the prolonged periods of zero brain activity where patients are declared to be clinically dead, who then on their often improbable recovery recount stories of not just those they have encountered during that period of time, deceased spouses, relatives, etc., but also give accurate accounts of what they observed going on in the operating rooms during their period of death.

Some of my own questions surrounding this issue have been, e.g. whether these NDEs have actually been experienced at exactly the same time as when a flat EEG has been recorded? Also, Does a flat EEG mean that there is “absolutely” no brain activity whatsoever?   

Kevin Nelson, a neurophysiologist at the University of Kentucky, and writer of the book The Spiritual Doorway in the Brain, states, “Although you often hear people claiming that NDEs happen during the minutes when they were declared clinically dead, this is a misconception that has arisen because people use the term 'clinical death' when they really mean cardiac arrest. When your heart stops and you lose blood flow, you don't lose consciousness for another 10 seconds and brain damage doesn't occur until 30 minutes after blood flow is reduced by 90 per cent or more. So when experiencing an NDE, you are not dead.

People like to say that these experiences are proof that consciousness can exist outside the brain, like a soul that lives after death. I hope that is true, but it is a matter of faith; there is no evidence for that. People who claim otherwise are using false science to engender false hope and I think that is misleading and ultimately cruel”.

Alex Tsakiris on his website "Skeptico", also takes a look at this same issue: 

“For near death experience skeptics, medical evidence of a flat EEG during an out of body experience has always been a stumbling block.  After all, a brain dead patient can’t hallucinate.  But, does a flat EEG really mean no brain activity?  NDE  doubters have claimed activity deep inside the brain, beyond the reach of EEG instruments, must account for the complex 'realer than real' experiences reported by those who briefly pass into the afterlife. Now, University of Toledo Neuroscience researcher, and EEG expert, Dr. John Greenfield explains why this claim doesn’t hold up.”

In an interview with Dr. John Greenfield, University of Toledo Neuroscience researcher, and EEG expert, Tsakiris asks whether or not it’s possible that a near-death experiencer is having a complex near-death experience, as it’s described, without anything showing up on their EEG., Dr. Greenfield responds,I think the likelihood of that is pretty low. Most patients, when the EEG is flat, when it’s not showing any activity, that really suggests that the brain is not doing very much. The likelihood of having any sort of experiences at all in that setting is pretty low”.  

Greenfield continues, “… When the brain is not getting much blood, it pretty much shuts down. And whether that ends up being permanent depends on how long the blood flow is shut off … it would be very unlikely that somebody could have a complex sort of dream-like state as described for most near-death experiences, at least during that time … a flat EEG typically correlates with a very inactive brain”.

The interview with with Dr. Greenfield, is then followed by a conversation with Dr. Penny Sartori an NDE Researcher who’d gained much of her experience and data during her time working in an intensive care unit. 

Dr. Sartori says, “This is something that really does fascinate me. In total, out of the five years, I interviewed over 300 patients ... I interviewed everyone who had been a patient and survived in the intensive care unit regardless of how close to death they came. I wanted to see if maybe just the thought that they could be close to death could in itself precipitate an experience. This didn’t seem to be the case.

Then for the next four years I concentrated solely on the patients who had had a cardiac arrest and so had survived clinical death. What I found is that although the sample is a lot smaller than the first year’s data I found that quite a large group of these people did report experiences consistent with a near-death experience”.

The typical argument used by many doubters is that the NDE experience is nothing more than a dream, and that the classic scenario where the unconscious patient accurately recounts the events that take place in the emergency room - as observed from an above out-of-body position - is nothing other than a general knowledge of what happens in such situations.

On these specific issues, what Dr. Sartori found was this, “The people who had a near-death experience and the out of body experience, that what they recorded was really quite accurate and I decided then to ask the control group, the people who’d actually had a cardiac arrest but had no recollection of anything at all. 

I asked them if they would reenact their resuscitation scenario and tell me what they thought that we had done to resuscitate them.

And what I found is that many of the patients couldn’t even guess as to what we’d done. They had no idea at all. And then some of them did make guesses, but these were based on TV hospital dramas that they’d seen. 

I found that what they reported was widely inaccurate. Some people just made educated guesses. What I found was that some people are sort of under the misconception that they had had a dc shock when in fact they had only had chest compressions and drugs administered. 

Then the ones who did have a dc shock I found that the patients guessed the wrong position of where these shock paddles would be placed on the body. 

So there was a stark contrast really in the very accurate out of body experiences reported and then the guesses that the control group had made”.



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