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Brain activity of dying people shows signs of near-death experiences

newscientist.com

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Re: Brain activity of dying people shows signs of near-death experiences

#71

Post by yamtaddle »

andyjohnson0 wrote: post #2

> The sensation of moving down a tunnel towards a bright light, reliving past memories and hearing or seeing deceased relatives have all been reported by people from many cultures who have had a brush with death. Sceptics, however, say these experiences could be caused by people hallucinating as they recover in hospital. The way that the default is presented here is interesting. Interpreting the experiences as halluc…

> presumably a sceptic of them being evidence for some kind of afterlife.

That would never have occurred to me—my reading of the passage is that these are skeptics of near-death experiences actually occurring near death, rather than later during recovery and becoming connected to the earlier experience.

[EDIT] Struck a word that made the tone very slightly confrontational for no reason.

Re: Brain activity of dying people shows signs of near-death experiences

#72

Post by ChicagoBoy11 »

tmtvl wrote: post #56
ndsipa_pomu wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I consider that the best argument against any kind of afterlife is the sheer banality of any claimed conversations with ghosts/deceased. I'd imagine that someone that has taken the final(?) journey would have incredible insights to pass on, yet they always just mumble on about something mundane.

Well, you don't know what you've got 'till it's gone, right? Maybe the first thing we start missing is small talk. (Of course, I'm more of a Lisp guy myself)

I wanted you to know I really appreciated the effort you put into that joke. Gave me a nice chuckle this afternoon, and I really needed it!

Re: Brain activity of dying people shows signs of near-death experiences

#73

Post by metroholografx »

rapnie wrote: post #51
notnaut wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’ve done plenty of psychedelics. I have no idea why you would imply dreams and near death experiences are in the same boat, and much further than that, why you’d combine them with the concept of an afterlife. The pineal gland isn’t a third eye. Dreams are blatantly not random neurological firings, but have no inherent relation to death or the concept of life after death at all. Near death experiences are similar. Th…

> the human brain is soooo fucking primed to see patterns and make sense from anything. Fully agree. I've never done psychedelics, but years ago when overworked and by lack of sleep my mind went into a severe state of hyperassociativity. Though a serious health danger (feeling as if your brain gets cooked) it was a magnificent experience. Everything I saw with my eyes triggered an explosion of associations. I felt as…

[dead]

Re: Brain activity of dying people shows signs of near-death experiences

#74

Post by atlantic »

andyjohnson0 wrote: post #2

> The sensation of moving down a tunnel towards a bright light, reliving past memories and hearing or seeing deceased relatives have all been reported by people from many cultures who have had a brush with death. Sceptics, however, say these experiences could be caused by people hallucinating as they recover in hospital. The way that the default is presented here is interesting. Interpreting the experiences as halluc…

You can only experience the external world through your consciousness. Certain contents of consciousness we assume to have an external correlate, others not, but there is no way to bypass our minds and check directly. Any given civilization has its own picture of reality, and draws its own line separating objective from subjective. We have a fairly conservative model of what is real, due to the influence of the scientific method, but the choice is ultimately arbitrary.

Re: Brain activity of dying people shows signs of near-death experiences

#75

Post by whinenot »

danbruc wrote: post #25
leroy-is-here wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If tiny chemicals can do that to you, because you ingested them, what about all of the other things you ingest, including sound, which cause chemicals in your brain to make reactions?

I am not sure what you mean, but sensory inputs can obviously affect you. Hearing a bear roar right behind you will probably change you state of mind pretty quickly.

Can confirm. Sleeping in a tent on the Serengeti whilst hyenas and lions prowl around the perimeter of the campground has a noticeable effect on one's sleep pattern and heart rate.

Re: Brain activity of dying people shows signs of near-death experiences

#77

Post by wk_end »

ndsipa_pomu wrote: post #28
2OEH8eoCRo0 wrote: post #20

Near-death brain activity and any confirmation of near-death experience does not necessarily imply an afterlife .

I consider that the best argument against any kind of afterlife is the sheer banality of any claimed conversations with ghosts/deceased. I'd imagine that someone that has taken the final(?) journey would have incredible insights to pass on, yet they always just mumble on about something mundane.

Well, that'd be an argument against ghost encounters, not necessarily against "any kind of afterlife". There's plenty of afterlife beliefs that don't involve ghosts at all.

Moreover it's assuming that being a ghost would actually impart some incredible insights, or that the behaviour or experience of being a ghost would necessarily reflect that. Most of what I know about ghosts comes from the movie Casper (1995), and in that ghosts are depicted as beings who can't move on from some trauma from their life. Maybe the incredible insights come later, after moving on; maybe the nature of being a ghost necessitates fixation on the "mundane".

I'm also not sure (nor am I not not sure) that most accounts of interaction with ghosts would even be described as "mumbling on about something mundane". A Christmas Carol (fictional) depicts ghosts as providing life-changing spiritual guidance, for instance.

The best - and only - argument we have against belief in any kind of afterlife is that we have no actual evidence for one. The very idea lies outside of our capacity to know.

Re: Brain activity of dying people shows signs of near-death experiences

#78

Post by nathan_compton »

spacephysics wrote: post #5
andyjohnson0 wrote: post #2

> The sensation of moving down a tunnel towards a bright light, reliving past memories and hearing or seeing deceased relatives have all been reported by people from many cultures who have had a brush with death. Sceptics, however, say these experiences could be caused by people hallucinating as they recover in hospital. The way that the default is presented here is interesting. Interpreting the experiences as halluc…

Unfortunately many things in western culture that get close to mysticism are disregarded as hallucinations or random neurological firings. Same goes with dreams and such. It’s the ‘religion of science’ defaulting to the ‘god’ of deconstructionism. Just hallucinations, nothing more. I understand why, there’s certainly many things which were once said to be mystic, but ended up less so. However, anyone who has done res…

I've done fair amount of psychedelics and all they convinced me of is that people who think the experience is spiritual are credulous.

Re: Brain activity of dying people shows signs of near-death experiences

#79

Post by 11235813213455 »

In the cases of natural deaths, I think it's something you decide, or rather you give up, and shortly after the whole body turns off. I was with my mother with a strong cancer, she didn't want to go to hospital but her situation got really bad so we ended up carrying her to hospital, she died shortly after entering in the hospital despite all their systems (transfusions) set up

Re: Brain activity of dying people shows signs of near-death experiences

#80

Post by steveBK123 »

spacephysics wrote: post #5
andyjohnson0 wrote: post #2

> The sensation of moving down a tunnel towards a bright light, reliving past memories and hearing or seeing deceased relatives have all been reported by people from many cultures who have had a brush with death. Sceptics, however, say these experiences could be caused by people hallucinating as they recover in hospital. The way that the default is presented here is interesting. Interpreting the experiences as halluc…

Unfortunately many things in western culture that get close to mysticism are disregarded as hallucinations or random neurological firings. Same goes with dreams and such. It’s the ‘religion of science’ defaulting to the ‘god’ of deconstructionism. Just hallucinations, nothing more. I understand why, there’s certainly many things which were once said to be mystic, but ended up less so. However, anyone who has done res…

perception & reality are interesting can be thought of as overlapping imperfectly, with each having some influence on the other.

We observe the world through our senses, which can impact our state of mind. Our state of mind impacts our senses, through which we observe the world.

We are always unreliable narrators.

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