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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

#121

Post by arolihas »

leroy-is-here wrote: post #27
stinos wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't agree there's more to it than random firings, but only in the sense they aren't quite random at all. For the rest I do still think there's nothing more to it than that. The biochemistry behind psychedelics is fairly well-researched and can be explained, so while there is a random component to it just like there are variations in, say, how people perceive color, I do still belive that's really all there is to…

The science of keeping humans healthy is fairly well researched and can also be explained, but that same science cannot convey the experience of being healthy.

A lot of people either seem to not understand that science is focused on testable models of phenomenon and not the actual phenomenon itself, or they refuse to believe any such meaningful distinction exists.

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

#122

Post by C-x_C-f »

mike_d wrote: post #117
C-x_C-f wrote: post #108

If there's one hill I'm determined to die on (given the information that I have anyway) is that any scientific finding extrapolating information from "brain waves" or "region activation" is little more than modern day phrenology. Of course this is not an original thought, though I find it alarming that it's the minority opinion seeing as EEG/fMRI augury suffers from blatant methodological and even statistical flaws.…

What you are experiencing is being present for the development of a major leap in technology. You'll see a lot of trial and error and near misses until someone cracks the big breakthrough of how we non-invasively read information in bulk from a mind. Have a look at all the historical cynicism that surrounded things like voice tracks in motion pictures or consumer automobiles.

I don't deny that neuroscientists will discover something big in the future; I'm just saying that people should stop expecting that the next breakthrough will come from crude tools such as EEGs and fMRI, at least in conjunction with present-day computational power and statistical sophistication. These tools are useful enough without assigning an aura of metaphysical power to them; as things stand, billions of dollars are being wasted on adding noise, and what's worse is that the field has a track record of nefarious applications[0]. You could argue that the latter are not the scientists' fault, but if we keep promoting grandstanding pseudoscience for no clear reason, it's only a matter of time before somebody with both power and ill will is going to use it to harm people, all the while purporting to act in the name of "science."

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phrenology#Racism

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

#123

Post by bell-cot »

Between having surreal dreams occasionally after merely a late-night dark chocolate snack, and some bizarre errors I've seen from computers with failing power supplies...zero "near-death experience" reports actually seem credible to me. ("Credible" in the supernatural / theological sense. However real an occasional dream of levitating myself feels...after waking up, that pesky "gravity" stuff is again ON, with the cool "off" option grayed out.)

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

#124

Post by kelnos »

leroy-is-here wrote: post #15
danbruc wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

However, anyone who has done respectable doses of psychedelics probably agrees with me that there’s a bit more to dreams, NDE and afterlife than “random” neurological firings. Why would that be the case? If anything, it seems to me, taking psychedelics will teach you that tiny amounts of chemicals can drastically alter how your brain works, especially how it perceives the world.

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 would think there's a difference between regular stimuli (through touch, sound, sight, taste, smell) causing your brain to react -- possibly drastically, and deliberately changing your brain chemistry in an "unnatural" way by taking drugs.

One chemical change is caused by the brain working as designed, while the other is a deliberate attempt to change the brain directly.

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

#125

Post by stevenhuang »

wouldbecouldbe wrote: post #70
spacephysics wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Yeah and the interesting part of it, scientific as we think we are, we don't even try to prove conciousness arises from neurological processes.

Of course we do, you're just not aware of the research: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neural_correlates_of_conscious...

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

#126

Post by kelnos »

leroy-is-here wrote: post #34
eimrine wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is this a question? If yes, what is the field of possible answers?

Well, the answer is literally that everything you ingest affects you. It affects your body and the body affects the mind. From the food you eat to the words you hear, your body and mind is affected.

Sure, everything you ingest affects you. But I think most people wouldn't expect drinking some clean water to cause them to hallucinate. Ingesting a chemical like LSD that is known to affect the brain in certain ways is different.

Put another way: all things are not equal when you ingest them.

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

#127

Post by mike_d »

C-x_C-f wrote: post #122
mike_d wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What you are experiencing is being present for the development of a major leap in technology. You'll see a lot of trial and error and near misses until someone cracks the big breakthrough of how we non-invasively read information in bulk from a mind. Have a look at all the historical cynicism that surrounded things like voice tracks in motion pictures or consumer automobiles.

I don't deny that neuroscientists will discover something big in the future; I'm just saying that people should stop expecting that the next breakthrough will come from crude tools such as EEGs and fMRI, at least in conjunction with present-day computational power and statistical sophistication. These tools are useful enough without assigning an aura of metaphysical power to them; as things stand, billions of dollars…

> I'm just saying that people should stop expecting that the next breakthrough will come from crude tools such as EEGs and fMRI

Scurvy killed over two million people until we figured out the solution was simply eating an orange.

We won't know if EEGs and MRIs are core to future technology until we have that breakthrough.

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

#128

Post by kelnos »

notnaut wrote: post #37
spacephysics wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 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

I really wish more people would recognize this. I hear so much irrational thinking because people seem to think that random noise is somehow meaningful. Or because people choose to ignore all the information that doesn't match the "pattern", because they've decided what does match is important to them in some way.

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

#129

Post by kayo_20211030 »

C-x_C-f wrote: post #108

If there's one hill I'm determined to die on (given the information that I have anyway) is that any scientific finding extrapolating information from "brain waves" or "region activation" is little more than modern day phrenology. Of course this is not an original thought, though I find it alarming that it's the minority opinion seeing as EEG/fMRI augury suffers from blatant methodological and even statistical flaws.…

Hear, Hear. A worthy hill.

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

#130

Post by reuben_scratton »

When my mother died she had been completely unconscious for a whole week, but just 30 minutes before she died she opened her eyes and looked around the room. I was later told by a nurse that this is quite common when people are about to die. It seems to fit with the notion of one last burst of brain activity.
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