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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

#131

Post by C-x_C-f »

mike_d wrote: post #127
C-x_C-f wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I'm not sure I follow; by the same argument, measuring bumps on people's skulls can't be ruled out as not crucial to future science since it hasn't yielded a breakthrough yet.

The merits of a scientific methodology cannot possibly depend on the small chance that some hitherto unsuccessful approach might result in an unexpected breakthrough. Aside from the fact that anything might hold the key to the next big thing, such an approach would inevitably end up following whims and fashions more so than robust and sound scientific reasoning. All else being the same, priority should be given to research which is grounded in solid experiment design and a firm grasp on statistic.

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

#132

Post by [deleted] »

tboyd47 wrote: post #66
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…

On the other hand, it's the definition of solipsism to interpret any experience you don't personally share as "hallucinations."

[deleted]

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

#133

Post by anthk »

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.…

On waves, read about it:

https://neurophysics.ucsd.edu/courses/physics_171/Buzsaki%20...

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

#134

Post by NateEag »

andyjohnson0 wrote: post #100
bloak wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Of course there are also stories of people who claim to have left their body and seen the operating theatre from above and to have noticed some unexpected object on top of a cupboard or in some other location visible only from on high ... and later, when someone checks, the object really is there ... [spooky music] ...

> stories Are there actual, verified instances of this happening?

The canonical compilation of these anecdotes is "The Self Does Not Die":

https://books.google.com/books/about/The_Self_Does_Not_Die.h...

There are a few stories in it that left me raising my eyebrows and going "well, that seems improbable."

I've not found any I couldn't construct a reductionist dismissal for (usually of the form "confirmation bias - someone had to eventually have the hallucination that corresponded with reality and we don't hear about the failures" or "the witnesses memories are incorrect"), but that doesn't mean I find the dismissals entirely plausible or fully convincing.

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

#135

Post by garganzol »

fnordpiglet wrote: post #120
garganzol wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sounds funny but... I had a near-death experience and this is exactly how it feels - data recollection before departure. The weird thing is that you understand that it's not a totally new feeling - it seems that you are already got familiarized with it some time in the past but just forgot it while you was living your current instance of life.

Could you elucidate?

Imagine a film of still and moving images depicting all situations that you ever experienced in your whole life. When you have a near death experience, that imaginary film appears in your consciousness and you immediately recall all those situations down to the greatest details, in parallel. You recall and relive even those moments that you thought were irreversibly lost in your memory. That process of recalling takes a split second, but once it comes to completion you get quite amazed that your brain (or something) was able to perform such a big and costly computational undertaking.

However, in my case, that shocking astonishment was not joyful. For me, it was bitter because once I was able to see every moment of my life with all my deeds and intentions packed in a highly-concentrated billboard of information, I realized how miserable my life actually was. I was driven by fear, illusions, money, greed, and selfishness. I was not giving, I was taking. I was not caring, instead I was mostly ignorant. I knew nothing about life and now it's ending and I spent it awfully.

A few moments later, I understood that a natural cycle of life and death was going to repeat itself one more time, so I made a hard promise to do it better next time, if at all.

However, the cycle did not repeat itself, as I received adequate medical help in time. I was able to make a recovery. But that experience changed me forever.

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

#136

Post by andrewflnr »

The digression into mysticism in this thread is weird. Finding a physical correlate of NDEs reinforces the materialist view, which is basically the null hypothesis for "sceptics". Everyone who didn't already believe in an immaterial soul can calm down.

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

#137

Post by o_____________o »

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.…

> as EEG/fMRI augury suffers from blatant methodological and even statistical flaws

Maybe

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41593-023-01304-9.epdf

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

#138

Post by mensetmanusman »

virgildotcodes wrote: post #104
mensetmanusman wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you believe the objects of your thoughts are material?

Yeah it seems to me the entire process of cognition is based on fully material processes.

Not the process, the plane of existence where the object is. Many who have left Plato’s cave doubt that those objects are made of material.

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

#139

Post by jzb »

bloak wrote: post #86
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.

Of course there are also stories of people who claim to have left their body and seen the operating theatre from above and to have noticed some unexpected object on top of a cupboard or in some other location visible only from on high ... and later, when someone checks, the object really is there ... [spooky music] ...

I don’t know if there’s an afterlife or not, but if there’s such a thing as a soul I wouldn’t think it’d operate on a technicality.

That is: our medical definition of death wouldn’t be what determines freeing a soul from the body. I can’t imagine an “oops, looks like they got your heart beating again - guess it’s time to stuff that pesky soul back in the carcass. See you in a few years” scenario.

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

#140

Post by rbanffy »

mensetmanusman wrote: post #138
virgildotcodes wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah it seems to me the entire process of cognition is based on fully material processes.

Not the process, the plane of existence where the object is. Many who have left Plato’s cave doubt that those objects are made of material.

Without a definition of what’s material in this context, this discussion makes very little sense.

We can’t see objective reality since all we see and sense have to go through our brains. What we can do is to interpret what we see and try to arrive at something that represents a consensus among our different perceptions.

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