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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

#191

Post by stinos »

mistermann wrote: post #155
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…

> No matter how in touch one might feel with whatever mystic stuff out there, no matter how profound it might feel, I've yet to see any evidence whatsoever of that somehow proving there effectively is something out there. Doesn't matter those feelings are very real, but it's just.. feelings. Do you have a pretty diverse range of experiences on psychedelics backing this up?

'back up' is a bit hard because of the anecdotal nature, but for me this is just the most logical explanation and as said: I have yet to see even the slightest piece of scientific evidence pointing to something else. Whereas there's enough of science supporting the way I think. I remain skeptical of course, though it's more of a 'I want to belive' type of thing.

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

#192

Post by ndsipa_pomu »

mistermann wrote: post #160
ndsipa_pomu wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's reasonable to dismiss hypotheses that are untestable, provide no predictive power and have questionable evidence to support them. That's not so much about being close-minded, but just a practical methodology. If you accept non-testable hypotheses, then how can you tell whether it was the result of a specific deity or an invisible pink unicorn?

How is "provide no predictive power" achieved?

> How is "provide no predictive power" achieved?

It's very similar to being untestable. If a hypothesis provides a prediction, but can alter the interpretation after the event to fit the facts, then it's providing no predictive power. e.g. If someone predicts that rewards/punishes people when they die (which alters their near death experience), but then amends their interpretation of good/bad to fit the data, then it can't be used to predict anything.

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

#193

Post by rbanffy »

mensetmanusman wrote: post #171
rbanffy wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Are you saying the mind is another form of interpretation? Where is that plane of interpretation happening?

We are only aware of the mind's internal representation of objective reality.

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

#194

Post by 1827163 »

ndsipa_pomu wrote: post #53
1827163 wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There shouldn't be anything wrong with having an open mind about such phenomena. While it's very likely that they are of biological origin, to immediately dismiss any other possibilities is closed minded dogmatism.

It's reasonable to dismiss hypotheses that are untestable, provide no predictive power and have questionable evidence to support them. That's not so much about being close-minded, but just a practical methodology. If you accept non-testable hypotheses, then how can you tell whether it was the result of a specific deity or an invisible pink unicorn?

I don't by default accept the existence of such phenomena, instead I don't want to summarily, without investigation, dismiss the existence of it.

There might still be a way we can test these hypotheses at some point in the future. It's just that we can't do it now.

But not being able to test it now, is no reason to dismiss it, because then we will never go down the path that might eventually result in it being testable.

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

#195

Post by proc0 »

> Sam Parnia at NYU Langone Health says the gamma wave surge might happen as people die because falling oxygen levels disable some natural “braking systems” on brain activity.

Woah, they should study this in context of the practice of meditating and fire breathing (hyperventilating?). A popular one is Wim Hoff who has this method where you increase O2 in the blood by breathing techniques and then hold your breath for as long as possible.

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

#196

Post by Someone »

pedalpete wrote: post #157
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 someone who works in EEG, you may be surprised that I somewhat agree with you. Let's start with where I am in agreement. EEG or fMRI data only tells us about electrical activity in the brain, specifically the firing of neurons in different patterns and areas of the brain. We are yet to make the absolute connection of how that electrical activity translates into thought. What I do find interesting is that in the ag…

> EEG or fMRI data only tells us about electrical activity in the brain, specifically the firing of neurons in different patterns and areas of the brain. We are yet to make the absolute connection of how that electrical activity translates into thought.

To do that, I think we’d need much higher resolution imaging, both in space and in time.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Functional_magnetic_resonance_... talks of submillimeter spatial for fMRI while a neuron is about 0.1mm.

It also says temporal resolution can be about a second. Whether that is sufficient isn’t clear to me. I think we know too little of the human brain to make a judgment on that. On the one hand, https://aiimpacts.org/rate-of-neuron-firing/ says a brain neuron, on average, fires less than 2 times a second. On the other hand https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fncel.2016.0023... talks of fast-spiking neurons that fire hundreds of times a second.

The current data is like trying to figure out how a CPU works from recordings that don’t show individual bits, but only show what parts get active when doing floating point calculations, when doing I/O, etc.

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

#197

Post by oigursh »

NovaDudely wrote: post #172
Jeff_Brown wrote: post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I had open heart surgery once, and was given a lot of drugs. It was extremely intense and strange, and I felt like I was at the edge of discovering something immensely important. In retrospect I believe I learned nothing.

I think I posted it on here before but I recall a story of someone who said they would speak to God on LSD and that everything was profound. So one time they decided to ask "God" what the meaning of life was and they would write it down to study the next day. The next day all that was written down was "Walls". It felt profound but meant nothing. That is unless walls is the answer and it is just too blunt for us to un…

Universal Love said the Cactus Person https://slatestarcodex.com/2015/04/21/universal-love-said-th...

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

#198

Post by andrewflnr »

akomtu wrote: post #175
andrewflnr wrote: post #136

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.

What is "materiality"? Electrons guided by magnetic field that form one universal wave function? In that case even the hardcore materialists are fundamentally in agreement with mysticism.

No they aren't, despite the superficial similarity, and I think you know it. At best you haven't actually thought about the difference between a measurable field defined by math and a mystical "field" ultimately defined by feelings.

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

#199

Post by foxyv »

klyrs wrote: post #188
NovaDudely wrote: post #172

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think I posted it on here before but I recall a story of someone who said they would speak to God on LSD and that everything was profound. So one time they decided to ask "God" what the meaning of life was and they would write it down to study the next day. The next day all that was written down was "Walls". It felt profound but meant nothing. That is unless walls is the answer and it is just too blunt for us to un…

Truly, the meaning of life is walls. Without cell walls, where would we be? Without delineation or separation, how could we make sense of the world? This article is about piercing the veil, a wall between life and, well, that would be telling. Gradients are necessary for life, but walls are necessary for meaning . I dunno, I'm not high but I can see some plausible depth here. I'm not arguing that your friend talked t…

I used to do this a lot as a kid. Ascribing high meaning to tiny things like words or patterns. Some of it was just plain magical thinking. Later I learned it's called the "Hindsight Bias" usually mixed in with a little grandiosity and juvenile narcissism. I never understood why no-one could see my genius! Being a teenager is so cringey in retrospect...

Although, as a buddhist I like to think of the meaning of life as tearing down walls that never existed anywhere but our own minds. Of realizing interconnectedness. But at the same time I'm always aware that I'm not THAT far from the cringey know-it-all teenager!

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

#200

Post by klyrs »

foxyv wrote: post #199
klyrs wrote: post #188

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Truly, the meaning of life is walls. Without cell walls, where would we be? Without delineation or separation, how could we make sense of the world? This article is about piercing the veil, a wall between life and, well, that would be telling. Gradients are necessary for life, but walls are necessary for meaning . I dunno, I'm not high but I can see some plausible depth here. I'm not arguing that your friend talked t…

I used to do this a lot as a kid. Ascribing high meaning to tiny things like words or patterns. Some of it was just plain magical thinking. Later I learned it's called the "Hindsight Bias" usually mixed in with a little grandiosity and juvenile narcissism. I never understood why no-one could see my genius! Being a teenager is so cringey in retrospect... Although, as a buddhist I like to think of the meaning of life a…

Yeah, I was just having fun with it. I was reared in a spiritualistic environment, so I kinda know the lingo. So help me if I actually believed those words I wrote :)
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