Does a Mind Need a Brain?

The exact time when the experiences were undergone was difficult to pinpoint in this study. The data supports the surprising conclusion that NDEs arise during the unconscious period, when the brain is so dysfunctional that the patient is deeply comatose and the cerebral structures usually thought necessary for subjective experience and memory are severely impaired.

If the NDE arose during the period when consciousness was being lost, it would have been joined in memory with ongoing mental experiences at the beginning of the episode, but none of the subjects reported that. Experiences that occur during recovery of consciousness are confusional, but these were not. These subjects had lucid memories with highly structured, narrative, easily recalled and clear features, unlike confusional hallucinations.

None of the subjects reported out-of-body experiences, although they are a relatively common feature of retrospective studies. The scientists had prepared to test any such reports by suspending special boards from the ceilings of the wards before the commencement of the study. These boards had special figures on the surface facing the ceilings that were not visible from below.

If anyone claimed to have left his or her body and was near the ceiling, that person would be expected to be able to identify the markings if he or she had indeed been out-of-body. If the perception was psychological in origin, then one would not expect the markings to be identified.

In this study, the scientists provided evidence that NDEs among survivors of cardiac arrest are relatively rare and that they probably occur during periods when the brain is nonfunctional. Of the memories that do occur during this “unconscious” period, the majority have at least some features of NDEs.

Clearly, a much larger prospective study, probably including multiple institutions, would have to be conducted to have enough subjects so that the psychological, the transcendent, and the physiological aspects of these experiences can be studied more adequately.

After the research paper was published, Dr. Sam Parnia, lead author of the study, told Reuters that he and his colleagues have found more than 3,500 people with lucid memories of experiences that apparently occurred when they were clinically dead.

One patient was only 2-1/2 years old when he had a seizure-induced cardiac arrest. His parents said the boy “drew a picture of himself as if out of his body looking down at himself.”

“It was drawn like there was a balloon stuck to him. When they asked what the balloon was, he said, ‘When you die you see a bright light and you are connected to a cord.’” For six months after he had been discharged from the hospital, the boy kept drawing that same scene.

Parnia speculated that human consciousness may work independently of the brain, using it as a mechanism to manifest thoughts, much as a television set translates the signal that comes through the ether into pictures and sounds.

To read the research paper, please visit http://www.horizonresearch.org/ndearticle_1_.pdf