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Thank you so much for the ping!

It is an interesting article. Building up to the last paragraph, it speaks of "nonlocal features of the image, such as spatial or temporal frequencies in the brightness pattern, or the presence of correlated orientations within the image." All good and fine, the brain fills in the spatial/temporal geometry - which could indeed explain the 'vision' of a tunnel.

However, that last paragraph is not connected to the previous thoughts. He leaps to the conclusion:

So, the next time you have a near-death experience, and see a tunnel stretching before you leading to a beckoning light, it's not Jesus calling you into the afterlife. It's just some characteristic jiggling of the neurons in your weakened brain. Which, to my mind, is much more interesting.

The conclusion he wishes to draw does not follow from the evidence he presented.

IMHO, the most fascinating and candid of all the NDE accounts comes from the children who draw pictures of their experience soon after. There is precious little in their drawings concerning geometries though it appears quite frequently in adult recollections.

Here's an interesting article: Psychology Today: Bright lights, big mystery