Posted on 04/24/2006 11:08:29 PM PDT by churchillbuff
A new study by a team of University of Kentucky researchers attempts to explain the mysterious "near-death experience" reported by some people who survive close brushes with death.
The research appeared in the scientific journal Neurology. It has attracted international attention. The report's lead author says it should be possible to test the theory.
The Kentucky researchers argue that near-death experiences may be caused by a blurring of waking and sleeping states brought on by a biological mechanism.
Individuals who have reported near-death experiences appear to be more likely to have a strong "fight or flight" arousal system.
In moments of extreme stress, that system can cause them to experience some features of deep sleep despite being awake, the study said. The state of deep sleep, or rapid eye movement sleep, is the part of sleep during which most dreaming occurs.
Kentucky neurologist Kevin Nelson says the jarring experience triggers the REM sleep state to briefly kick in even though they remain awake.
People's unusual sleep cycles still doesn't explain how some Near-Death Experiencers report seeing things from another vantage point - like up on the ceiling.
Ditto.
Last night on Coast-to-Coast (I know, I know!) some guy was talking about NDE's, mentioned about blind people (from birth) having NDE's with eye sight, and providing a visual description of the room they were in, etc. Interesting if true.
These NDEs seem to have some scientists worried. On the one hand, they're frequent and credible enough that the medical and scientific community acknowledges that they happen. But, because they suggest the possibility of a non-material dimension, there's a whole cottage industry devoted to explaining them away as "natural" phenomena. None of the "natural" explanations can explain how an NDE can involve, say, watching an operation from the ceiling and being able to recount what went on, from that visual perspective. If they're drug-induced, or the result of oxygen cutoff, or a product of sleep tendencies, that still wouldn't explain how the "experiencer" gets up to the ceiling and looks down.
We had an interesting experience with our son (who as a soldier now serving in the WOT), probably has a strong fight or flight response.
When he was about 8 years old he was hit by a car and thrown 40 feet through the air. After he recovered (fortunately he was not badly injured) and came home from the hospital he told me he had been floating about ten feet up in the air and watched me and the police and ambulance people working over him on the ground. This was not a topic we had ever discussed.
When he was around two we had several startling extra sensory perception experiences which really startled me.
I listen to Coast-to-Coast to remind myself what real mental illness sounds like. Have you ever, on that program, heard any of the speakers sight exact experiments and the authors of those experiments or documents to back their position? They are aways vague about everything! Occasionally you have a valid authority. Most are just tall tale tellers.
could you control your floating? or were you just kinda stuck there? I'm curious.
I had no awareness of control, but I did have a connection to my body, when they moved me into the ambulance I was still about the same height but outside, I didn't gain altitude until they drove away and I couldn't see my body anymore, I just watched the ambulance drive away. I can't remember any passage of time either, from the time I hit my head until the Ambulance drove away could have been a minute or a day, it just was, I woke up the next day initially with no memory at all of what happened, then as I started to move around and my head started pounding it all came back to me.
TT
In a secular world, scientists constitute a smug, self-satisfied, and very contented New Priesthood, dictating the terms of reality and interpreting the universe for the laity. Any admission of or evidence for the old religious order threatens their primacy, is anathema, and must be quashed immediately at source. The potential validity of NDEs as evidence of spirituality and life after death gives a case of night sweats to every member of the caste of the New Priests.
I dunno. I always figured that maybe we're going back to some of our earliest remembered moments.
The long dark tunnel into the light business sounds a lot to me like being born.
amen. why is it so-called scientists have this overwhelming need to disprove anything that even hints of god or metaphysics. yet they don't spend much time disproving demons, satan, or witchcraft? wonder why.
..."These NDEs seem to have some scientists worried."...
Yes, some do not want to consider that God does exist and that we all might be called to another place after this life is over. If there is paradise, then hell might also exist or some kind of other dark place in between. We humans are so fragile, yet so arrogant. If we, with our envies and cruel strife are all there is, why try to survive? I am so glad I know God is real.
..."In a secular world, scientists constitute a smug, self-satisfied, and very contented New Priesthood, dictating the terms of reality and interpreting the universe for the laity. Any admission of or evidence for the old religious order threatens their primacy, is anathema, and must be quashed immediately at source. The potential validity of NDEs as evidence of spirituality and life after death gives a case of night sweats to every member of the caste of the New Priests."...
Beginning with Freud. He has now been largely debunked but just think of the damage he caused to the lives of people who suffered from maladies which, in many cases were incited by abuses from those around them.
There have been four controlled, peer-reviewed, long-term hospital studies done on the NDE, the first of which was published in the British Medical Journal "The Lancet" in 2001. All four studies have produced the same results: about 20% of people in all four studies experienced NDEs, the NDEs largely matched in description and detail. The Lancet article is widely available and it went through various explanations, but concluded they did not fit the facts. Conclusion: "Not medically explicable at the present time."
It is interesting stuff.
Of particular note are the sighted NDEs of those who are congenitally blind, and the NDEs of those in Stage III brain death in "halting" operations to repair brain aneurysms.
Agreed. Have read far too much on this subject to believe it's just some 'biological state'.
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