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People who have looked their mortality in the face often describe their near-death experiences in surprisingly similar terms – vivid recollection of memories, a sense of standing outside of their body, bright lights, or a feeling of tranquility. While there is plenty of anecdotal evidence from people who have had near-death experiences (NDEs), scientists have little to no data on what happens in the brain as people transition into death. However, under tragic circumstances, scientists have collected the first continuous data on the neural dynamics of the brain during death. When an 87-year-old patient developed seizures after receiving surgery due...

Does life after death really exist? The answer to this question has fundamental implications for every man, woman and child on the entire planet, and yet most people don’t spend very much time thinking about it. If this life is not the end, so much of the petty stuff that we spend so much time obsessing over in this life really doesn’t matter, and instead we should be focusing on the things that actually do matter for the life to come. However, if this life truly is the end, we might as well eat, drink, party and enjoy this life...

Palliative and intensive care units at hospitals have a close relationship with death, giving rise to many experiences that defy any rational explanation. Patients who foresee the exact time when they will die; others who seem to decide for themselves the day and the hour, moving their death forward or delaying it; family members' prophetic dreams or presentiments on the part of third parties who, without even knowing that someone has been brought to the hospital or has suffered an accident, are certain that he has died. Only healthcare professionals who work closely with terminally ill patients know first-hand the...

I’m not one of those twelve million readers who bought the book “Heaven is For Real” and torpedoed it to the New York Times’ Bestseller List. But I did check it out from the library and enjoyed both the story and the accounts of heaven. “Heaven is for real” is, in fact, only one among the many testimonies of near death experiences I’ve heard about from both Christians and non-Christians. With some suspect exceptions, most of the descriptions of heaven are fascinating and inspire me to work hard to aim for the ultimate prize. But that’s just the good news.On...

A surge of electrical activity in the brain could be responsible for the vivid experiences described by near-death survivors, scientists report. A study carried out on dying rats found high levels of brainwaves at the point of the animals' demise. US researchers said that in humans this could give rise to a heightened state of consciousness

They are eerie sensations, more common than one might think: A man describes feeling a shadowy figure standing behind him, then turning around to find no one there. A woman feels herself leaving her body and floating in space, looking down on her corporeal self. Such experiences are often attributed by those who have them to paranormal forces. But according to recent work by neuroscientists, they can be induced by delivering mild electric current to specific spots in the brain. In one woman, for example, a zap to a brain region called the angular gyrus resulted in a sensation that...

Friday, February 04, 2005 Hallucinatory Neurophysics Everyone knows what it's like to experience the hallucinations that accompany certain kinds of drug use (among other mind-altering contexts) -- if not from direct experience, at least from depictions in movies and literature. We've seen the colorful, swirling patterns, or the illusory tunnels stretching before us. It turns out that hallucinations are by no means random; there are certain recurrent patterns reported by people who experience them. These patterns were studied by Heinrich Kluever in the 1920's and 30's, and classified into four different structures: spirals, spokes, honeycombs, and cobwebs. Subsequent work has...

Book details 2 encounters in near-death experiencesTwice President Reagan faced life-threatening experiences and twice he had encounters with angelic beings who comforted him and helped pull him through his medical crises, says a new book, "Hand of Providence: The Strong and Quiet Faith of Ronald Reagan," by Mary Beth Brown. As Reagan was fighting for his life after being shot by John Hinckley March 30, 1981, he was having trouble breathing. His skin had turned so pale, Nancy Reagan remembers, "He was the color of paper – just as white as a sheet, with dried blood around his mouth." Reagan...