Near-death Experience - Research

Research

Because the study of NDEs is a topic that addressed multiple possible feelings, sensations and their origins, research on NDE should be conducted primarily by researchers with credentials in cognitive neuroscience. Cognitive neuroscience addresses the questions of how psychological functions (for example, human feelings and sensations) are produced by neural circuitry (including the human brain). Modern contributions to the research on near-death experiences, however, have come from several academic disciplines that generally do not include neuroscience. There are multiple reasons for this trend. For example, brain activity scans are not typically performed when a patient is undergoing attempts at emergency resuscitation. Claiming that there is no measurable brain activity without having a variety of different EEG, catSCAN, FMRI, etc. is not considered a good scientific practice. Existing research is mainly in the disciplines of medicine, psychology and psychiatry.

Individual cases of NDEs in literature have been identified into ancient times. In the 19th century a few efforts moved beyond studying individual cases - one privately done by Mormons and one in Switzerland. Up to 2005, 95% of world cultures have been documented making some mention of NDEs.

Contemporary interest in this field of study was originally spurred by the writings of Jess Weiss (popular literature author), Elisabeth Kübler-Ross (psychiatrist), George Ritchie (psychiatrist), and Raymond Moody Jr. (psychologist and M.D.). Moody's book Life After Life, which was released in 1975, brought public attention to the topic of NDEs. This was soon to be followed by the establishment of the International Association for Near-death Studies (IANDS) in 1981. IANDS is an international organization that encourages scientific research and education on the physical, psychological, social, and spiritual nature and ramifications of near-death experiences. Among its publications are the peer-reviewed Journal of Near-Death Studies and the quarterly newsletter Vital Signs.

Bruce Greyson (psychiatrist), Kenneth Ring (psychologist), and Michael Sabom (cardiologist), helped to launch the field of Near-Death Studies and introduced the study of near-death experiences to the academic setting. From 1975 to 2005, some 2500 self reported individuals in the US had been reviewed in retrospective studies of the phenomena with an additional 600 outside the US in the West, and 70 in Asia. Prospective studies, reviewing groups of individuals and then finding who had an NDE after some time and costing more to do, had identified 270 individuals. In all close to 3500 individual cases between 1975 and 2005 had been reviewed in one or another study. And all these studies were carried out by some 55 researchers or teams of researchers. The medical community has been reluctant to address the phenomenon of NDEs, and grant money for research has been scarce. Nevertheless, both Greyson and Ring developed tools usable in a clinical setting. Major contributions to the field include Ring's construction of a "Weighted Core Experience Index" to measure the depth of the near-death experience, and Greyson's construction of the "Near-death experience scale" to differentiate between subjects that are more or less likely to have experienced an NDE. The latter scale is also, according to its author, clinically useful in differentiating NDEs from organic brain syndromes and nonspecific stress responses. The NDE-scale was later found to fit the Rasch rating scale model. Greyson has also brought attention to the near-death experience as a focus of clinical attention, while Melvin Morse, head of the Institute for the Scientific Study of Consciousness, and colleagues have investigated near-death experiences in a pediatric population.

Neurobiological factors in the experience have been investigated by researchers in the field of medical science and psychiatry. Among the researchers and commentators who tend to emphasize a naturalistic and neurological base for the experience are the British psychologist Susan Blackmore (1993), with her "dying brain hypothesis", and the founding publisher of Skeptic magazine, Michael Shermer (1998). More recently, cognitive neuroscientists Jason Braithwaite (2008) from the University of Birmingham and Sebastian Dieguez (2008) and Olaf Blanke (2009) from the Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne, Switzerland have published accounts presenting evidence for the brain-based nature of near death experiences.

In September 2008, it was announced that 25 U.K. and U.S. hospitals would examine near-death studies in 1,500 heart attack patient-survivors. The three-year study, coordinated by Sam Parnia at Southampton University, hopes to determine if people without heartbeat or brain activity can have an out-of-body experience with veridical visual perceptions. This study follows on from an earlier 18-month pilot project. On a July 28, 2010 interview about a recent lecture at Goldsmiths, Parnia (internal medicine physician by training with specialty in pulmonology, critical care, and sleep medicine) asserts that "evidence is now suggesting that mental and cognitive processes may continue for a period of time after a death has started" and describes the process of death as "essentially a global stroke of the brain. Therefore like any stroke process one would not expect the entity of mind / consciousness to be lost immediately". He also expresses his disagreement with the term 'near death experiences' because "the patients that we study are not near death, they have actually died and moreover it conjures up a lot of imprecise scientific notions, due to the fact that itself is a very imprecise term".

Researcher Lakhmir Chawla, an Associate Professor of Anesthesiology and Critical Care Medicine and Medicine at George Washington University medical centre in Washington D.C. argues that near-death experiences are caused by a surge of electrical activity as the brain runs out of oxygen before death. Levels were similar to those seen in fully conscious people, even though blood pressure was so low as to be undetectable, and could generate vivid images and feelings. The gradual loss of brain activity had occurred in the approximate hour before death, and was interrupted by a brief spurt of action, lasting from 30 seconds to three minutes. Sam Parnia disputed this explanation, claiming that Lakhmir Chawla had not provided proof that the electrical surges he recorded were linked to near-death experiences, saying: "Since all the patients died, we cannot tell what they were experiencing". Ironically, critics of Dr. Parnia's work on NDEs have mentioned the lack of evidence of recording brain activity via a combination of EEG, FMRI, catSCANS, etc. in his own studies.

The top peer-reviewed journals in neuroscience, such as Nature Reviews Neuroscience, Brain Research Reviews, Biological Psychiatry, Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience are generally not publishing research on NDEs. Among the scientific and academic journals that have published, or are regularly publishing, new research on the subject of NDEs are Journal of Near-Death Studies, Journal of Nervous and Mental Disease, British Journal of Psychology, American Journal of Disease of Children, Resuscitation, The Lancet, Death Studies, and the Journal of Advanced Nursing. Some researchers have complained about the resistance of the scientific establishment to the implications of NDEs.