May 2024
The press is ramping up its coverage of Near-Death Experiences as more scientific research is published and more high-profile experiencers share their stories.
Scientific American published a long-form piece on cutting edge research on consciousness and NDEs, and The Guardian recently published a similar piece.
The NDE phenomenon is gradually becoming accepted in clinics and medical research, although there is a lot of disagreement on how to interpret it.
“We clearly don’t question the reality of Near-Death Experiences anymore”, says Charlotte Martial, a neuroscientist in Liège in Belgium.
The Scientific American article by Rachel Nuwer features a number of leading scientists in the field, such as Sam Parnia, director of resuscitation research at New York University, and neuroscientist Christoph Koch, who recently released a book where he writes about his own NDE. Koch is regarded as one of the chief proponents of a theory on consciousness called Integrated Information Theory (IIT).
Raymond Moody, the pioneer who coined the term “Near-Death Experience”, is mentioned, along with more recent researchers with a physicalist bias (Jimo Borjigin at University of Michigan and Daniel Kondziella at Copenhagen’s Rigshospitalet).
An astounding 5 percent to 10 percent of the general population is estimated to have memories of an NDE, including somewhere between 10 percent to 23 percent of cardiac arrest survivors.
Scientific American lists some of the common features of NDEs: leaving one’s body, a sense of vastness, being enveloped in unconditional love, passing through a tunnel, having a life review, and meeting either deceased loved ones, compassionate entities or prominent spiritual or religious figures.
Nuwer points out that there are important existential implications, “although exactly what those might be continues to be debated in the scientific literature and at conferences”.
Assistant professor of psychiatry Anthony Bossis at New York University notes that these kinds of transcendent experiences are found in spiritual traditions all across the world.
“Might they have some greater purpose for helping humanity cultivate understanding and awareness of consciousness?” he asks.
Perhaps surprisingly, religious people are not more prone to NDEs than other people, according to the article. But there is one group that is more likely than others to have an NDE: those who are prone to REM sleep intrusion. This is a condition where the dream state briefly enters the waking state and blurs the line between the two. In a Danish study from 2019, 10 percent of a global sample of 1,034 adults had experienced an NDE, and of those, 47 percent also reported REM sleep intrusion.
There are striking similarities between NDEs and the experiences people report after having taken psychedelics, which also seems to shut down large areas of the brain.
“Regardless of how people interpret NDEs, studying them may expand the boundaries of resuscitation, provide a better understanding of mind and brain, and shine a flicker of light on some of the deepest mysteries of existence”, the article concludes.
A new documentary on NDEs is under way, produced by filmmaker Anthony Chene (see FJN article here).
Anders Bolling
