General anesthesia and consciousness

[All Becomes New]

Show me where I said the supernatural is impossible. But do not try and turn this around on me. You claim that NDEs are supernatural and that it can be shown. Show it then.

I will set aside whether you said that the supernatural is impossible, but the way you argue about this topic sure gives that impression.

Please tell me what would convince you the supernatural is a reality. I'm trying to show that NDEs show evidence of the supernatural, but you are not convinced so I am wondering if anything would convince you.

 

[All Becomes New]

You don't have any facts. It's not a fact that the guy had an out of body experience. It's a fact that he said he did. Those are two entirely different things.

It is something that is corroborated with tons of examples.

 

[Warden_of_the_Storm]

I will set aside whether you said that the supernatural is impossible, but the way you argue about this topic sure gives that impression.

Please tell me what would convince you the supernatural is a reality. I'm trying to show that NDEs show evidence of the supernatural, but you are not convinced so I am wondering if anything would convince you.

I am not convinced because all you have done is just say they are evidence of the supernatural. Just saying that something is evidence of the supernatural is not showing that it is evidence of the supernatural. Telling is not showing.

As for evidence, I honestly cannot say until I see it since a lot of claims I've seen have been for straight up and easily debunked hoaxes (not this sort of thing, other things regarding fossils and such) or only just-so stories that rely on daisy chains of claims that show nothing. If this is the thing that shows the supernatural to be a real thing, all the better.

 

[All Becomes New]

I am not convinced because all you have done is just say they are evidence of the supernatural. Just saying that something is evidence of the supernatural is not showing that it is evidence of the supernatural. Telling is not showing.

As for evidence, I honestly cannot say until I see it since a lot of claims I've seen have been for straight up and easily debunked hoaxes (not this sort of thing, other things regarding fossils and such) or only just-so stories that rely on daisy chains of claims that show nothing. If this is the thing that shows the supernatural to be a real thing, all the better.

As @Bradskii has said, and I agree with, it is about what is more likely, not whether we have 100% certainty about something because, in all but the most fundamental, we have no such proof. So when millions of people report experiences they have had when on death's door say they experienced something that was "more real" than this life, then I don't just chalk that up as a coincidence. It tells us something about reality at that point.

Your answer is so typical of atheists (whether you are an atheist or not) to say, "IDK what would convince me." Even Dawkins has said if he saw the stars spell something out in the sky like, "Jesus was resurrected" (I forget the exact example he gives) he would sooner think he was hallucinating. So it seems that even though people like Dawkins say they are not 100% certain there is no God (or supernatural), functionally, he behaves as if nothing could possibly convince him. And that's what I see in you and others here debating this topic.

 

[Bradskii]

It is something that is corroborated with tons of examples.

We're not talking about 'tons of examples.' We're talking about this one. Notwithstanding that you can't possibly justify that one event is supernatural because there have been lots of other claims. That's logically absurd.

One more time, using your own words, 'we have to go with what is more likely.' And one more time, that will be, of course, your opinion.

 

[Bradskii]

As @Bradskii has said, and I agree with, it is about what is more likely...

No. What we personally consider to be more likely.

 

[partinobodycular]

Fear is something some of these (many) studies account for. In fact, if you look back much earlier in the thread I linked a study that said explicitly that fear was not a factor.

Okay, I just spent half an hour going over your posts trying to find it, without success, so maybe a hint.....

 

[All Becomes New]

@partinobodycular, it is found here:

Like, here's a study you can look at. In the "Discussion," it reads:

Our results show that medical factors cannot account for occurrence of NDE; although all patients had been clinically dead, most did not have NDE. Furthermore, seriousness of the crisis was not related to occurrence or depth of the experience. If purely physiological factors resulting from cerebral anoxia caused NDE, most of our patients should have had this experience. Patients' medication was also unrelated to frequency of NDE. Psychological factors are unlikely to be important as fear was not associated with NDE.

Paper here (peer-reviewed as far as I am aware): https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140673601071008/fulltext

 

[partinobodycular]

@partinobodycular, it is found here:

Our results show that medical factors cannot account for occurrence of NDE; although all patients had been clinically dead, most did not have NDE. Furthermore, seriousness of the crisis was not related to occurrence or depth of the experience. If purely physiological factors resulting from cerebral anoxia caused NDE, most of our patients should have had this experience. Patients' medication was also unrelated to frequency of NDE. Psychological factors are unlikely to be important as fear was not associated with NDE.

Then perhaps you can shed some light on why it says the following in the "Findings":

Depth of the experience was affected by sex, surviving CPR outside hospital, and fear before cardiac arrest.

It would seem that fear was indeed a factor.

 

[All Becomes New]

Then perhaps you can shed some light on why it says the following in the "Findings":



It would seem that fear was indeed a factor.

I think the data disagrees with you. Selective bias by you. In the same exact paragraph, it says,

Most patients were not afraid before CPR, as the arrest happened too suddenly and unexpectedly to allow time for fear.

 

[Bradskii]

I think the data disagrees with you. Selective bias by you. In the same exact paragraph, it says,

That was most patients. Not all.

 

[All Becomes New]

That was most patients. Not all.

35 of those 74 had an NDE. The 74 people were well after the fact as many had died or were unable/unwilling to answer questions about it. So 4 out of those 35 were afraid prior to the NDE. Not a significant amount.

 

[Bradskii]

35 of those 74 had an NDE. The 74 people were well after the fact as many had died or were unable/unwilling to answer questions about it. So 4 out of those 35 were afraid prior to the NDE. Not a significant amount.

Then what you said was wrong: 'I linked a study that said explicitly that fear was not a factor.'

You can't say it was not a factor and then say - well ok, it wasn't a significant factor. Let's get some consistency here.

Anyway, I think I'm done. You've conceded that in your opinion you think these cases are probably supernatural. I've no problem with you holding to that. Personally I am convinced that you are completely wrong, but that is just my opinion as well.

 

[partinobodycular]

I think the data disagrees with you. Selective bias by you. In the same exact paragraph, it says,

Not selective bias, more like confusion, the two statements seem to contradict each other. Perhaps if we broke the findings down.

Occurrence of the experience was not associated with duration of cardiac arrest or unconsciousness, medication, or fear of death before cardiac arrest.

By this I'm assuming that NDE's could occur regardless of duration, medication, or previous fear of death. In other words an NDE could occur whether you were very fearful or not fearful at all. But this doesn't address frequency, i.e how frequently it occurred in each of these scenarios. Meaning that it could occur more frequently if you were really scared, or maybe the other way around, this statement doesn't tell us. To me all that this statement is saying is that having an NDE couldn't be ruled out based upon one's lack of fear.

It should also be noted that one's level of fear is both self reported and subjective.

Frequency of NDE was affected by how we defined NDE, the prospective nature of the research in older cardiac patients, age, surviving cardiac arrest in first myocardial infarction, more than one cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR) during stay in hospital, previous NDE, and memory problems after prolonged CPR.

This one is a little harder for me to parse, because obviously frequency is going to be affected by how one defines an NDE. But it's trickier than that, because it's not very specific. In other words does age increase or decrease frequency? It doesn't tell us. All that it seems to tell us is that age has an effect on frequency. But it's the following one that had me curious, "more than one cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR) during stay in hospital will increase the likelihood of having an NDE". Now maybe it's just me, but I would assume that a person's level of fear will increase every time that they have to undergo CPR. I mean at some point you have to figure that you're living on borrowed time. But what it also suggests to me is that this is an objective way of measuring fear, hence it suggests that the more fearful you are the more likely you are to have an NDE.

Depth of the experience was affected by sex, surviving CPR outside hospital, and fear before cardiac arrest.

This one on the other hand is pretty clear... fear will have an effect on the depth of one's NDE.

So after doing my best to interpret what that statement is saying, this is my conclusion. One's level of fear can't definitively tell us whether someone will or won't have an NDE, but it can tell us that they will have them more frequently and more deeply.

Now I've really had to read a lot into this statement, not because I'm trying to prove my case, but because clarity isn't something the author seems to be gifted with. If you interpret this statement differently than I do, feel free to let me know.

 

[stevevw]

No one says NDEs don't exist. People who approach death-like states have reported experiences. Some of us just don't think they mean anything other than the brain does weird stuff when you deprive it of oxygen, etc.

The problem is from what I understand is that the experiences are not described as being 'weird stuff'. Quite the contrary its often clear and coherent, causing people to reflect deepely on their life and actually having a big impact on them. Changing relationships, becoming more spiritual, caring more for others.

The experiences are described as being more clear than everyday experiences about ones life sometimes bringing up lost memories or forgotten loved ones who have passed. Gaining a better understanding of the meaning of life.

If this is all about confused and irratic and weird hullucinations then we would expect to see more confused thinking, a lack of clarity and inconsistent experiences between people. But we don't. We see a consistency in experiences across age, gender and culture.

In fact during NDE there is no brain activity and certainly not enough to involve hyper vivid and clear experiences that effect people deeply if consciousness is regarded as complex neurological correlations involving large parts of the brain.

 

[Bradskii]

In fact during NDE there is no brain activity and certainly not enough...

Something of a contradiction there.

How many NDEs are you aware of where the patient was inside a magnetic scanner? Maybe you are confusing brain activity, which is measured with an EEG with an ECG. Which measures heart activity.

 

[stevevw]

Something of a contradiction there.

How many NDEs are you aware of where the patient was inside a magnetic scanner? Maybe you are confusing brain activity, which is measured with an EEG with an ECG. Which measures heart activity.

No they were talking about EEG's where there was no brain activity, flat lined brain.

Cardiologist has described a near-death experience that occurred while its experiencer - a woman who was having an unusual surgical procedure for the safe excision and repair of a large basilar artery aneurys met all of the accepted criteria for brain death. Neither is this is an isolated instance for there are now a growing number of people who have testified that they experienced consciousness - indeed, frequently consciousness on a very high and vivid plane, while they were - for a short period - technically "brain-dead."

University of Southampton researchers have just published a paper detailing their pioneering study into near death experiences (or near-death experiences) that suggests consciousness and the mind may continue to exist after the brain has ceased to function and the body is clinically dead.
Independent EEG studies have confirmed that the brain's electrical activity, and hence brain function, ceases at that time. But seven out of 63 (11 per cent) of the Southampton patients who survived their cardiac arrest recalled emotions and visions during unconsciousness." (more information here: http://www.mikepettigrew.com/afterlife/html/u_k__study.html).

"...There are currently three explanations for these accounts. The first is physiological; that the hallucinations patients experience is due to disturbed brain chemistry caused by drug treatment, a lack of oxygen or changes in carbon dioxide levels.

In the Southampton study none of the four patients who had near-death experiences had low levels of oxygen or received any unusual combination of drugs during their resuscitation."
http://www.near-death.com/evidence.html#a2.

“In our prospective study of patients that have been clinically dead (VF on the ECG) no electric activity of the cortex of the brain (flat EEG) must have been possible, but also the abolition of brain stem activity like the loss of the corneareflex, fixed dilated pupils and the loss of the gag reflex is a clinical finding in those patients. However, patients with an NDE can report a clear consciousness, in which cognitive functioning, emotion, sense of identity, and memory from early childhood was possible, as well as perception from a position out and above their “dead” body. So we have to conclude that NDE in our study was experienced during a transient functional loss of all functions of the cortex and of the brainstem.

A Reply to Shermer Medical Evidence for NDEs, Pim van Lommel

​

For the NDEs occurring under general anesthesia, 19 (83%) of the respondents answered, “More consciousness and alertness than normal,” to this question, compared to 437 (74%) for all other NDEs. The responses to this question by the two groups were not statistically significantly different. This suggests, remarkably, that the level of consciousness and alertness in NDEs is not modified by general anesthesia.
Near-Death Experiences Evidence for Their Reality

 

[partinobodycular]

No they were talking about EEG's where there was no brain activity, flat lined brain.

Perhaps you can explain something to me that's puzzled me for a while... how do researchers know when an NDE happened?

We know from studies that half of all NDE's occur in people who were never near death at all.

The medical records of 58 patients, most of whom believed they were near death during an illness or after an injury and all of whom later remembered unusual experiences occurring at the time, were examined. 28 patients were judged to have been so close to death that they would have died without medical intervention; the other 30 patients were not in danger of dying although most of them thought they were.

Features of "near-death experience" in relation to whether or not patients were near death

So we can be absolutely certain that these people's NDE's happened before they flat lined, because they never actually flat lined. But what about the other half? How do we know when their NDE's happened? There are a number of possibilities.

1. The NDE happens while the patient is perfectly stable, just like the other half of people. It's just that these patients then go on to flat line, but their NDE had already occurred.
2. The NDE happens during the time when blood flow to the brain has stopped, but the brain hasn't actually flat lined yet. The brain can continue to function for at least a few minutes after loss of blood flow, and could function for an extended period of time as doctors and nurses work to keep oxygen going to the brain.
3. The NDE happens while brain function is flat lined.
4. The NDE happens as heart function is restored, blood flow to the brain returns, and brain activity begins to return to normal.
5. The NDE happens once brain function has fully normalized again.

So the question is... other than the half of patients who never flat lined, how do we know when the NDE's for everyone else actually happened? Just because half of the patients flat lined doesn't mean that their NDE's occurred while they were flat lined.

It seems to me that without an answer to this question everything else about NDE's is pure speculation.

 

[Tinker Grey]

Perhaps you can explain something to me that's puzzled me for a while... how do researchers know when an NDE happened?

We know from studies that half of all NDE's occur in people who were never near death at all.



Features of "near-death experience" in relation to whether or not patients were near death

So we can be absolutely certain that these people's NDE's happened before they flat lined, because they never actually flat lined. But what about the other half? How do we know when their NDE's happened? There are a number of possibilities.

1. The NDE happens while the patient is perfectly stable, just like the other half of people. It's just that these patients then go on to flat line, but their NDE had already occurred.
2. The NDE happens during the time when blood flow to the brain has stopped, but the brain hasn't actually flat lined yet. The brain can continue to function for at least a few minutes after loss of blood flow, and could function for an extended period of time as doctors and nurses work to keep oxygen going to the brain.
3. The NDE happens while brain function is flat lined.
4. The NDE happens as heart function is restored, blood flow to the brain returns, and brain activity begins to return to normal.
5. The NDE happens once brain function has fully normalized again.

So the question is... other than the half of patients who never flat lined, how do we know when the NDE's for everyone else actually happened? Just because half of the patients flat lined doesn't mean that their NDE's occurred while they were flat lined.

It seems to me that without an answer to this question everything else about NDE's is pure speculation.

That question occurred to me as well.

 

[Bradskii]

No they were talking about EEG's where there was no brain activity, flat lined brain.

Cardiologist has described a near-death experience that occurred while its experiencer - a woman who was having an unusual surgical procedure for the safe excision and repair of a large basilar artery aneurys met all of the accepted criteria for brain death. Neither is this is an isolated instance for there are now a growing number of people who have testified that they experienced consciousness - indeed, frequently consciousness on a very high and vivid plane, while they were - for a short period - technically "brain-dead."

University of Southampton researchers have just published a paper detailing their pioneering study into near death experiences (or near-death experiences) that suggests consciousness and the mind may continue to exist after the brain has ceased to function and the body is clinically dead.
Independent EEG studies have confirmed that the brain's electrical activity, and hence brain function, ceases at that time. But seven out of 63 (11 per cent) of the Southampton patients who survived their cardiac arrest recalled emotions and visions during unconsciousness." (more information here: http://www.mikepettigrew.com/afterlife/html/u_k__study.html).

"...There are currently three explanations for these accounts. The first is physiological; that the hallucinations patients experience is due to disturbed brain chemistry caused by drug treatment, a lack of oxygen or changes in carbon dioxide levels.

In the Southampton study none of the four patients who had near-death experiences had low levels of oxygen or received any unusual combination of drugs during their resuscitation."
http://www.near-death.com/evidence.html#a2.

“In our prospective study of patients that have been clinically dead (VF on the ECG) no electric activity of the cortex of the brain (flat EEG) must have been possible, but also the abolition of brain stem activity like the loss of the corneareflex, fixed dilated pupils and the loss of the gag reflex is a clinical finding in those patients. However, patients with an NDE can report a clear consciousness, in which cognitive functioning, emotion, sense of identity, and memory from early childhood was possible, as well as perception from a position out and above their “dead” body. So we have to conclude that NDE in our study was experienced during a transient functional loss of all functions of the cortex and of the brainstem.

A Reply to Shermer Medical Evidence for NDEs, Pim van Lommel

​

For the NDEs occurring under general anesthesia, 19 (83%) of the respondents answered, “More consciousness and alertness than normal,” to this question, compared to 437 (74%) for all other NDEs. The responses to this question by the two groups were not statistically significantly different. This suggests, remarkably, that the level of consciousness and alertness in NDEs is not modified by general anesthesia.
Near-Death Experiences Evidence for Their Reality

Neither of those links are available. Did you manage to open them?

And as has been noted, in the unlikely event that a patient was plugged into something that would detect brain activity (and I'd like access to that report to check) then when somebody recovers and says 'Hey, I had the weirdest experience', quite possibly hours after the event, there is no way to know that they had the experience when brain activity was flatlining.