Near-death experiences Experience cardiac arrest

Close to death: study on near-death experiences

09/10/2014

Pretty much everyone has ever heard or read about it. People die, are clinically dead, resuscitated, and then report on things they want to see and hear during their medically detectable clinical death or resuscitation.

In fact, there are cases like those of a 57-year-old patient who, clinically dead, was resuscitated and had memories of the actual operations in the treatment room that he, as a clinically dead person, should not have. In this respect, the patient's memories were considered credible by the treating physicians.

First systematic examination of the phenomenon
For some years, doctors try to explain this phenomenon. In most cases, the attempts to explain the situation go in the same direction, namely to justify these cognitive experiences of patients with situational brain activities in the near-death area. A systematic examination of this e.g. however, there have not been any symptoms of resuscitation.

This is what researchers around Sam Parnia from the State University of New York have tackled at Stony Brook. „In this study, we wanted to go beyond the emotionally charged yet poorly defined concept of near-death experience to objectively explore what happens when we die“, so Sam Parnia im „News Release of the University of Southampton“.

To do so, they examined the data from 2060 cardiac arrest patients in the US and Europe and interviewed 140 survivors about their experiences and verified the results. Almost half of the respondents reported "bright light, animals, plants, families, anxiety or violence" in their memories.

Two percent even stated that they had been fully conscious and able to remember the resuscitation, according to the scientists in the journal "Resuscitation"..
"Even if not all people can remember their experiences later, many more people could have had such experiences," says Parnia SPIEGEL ONLINE. "We do not know what the topics mean."

Scientifically difficult to prove
There are many reports of out-of-body or near-death experiences. Scientifically, the least of them, says Thomas Metzinger, head of the Neuroethics / Neurophilosophy Research Center at the University of Mainz to Spiegel online. He himself says while writing his doctoral thesis to have had seven such experiences, but without being able to prove them. Therefore, the reports should be treated with caution. „People interpret these experiences very personally, much like dreams“ said psychologist Dave Wilde of Nottingham University in Trent University.
Metzinger, however, do not doubt that there are such near-death experiences: "When it comes to the sausage, the brain spouts out what's possible." (Jp)