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Near-death experiences: Determining the neuroanatomical pathways by experiential patterns and simulation in experimental settings
... Mardi Horowitz and John Adams (1970) have theorized that the hallucinatory phenomena associated with complex partial seizures arise as expressions of altered states of consciousness. The similarities between NDE phenomena and temporal lobe epileptic symptoms have been noted by several researchers (Saavedra-Aguilar and Gómez-Jeria, 1989;Persinger, 1994). Thus we can reasonably suppose that similar mechanisms might be operating in NDEs and in temporal lobe epilepsy. ...
... The source of the hellish affect is another question. Temporal lobe research by Michael Persinger (1994) suggests that single states of consciousness can evoke very different affects and implies that temporal lobe affects may be implicated in both hellish and blissful NDEs. ...
... The involvement of the brain's temporal lobes in NDEs appears to be well established. Persinger (1987) has theorized that when our species first evolved its unique cognitive abilities, two parts of our brains enlarged disproportionately: the frontal lobes, generally specialized for extrapolating into the future, and the temporal lobes, generally specialized for remembering the past. Those developments allowed people to remember death and to realize that the same thing would happen to them in the future. ...
Hypothesizes that a near-death experience (NDE) is the subjective experience of having the state of consciousness in which a person experiences the last moment of his or her life being turned, in stages, into the state of consciousness experienced as the “point of no return.” The life review this, as is interpreted as a review of the states of consciousness experienced during our lives. Our responses to reviewing our own behaviors while in specific states reinforces and classifies them into those to repeat in future lives and those to avoid. We examine a modification of the traditional doctrine of reincarnation that takes into account biological and cultural evolution. This allows an understanding of how the attributes of NDEs could have undergone selection even though all opportunities for mating have already passed at the time of death.
... Mardi Horowitz and John Adams (1970) have theorized that the hallucinatory phenomena associated with complex partial seizures arise as expressions of altered states of consciousness. The similarities between NDE phenomena and temporal lobe epileptic symptoms have been noted by several researchers (Saavedra-Aguilar and Gómez-Jeria, 1989;Persinger, 1994). Thus we can reasonably suppose that similar mechanisms might be operating in NDEs and in temporal lobe epilepsy. ...
... The source of the hellish affect is another question. Temporal lobe research by Michael Persinger (1994) suggests that single states of consciousness can evoke very different affects and implies that temporal lobe affects may be implicated in both hellish and blissful NDEs. ...
... The involvement of the brain's temporal lobes in NDEs appears to be well established. Persinger (1987) has theorized that when our species first evolved its unique cognitive abilities, two parts of our brains enlarged disproportionately: the frontal lobes, generally specialized for extrapolating into the future, and the temporal lobes, generally specialized for remembering the past. Those developments allowed people to remember death and to realize that the same thing would happen to them in the future. ...
Near-death experiences (NDEs) in Thailand do not demonstrate the episodes most noted in those collected in the West, but they do show consistent features. I argue that these features, including harbingers of death, visions of hell, the Lord of the underworld, and the benefits of making donations to Buddhist monks and temples, can be understood within the framework of beliefs and customs unique to Southeast Asia. The simplest explanation is that the phenomenology of NDEs at least in part fulfills the individuals' expectations of what they will experience at death. These expectations are most often derived from the experiencer's culture, subculture, or mix of cultures. Culture-bound expectations are, in turn, most often derived from religion. One case, quoted at length, shows features that suggest that the individual was experiencing stress as a result of living in both Thai and Chinese cultures. Although the phenomenology of Thai NDEs is at variance from those in the West, the typical episodes that appear in each seem to follow a comparable sequencing. This similarity in structure suggests that NDEs in both cultures have a common function.
... Rodin (1980Rodin ( , 1981, himself a physician and one who had a profound positive NDE, argues that it was but a toxic psychosis brought about by oxygen deprivation. Persinger (1994) supplements this explanation by attributing much of NDE to right-hemispheric invasion of left-hemispheric functions facilitated by oxygen deprivation. Carr (1982) argues that most phenomena that are reported in NDEs can be accounted for by sensory isolation and limbic lobe dysfunctions brought about by extreme stress and correlated elevated endorphin levels. ...
... Carr (1982) argues that most phenomena that are reported in NDEs can be accounted for by sensory isolation and limbic lobe dysfunctions brought about by extreme stress and correlated elevated endorphin levels. Visual phenomena are largely dismissed as hallucinations or as imagery that is commonly experienced under conditions of sensory isolation (Hood and Morris 1981;Hood, Morris, and Watson 1990;Persinger 1994). ...
This chapter describes the experience of receiving a near fatal bite from a serpent and the anticipation of death. It places near-death experiences by serpent bite (NDBs) in religious settings in the context of what has become known as near-death experiences. This is done for two reasons. First, the conceptual issues in NDEs are directly relevant to the religious beliefs of serpent-handling churches, particularly with respect to human immortality. Second, the claim to prototypical near-death experiences (NDEs) widely reported in the popular literature lacks clear empirical support. It is not, for instance, typical of NDEs from serpent bites to believers who handle in religious settings. Thus it may be that NDEs are influenced by the beliefs of those near death. Beliefs may be a particularly salient determinant of NDEs when they are firmly grounded in a religious worldview and even more so when that worldview includes a ritual that believers know can kill.
... Researchers have proposed several chemical models to explain NDEs, attributing them to a wide variety of substances that transmit impulses from one brain cell to another (neurotransmitters) [65][66][67][68][69][70]. The number of hypothetical neurotransmitters implicated is quite large, but none of these speculations is supported by any evidence. ...
Near-death experiences (NDEs) are vivid experiences that often occur in life-threatening conditions, usually characterized by a transcendent tone and clear perceptions of leaving the body and being in a different spatiotemporal dimension. Such experiences have been reported throughout history in diverse cultures, and are reported today by 10% to 20% of people who have come close to death. Although cultural expectations and parameters of the brush with death influence the content of some NDEs, near-death phenomenology is invariant across cultures. That invariance may reflect universal psychological defenses, neurophysiological processes, or actual experience of a transcendent or mystical domain. Research into these alternative explanations has been hampered by the unpredictable occurrence of NDEs. Regardless of the causes or interpretations of NDEs, however, they are consistently associated with profound and long-lasting aftereffects on experiencers, and may have important implications for non-experiencers as well.
... We are confident that future neuroscientific studies in cardiac arrest patients with NDEs are likely to reveal the functional neuroanatomy of several NDE phenomena, likely implicating distributed bilateral cortical and subcortical brain mechanisms. There are also the promising experimental results and earlier suggestions (Britton and Bootzin, 2004;Persinger, 1994) that link NDE phenomena to symptoms of temporal lobe epilepsy. We therefore also expect additional insights into the neural and neuropsychological mechanisms of NDE phenomena through studies investigating the incidence of NDE phenomena (by carrying out detailed interviews and questionnaires) in patients with focal epilepsies as well as other neurological patients suffering from focal brain damage. ...
Out-of-body experiences (OBEs) and near-death experiences (NDEs) are complex phenomena that have fascinated mankind from time immemorial. OBEs are defined as experiences in which a person seems to be awake and sees his body and the world from a disembodied location outside his physical body. Recent neurological and neuroscientific research suggests that OBEs are the result of disturbed bodily multisensory integration, primarily in right temporo-parietal cortex. NDEs are more loosely defined, and refer to a set of subjective phenomena, often including an OBE, that are triggered by a life-threatening situation. Although a number of different theories have been proposed about the putative brain processes underlying NDEs, neurologists and cognitive neuroscientists have, so far, paid little attention to these phenomena, although several experimental investigations based on principles from cognitive neuroscience are possible. This might be understandable but is unfortunate, because the neuroscientific study of NDEs could provide insights into the functional and neural mechanisms of beliefs, concepts, personality, spirituality, magical thinking, and the self. Based on previous medical and psychological research in cardiac arrest patients with NDEs, we sketch a neurological framework for the study of the so-called NDEs.
... Entretanto, vivências semelhantes a uma EQM, quase nunca são observadas em convulsões do lobo temporal (Devinsky et al., 1989;Rodin, 1989), e a estimulação elétrica dos lobos temporais pode desencadear fragmentos de música, cenas isoladas e repetitivas que parecem familiares, audição de vozes, experiências de medo ou outras emoções negativas, visões bizarras, imagens oníricas, além de ampla escala de sensações somáticas que nunca foram relatadas em EQMs (Gloor, 1990;Horowitz e Adams, 1970). Os relatos dos fenômenos induzidos por estimulação magnética transcraniana dos lobos temporais, que mostraram vaga semelhança com uma EQM (Persinger, 1994), não foram replicados e têm sido atribuídos à sugestão. ...
CONTEXTO: Quando algumas pessoas vivenciam um estado próximo da morte, elas referem uma experiência profunda de transcender o mundo físico, o que freqüentemente as conduz a uma transformação espiritual. Estas "experiências de quase-morte" (EQMs) são relevantes para os clínicos pois produzem mudanças nas crenças, nas atitudes e nos valores; podem ser confundidas com os estados psicopatológicos, embora tenham conseqüências diferentes necessitando terapêuticas diferentes; e, por fim, porque podem ampliar a nossa compreensão em relação ao fenômeno da consciência. OBJETIVOS: Esta revisão de literatura examina as evidências relacionadas às explicações que têm sido propostas para o fenômeno das EQMs, incluindo expectativa, memórias do nascimento, alterações nos gases sangüíneos, alucinações tóxicas ou metabólicas e modelos neuroquímicos e neuroanatômicos. MÉTODOS: A literatura sobre EQM dos últimos 30 anos foi revisada de modo abrangente, incluindo bases de dados médicas, de enfermagem, psicológicas e sociológicas. RESULTADOS: As EQMs tipicamente produzem mudanças positivas em atitudes, crenças e valores, mas também podem levar a problemas interpessoais e intrapsíquicos. Esses problemas, embora tenham sido comparados a vários transtornos mentais, diferem desses quadros psicopatológicos. Várias estratégias terapêuticas têm sido propostas para ajudar indivíduos que apresentam conseqüências problemáticas de uma EQM, mas tais intervenções ainda não foram testadas. CONCLUSÕES: A consciência mística e o funcionamento mental intensificado durante uma EQM, quando o funcionamento cerebral está gravemente prejudicado, são um desafio para os modelos atuais sobre a interação cérebro/mente e podem, eventualmente, levar a modelos mais completos para o entendimento da consciência.
... Several researchers have suggested that the right temporal lobes may be involved with NDEs, because epileptics who have temporal lobe seizures report many phenomena similar to NDEs (Britton and Bootzin, 2004;Persinger, 1994;Saavedra-Aguilar and Gomez-Jeria, 1989). However, Persinger pointed out that studies that have used transcranial magnetic stimulation of the temporal lobes to induce NDEs only vaguely resembled NDE phenomena and, when replicated, have failed to show consistent results. ...
Claims from those having near-death experiences (NDEs), as well as those sympathetic to such claims, challenge the prevailing assumption that consciousness is dependent on a functioning brain. Extant theories, both neurobiological and psychosocial, that attempt to explain NDEs are examined and found unable to adequately account for the full range of NDE reports, especially electromagnetic after-effects and out-of-body experiences with veridical perception. As a result, many leading NDE researchers have proposed that a new model is needed to explain how consciousness could possibly exist independently of the brain, mainly relying on theories from quantum physics. Our paper critically evaluates a range of extant neurobiological and psychosocial theories of NDEs, as well as examines theories that might offer more promise in fully explaining NDEs, especially those using insights derived from quantum physics. We conclude that the "hard problem" of consciousness is not yet solved, but that NDEs provide an important avenue for exploring the relationship between consciousness and brain, as well as possibly understanding a disembodied concept of consciousness.
... One example of such phenomenon is vestibular sensation, in which one's normal sense of balance is replaced by illusions of motion similar to the feelings of levitation reported in spiritual literature as well as the sensation of vertigo. Transient 'visions', whose content includes motifs that also appear in near-death experiences and alien abduction scenarios have also appeared (Persinger, 1993). Positive affectual parasthesias (electriclike buzzes in the body) have occurred. ...
It has been found that there are five million magnetite crystals per gram in the human brain. Interestingly, the meninges, has twenty times that number. These 'biomagnetite' crystals demonstrate two interesting features. The first is that their shapes do not occur in nature, suggesting that they were formed in the tissue, rather than being absorbed from outside. The other is that these crystals appear to be oriented so as to maximize their magnetic moment, which tends to give groups of these crystals the capacity to act as a system. We hypothesize that the entire set of modalities, cognitive and sensory, may be heuristically compared to a sound mixing board. In this metaphor, all the various modalities are represented as vertical rheostats with enhanced functioning increasing towards the top, and suppressed function increas-ing towards the bottom. Further, the act of becoming conscious of phenomena in any given modality involves the ad-justment of that modality's 'rheostat'.
... We are confident that future neuroscientific studies in cardiac arrest patients with NDEs are likely to reveal the functional neuroanatomy of several NDE phenomena , likely implicating distributed bilateral cortical and subcortical brain mechanisms. There are also the promising experimental results by Britton and Bootzin [142] and previous earlier suggestions by Persinger [196] that link NDE phenomena to symptoms of temporal lobe epilepsy. We therefore also expect additional insights into the neural mechanisms of NDE phenomena through studies investigating the incidence of NDE phenomena (by carrying out detailed interviews and questionnaires) and neuropsychology in patients with focal epilepsies as well as other neurological patients suffering from focal brain damage. ...
The intensity of reported vestibular experiences by normal volunteers (n = 127, over a 4-year period) increased significantly in a step-like manner during partial sensory deprivation when the daily geomagnetic activity exceeded about 15 nT; the effect size was equivalent to a correlation of about 0.33. Post hoc analyses indicated that the geomagnetic activity during the 3-h period at the beginning of the previous sleep cycle was the single greatest contributor. The enhanced occurrences of experiences that are similar to those associated with complex partial epileptic seizures suggests that specific stimuli associated with geomagnetic activity above about 15 nT affects specific regions of the human brain; the vulnerability occurs during the subsequent 24 h. However, in non-epileptic individuals these experiences must be amplified neurocognitively by removing input from auditory and visual modalities.
The hypothesis was tested that compensatory susceptibility to electro-encephalographic driving and entrainment by weak (1 microT) time-varying, externally applied complex magnetic fields would occur in normal subjects following successive stimulation by different patterns. 43% of the volunteers showed evidence of driving during the application of the complex magnetic fields and indications of resonance (entrainment) during the first 10 sec. following the cessation of the fields. The volunteers who exhibited driving and entrainment could be discriminated from those who did not by their more frequent reported experiences of fear and odd tastes during the stimulation. They were also more likely to have a preexposure history of a sense of presence and to experience intense meaningfulness when reading or writing prose or poetry.
This experiment was designed to simulate experimentally the specific parameters of geomagnetic activity that evoke epileptic seizures. The numbers of overt limbic seizures (rearing, paroxysmal forelimb clonus and falling) in a population of epileptic rats were recorded nightly for 65 successive days between 0200 and 0400 h during red light conditions. On some nights an experimental 7 Hz magnetic field whose magnitudes shifted in successive steps from zero to approximately 50 nT every 3 min was presented. The partial regression coefficients from the analysis indicated that either the presence of the 'synthetic' geomagnetic activity or increased magnitudes of the daily, natural geomagnetic activity (regional range approximately 10-70 nT) during the observational period significantly (P < 0.05) increased the proportion of nightly seizures. The effect sizes (6-8%) for both magnetic sources were comparable and additive. Concerted efforts to experimentally simulate the temporal profiles of geomagnetic activity may help reveal the neuromechanisms by which biobehavioral changes during geomagnetic perturbations occur within susceptible populations.
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