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+--- Thread: Article What is it like to die? The reassuring science of near-death experiences (/thread-18165.html)
What is it like to die? The reassuring science of near-death experiences - C C - Jun 10, 2025
https://www.sciencefocus.com/the-human-body/what-is-it-like-to-die-the-reassuring-science-of-near-death-experiences
EXCERPTS: . . . These are exciting developments, but many experts involved in NDEs aren’t persuaded by purely neurobiological explanations. Right up until his death in November 2024, Fenwick remained convinced that something more profound is going on. To him, accounts of NDEs provide evidence that the human soul exists beyond the brain.
Similarly, the University of North Texas’s Professor Emerita Janice Holden – the current President of the International Association of Near-Death Studies – has serious doubts about the brain research, claiming spikes in serotonin and similar neurotransmitters offer too simplistic an explanation for these profound experiences.
“Small, brief, limited brain emissions, even if shown to occur reliably in association with NDEs – which as yet they have not – cannot account for the complex cognition involved in NDEs,” she says. She also adds a surge of neurotransmitters can’t explain what the literature refers to as “verified perceptions” from NDEs, such as the ability for the dying person to witness events located elsewhere.
“How could a brief gamma wave spike in the brain explain the accurate report of a leg amputation in the operating room next door?” she asks, referencing a case documented by French anaesthesiologist Dr Jean Jacques Charbonier.
(For their part, the neuroscientists say these perceptions have yet to be proven conclusively. “That said, the non-local consciousness hypothesis remains a possibility,” concedes Martial. “One we’re currently testing in one of our ongoing hospital studies.”)
For Holden and many others working in this area, a possibly more important strand of investigation concerns the psychological consequences for people who have lived through a NDE.
[...] This increased openness about NDEs will assist the work of neuroscientists as they continue to uncover more details of what’s happening in the brain during these transformative moments. As they do so, the debate over whether there can ever be a purely biological explanation is likely to rumble on.
But what’s indisputable is the emotional power of NDEs for those who live through them.
“After that NDE experience, my life [will] never be the same,” says Leanda Pringle. “Although it has taken me a long time to fully integrate the experience, the abilities I now possess seem like something from a sci-fi movie. I truly believe I brought some of that realm back with me.” (MORE - missing details)
RE: What is it like to die? The reassuring science of near-death experiences - Magical Realist - Jun 10, 2025
Study on the electromagnetic effects of NDE experiencers...
https://digital.library.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metadc799170/m2/1/high_res_d/vol27-no2-83.pdf
ABSTRACT: Near-death experiencers (NDErs) have reported malfunction of
electrical devices in their vicinities (Atwater, 1994; Bonenfant, 2005; Ring,
1992; Ring & Valarino, 2000). In this quantitative, retrospective study we
investigated electromagnetic effects among NDErs, people who reported a
close brush with death without an NDE, and people who reported never having
been close to death but who used their most life-changing event as a past
reference point. All participants completed a demographic questionnaire and
two versions of the researchers-developed Electromagnetic Experiences
Questionnaire: during the past year and before the designated life event.
Participants who reported a close brush with death also completed the Near
Death Experience Scale (Greyson, 1983). Participants were adults with
equivalent demographics: 36 NDErs, 20 nonNDErs who reported a close brush
with death, and 46 people who had not been close to death. Results were a
greater incidence of reported electromagnetic effects among NDErs than among
participants in the other two groups; that retrospectively reported NDEs, more
than close brushes with death or life-changing events, tended to mark an
increase in electromagnetic effects; and that more electromagnetic effects were
correlated with deeper NDEs. Implications for future research are discussed."