Near-Death Experiences: Cool, but not evidence for God or ..
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Sunday, March 27, 2011
The following is a clip from a morning show called Weekend Sunrise. It’s the weekend incarnation of the ‘more serious’ weekday show (simply called ‘Sunrise’). Sunrise (the ‘more serious’ one) is a pithy variety show with a couple of conceited hosts who are fuelled by conservative opinion and an overstated evaluation of their own journalistic and critical merit.
The weekend version is a bit lighter and takes itself a little less seriously. As a result it also is a little less critical.
Presented here is scientific evidence proof of the afterlife.
[If you can’t spare 7 minutes of your life I do provide a brief summary]
The first thing that struck me was the high production value of the info-clip, entirely populated with Christian imagery and popular Christian metaphor. I thought it was a little cheesy, but tolerable (this was, after all, a segment on Science). Tolerable… until the very last fraction of a second:
I thought it a bit weird that that image managed to sneak through (see the silouette?), though it’s not half obvious. The kick in the teeth, however, came as soon as it was declared (not 6 seconds later) that the researcher was ‘not a religious man’. It’s cool that the religious should want to research topics related to religion, but to do so without admitting to it is a conflict of interest - To deny it wilfully is deception, and to try and sneak it past us is down right unethical. The alternate option is he missed it himself, which suggests he’s a sloppy scientist.
The interview is about his research into Near Death Experiences (NDE). A NDE is broadly defined as being a state of altered consciousness, occurring during an episode of unconscious, and as a result of a life threatening condition (such as cardiac arrest). While not particularly informative, Agrillo (2011) (from which the definition was derived) lists the 10 most common features of an NDE, which include:
It seems just about anyone can experience an NDE and no relationship has been found between the occurrence of NDE’s and age, gender, SES, spiritual or religious beliefs, education, or life experiences. Except, of course, that older people tend to die (or nearly die) more frequently than young people.
So there’s some background we can all agree upon. Kooks and Skeptics alike.
The clown in the video, however, suggests the NDE’s are evidence proof that there is life after death. It’s not a particularly persuasive or sound argument, since the reasoning follows:
An NDE is an experience which conforms to my human preconceptions of what death is like. Therefore, God.
At any rate, the clown in the video goes on to spruik his new book and to explain why his surveys confirm God’s existence. For a laugh he claimed that prior to his research he was ‘the world's greatest skeptic out’, which demonstrates his misunderstanding of what Skepticism is, and his willingness to misrepresent himself and his work to an audience. FYI, any skeptic, if presented with appropriate evidence for a phenomena, will accept the phenomena as genuine. Skepticism is about asking questions and looking for answers in a rigorous and consistent way. It’s not necessarily the rejection of the seemingly impossible. Thus, if he was a skeptic and has become convinced of his claims validity (which may happen in any field), then he may still continue to be a skeptic. However his language suggests that as he accepts evidence for the afterlife, he rejects scepticism completely.
The male host of the programme – Andrew O'Keefe – asks a particularly important and critical question:
"...is it possible that some of these effects can be explained merely by neurological processes... as it [the brain] shuts itself down?"
…to which the kook responds:
"What happens absolutely goes beyond any possible brain explanation..."
As evidence he offers a story about a congenitally blind individual who experiences clear vision during an NDE. I might buy that story if you can demonstrate the individual doesn’t have a visual cortex, but in any other form its weak anecdotal evidence from which inference is meaningless. It IS super cool and interesting (if true), and worthy of research, but meaningless to the end to which it was applied.
[On a side note – his website looks like a geocities refugee]
All this sceptical raving aside, I did become interested in what science does say about the NDE. I mean it is a genuinely interesting neurological and phenomenological occurrence.
My personal research into the topic was a little difficult since it does have a pretty serious woo-infection. Most of what I could find came from the Journal of Near-Death Studies, a journal that I know little of, but avoided. For instance a legitimate hypothesis might be posed
If an NDE is an experience shaped by personal convictions and broader cultural influences (including religious belief) then it ought to vary between cultures and religions.
And so one would expect that Muslim’s should be brain-jacked by Allah in a similar way.
Here’s an abstract from a paper published in the Journal of Near-Death Studiesby Kreps (2009) on the very topic.
Given the dearth of Muslim Near-Death Experiences (NDEs) in the literature, I decided to … find more of this material. After advertising unsuccessfully in both traditional media and internet groups, I recruited a student resident of Pakistan who had considerable contacts and help there to visit the area of a major earthquake in the Kashmir area in the hope that this would be a fertile terrain to find additional NDE accounts (ed. sic). …The results were disappointing. I conclude that NDEs are specifically designed for people who need them, and the need in certain communities may not be as great because of the persistence of traditional faith in an afterlife and a Creator. (ed. Emphasis added). [Unreferenced - researchblogging.org cannot find it, or apparently anything from the JNDS]
It’s unfortunate ol’ Kreps couldn’t find the material, and the approach made sense, right? Head to an area of mass devastation with a high Muslim population and you’d be sure to find NDEs. His conclusion (my emphasis added) is completely a priori. He basically states that NDE’s exist in order to reaffirm (or convince) people to the existence of God (Allah, in this instance) and the Afterlife. Thus, in a highly conservative and religious region NDE’s do not occur because their faith renders their existence moot.
...as a result I looked elsewhere for research.
In relation to the cultural question posed previously, Belanti and friends (2008) found that while most NDE’s had religious influences, the manner in which it manifests differed. While Europeans and Americans see heaven or hell, traditional Hawiians view a volcanoe (of religious significance). Where Europeans and Americans follow their spiritual guides (often relatives, etc), Indians tend to resist. Some cultures earned themselves a ‘life review’, but others didn’t. Some featured bright lights, some didn’t. Their findings are essentially a compilation of case reviews found in the existing literature, and they draw reasonably heavily fromJournal of Near Death Studies and non-peer reviewed books, and so it ought to be taken with a sizable pinch of salt.
The real problem with research into NDEs is twofold. First, self-report is unreliable. The people who experience these things are generally not in good form, and report them in hindsight. Hindsight introduces countless opportunities to cogitate upon and rationalize form and meaning. Second, death is poorly defined and difficult to measure. While that sounds absurd, people don’t frequently die inside fMRI machines, and so it’s difficult to know how much brain activity is occurring. In some instances EEG has been present, but a flat EEG reading is not brain-death, but only neocortical (brain surface) inactivity (Agrillo, 2011). There are other considerations, too. People who experience NDEs in hospitals are frequently medicated, and other brain conditions can induce similar hallucinations and experiences (which are then subjected to hindsight).
So here a few things we do know about NDEs:
- Random excitation of neurons in the visual cortex can produce perceptions of lights and tunnels. There are a disproportionate number of neurons dedicated to the centre of our vision than our periphery, so random excitation across the whole cortex will be perceived as generally being more ‘centred’. (Agrillo, 2011)
- Stress and Fear cause the brain to dump Endorphins. Endorphins block pain and induce feelings of well-being, acceptance and (sometimes) euphoria (Agrillo, 2011).
- Some evidence suggests there is a difference in general activation in Temporal Lobe Functioning between those who experience NDEs and controls. The data is weak, however. (Agrillo, 2011)
- REM intrusion and Out of Body (OBE) experiences are related, but not well understood. This is known through study on narcoleptics. The locus coeruleus (LC) plays a major role inhibiting. REM sleep, and in arousal as well. During wakefulness the LC is paramount to vigilance and stress, with LC discharge rates tightly correlated to behavior. Fear, hypoxia, hypotension, and hypercarbia all vigorously stimulate the LC. Systems promoting REM powerfully inhibit the LC. Conceivably, inhibition of a highly activated LC could also evoke elements of the REM state. (Nelson et al., 2007).
- Folks who’ve had an NDE experience higher levels of REM intrusion and OBEs. (Nelson et al., 2007)
- Having a positive NDE decreases fear of death, and increases acceptance. Negative NDE increase fear of death. (Belanti, 2008).
Points 4 and 5 are contested in a series of responses published in the Journal of Near Death Studies. Looking over it, some arguments seem more legitimate than other. I’ll qualify those two points by saying evidence may yet come to light to contest those relationships.
As you can see many of the phenomenon can begin to be explained by known brain functions and processes. Lights and well-being/Euphoria? Neuronal Excitation in the visual cortext and dumping of Endorphins (as well as neurotransmitters like Serotonin and Dopamine) can produce the affective component. Though I couldn't find the research, it's hardly a stretch to hypothesize that feelings of familiarity can be triggered when certain brain regions are (randomly?) stimulated during such a state (Click for some candidate sites).
All in all this guy is a kook and it's damnable he was given air-time during weekend morning prime-time. NDE's are pretty amazing phenomenon and are worth investigating for the benefits they can give us to our understanding of our brains. Additionally, further research ought to focus on how to best treat patients who experience them, in order for them to help make sense of it all, and incorporate it into the healing/sickness.
We really shouldn't surrender this one to the kooks - his logic is faulty, his motives questionable, and his conduct unethical (or just plain sloppy).
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Nelson, K. (2006). Does the arousal system contribute to near death experience?Neurology, 66 (7), 1003-1009 DOI: 10.1212/01.wnl.0000204296.15607.37
Agrillo, C. (2011). Near-death experience: Out-of-body and out-of-brain? Review of General Psychology, 15 (1), 1-10 DOI: 10.1037/a0021992
Belanti, J., Perera, M., & Jagadheesan, K. (2008). Phenomenology of Near-death Experiences: A Cross-cultural Perspective Transcultural Psychiatry, 45 (1), 121-133 DOI: 10.1177/1363461507088001