New Kid On The NDE Block
(If Ms Martial sees this picture, I hope she takes it in the spirit of fun it is intended…maybe she was a fan of these blokes if she is old enough to remember them…I was not).
I started this blog primarily to discuss clinical research into NDEs. Sam Parnia’s AWARE studies have formed the backbone of such research over the past 2 decades, but there is a new kid on the block and her name is Charlotte Martial (thanks Z for the heads-up). Below is a link the latest interview with her:
https://nautil.us/the-new-science-of-the-near-death-experience-1279957
Martial approaches the subject from a different angle to Parnia, specifically she is clearly a physicalist and unfortunately, I believe this prejudices her work. Parnia, while apparently a dualist, at least attempted to maintain some impartiality and retain an open mind as to what was causing NDEs…he allows for a physiological explanation while stating that the evidence defies this. Martial does not allow for non-physiological causes at all. This necessarily means that all of her discussions and conclusions will be framed by this thinking, forcing her to interpret the data in one way only, even if logic dictates otherwise. It is also possible that it may also influence her presentation of the actual data too. This is something that we observed in extremis with Jimo Borjigin who went beyond just allowing bias to enter discussion, to the point where she completely “misrepresented” her data to create an entirely false conclusion (which was lapped up by the media)…specifically she claimed that there was an increase in brain activity DURING cardiac arrest in coma patients when her own raw data clearly showed that it happened PRIOR to Cardiac arrest, and that by the time the heart had stopped beating all notable EEG activity had ceased. On this point, Martial sets out her stand on more solid ground from the start.
Moreover, unlike Borjigin who never actually researched NDEs, but rather looked at neurological output around the time of death in rats and coma patients, Martial has been running a study similar to the AWARE studies, interviewing patients after resuscitation and it seems that she has now garnered enough data to publish.
From the interview this is a summary of the data she has:
We tracked 180 patients, and of those, 12 had near-death experiences. Our preliminary results suggest that the brains of patients who had near-death experiences showed greater complexity than those who did not.
and
what we observed is that as soon as several days after the acute severe crisis, we can see memory change in terms of content of the experience, which challenged what was found in the retrospective literature.
Some features appeared, and some others disappeared in their memories. For instance, you can have someone who doesn’t report an out-of-body experience upon awakening, however, two months later, the person does report it.
By now readers of this blog will be familiar with the idea of headline hype. What I mean by that is that the headlines about a study, even sometimes the title, over-egg the actual findings that can be drawn from the data. Sometimes there is [innocent] conflation of data, such as in Parnia’s recent AWARE study in which he seemed to merge data from his prospective observational clinical study with retrospective reports from his database, and from this you get headlines that are spuriously related to the data. In the case of Borjigin, it goes way beyond that. Headlines and statements in the press are designed to draw attention, and in this case in the first paragraph we are obviously drawn to the words:
Our preliminary results suggest that the brains of patients who had near-death experiences showed greater complexity than those who did not.
Given the fact that she says this is the first time that EEG data has been collected in patients who have had NDEs, the implication is that she has managed to link EEG output associated with high level brain activity with actual NDE reports. If this is true, then this is definitely a step beyond what was achieved in AWARE II which also collected EEG data in patients undergoing CPR. In that study there was high level brain activity in some patients, but none who later reported an NDE. BUT while the wording of her statement seems to imply that Martial has this kind of data, will the reality survive rigorous scrutiny? Key questions to consider when she publishes her data:
- Was this EEG activity before, during CA, or after resuscitation? She says patients were unresponsive, does that mean that they had no vitals (no heartbeat), or were they just unconscious but with a heartbeat.
- If the EEG activity was during CA…i.e. they had no heartbeat, were they undergoing CPR at the time? This is what was observed in AWARE II.
- Have they been able to “timestamp” the NDE. This requires an OBE which contains an observation that can be linked to a specific timepoint, and if so, what were the physiological parameters of the patient. Were they still in CA? Were they undergoing CPR?
With regard to the report of at least one OBE, she states that the patient did not recall the OBE until an interview 2 months later. It is great that there was an OBE (if it is a proper OBE), but depending on the content, it is definitely open to accusations of corruption – not deliberate necessarily, but of the notion of false memory creation. This piece of data will be of greatest interest of all to me.
How long will we have to wait?
As is the case in research, I would expect that a publication would be preceded by an abstract at a conference, and that given her increased press activity, that is likely to be in the near future. The spring conference season runs till early July, then things tend to die over the Northern Hemisphere summer, before resuming in the Fall. Given the data she is already talking about, I suspect that she will have submitted her abstract to at least one or two conferences, and deadlines for submission are usually about 3 months prior, so we may get something as early as June, but may have to wait till the backend of the year. I put money Z will spotting it first! I will set up a PubMed and other alerts though as this certainly has the potential to be the most important study in this field since AWARE II.
I just wish she would adopt a more open-minded approach though. It would actually be in her interests if she wanted to sell books or gain publicity one day, although that is not a good reason to bias research of course. The fact is there is a massive interest in the area of spirituality among younger people today, and unless her data absolutely rules out the possibility of NDEs being the result of non-physiological origins, she should avoid presenting it in that light, as she does in this interview. She completely shuts down the possibility of non-natural causes, and I seriously doubt that the data proves this to be the case as it is extremely hard to prove a negative. It would better that she adopted the nuanced position that Parnia does…namely she could say that while this data supports the NEPTUNE model for explaining NDEs, it is still possible there are other causes, and there remain many accounts of NDEs that defy natural explanation.
Frankly no one is going to give a monkey’s about her NEPTUNE model except a few Guardian-reading cranks, since it is not really that different from previous attempts to explain NDEs as being the result of neurotransmitters. These attempts have been thoroughly debunked by the likes of Greyson, and even Parnia. The NEPTUNE model has the added weakness of being linked to the theory that NDEs are a form of Thanotosis:
“Basically, we suggest the NDE is a defense mechanism for coping with a life-threatening situation. It permits the person to disconnect from the environment, from the surroundings, to be absorbed into a more peaceful mental experience.”
The interviewer does a pretty decent job of highlighting the obvious flaws in that approach. The last thing you want is to be peaceful in a life-threatening situation…normally it is fight or flight, and while playing dead (Thanatosis) may suit some creatures in certain situations, they are not actually going through physiological death, they are just “scared to death”. The way she answers that is to claim that the psychological outcomes of NDEs are usually positive and that this may have evolutionary benefit:
for some at least, have psychological benefits. A lot of people who experience NDEs say it’s life transforming. It allows them to evolve and change their own behavior or beliefs. We suggest that the NDE arises when you don’t have any other kind of escape. So there is this fight-or-flight mechanism, but when neither fight nor flight is possible, this alternative would arise
I hope that was her just making it up on the spot as it not a very robust theory.
Ultimately her whole NEPTUNE model and accompanying theory suffers from a whopping great big flaw. Prior to the 1950s the overwhelming majority of people who had CAs stayed dead. It was only through the invention of CPR that people were able to come back (this coincided with the massive uptick in reports of NDEs). If the proximity of physiological death triggers an NDE, and prior to the 1950s physiological death meant permanent death, then whatever processes occurred immediately before CA would have no evolutionary benefit because they wouldn’t have survived. Given that her theory specifically relates to people who had CA (she states this explicitly), and given our collective knowledge of how these experiences are generally associated with CA, the whole evolutionary benefit theory collapses. Without this her NEPTUNE model is just previous [debunked] arguments about neurotransmitters.
No, it would be better for her if the data allowed for a non-natural explanation as well. The world is shifting – we are entering a post-materialistic age. I know so many scientists who accept that there is more to what we observe than just the natural explanations that science has thus provided and either believe in a “spiritual” explanation or that we are living in a simulation.
Given her answer to the final question about NDEs being real, I hold zero hope for such a Damascus moment:
When you meet entities or when you feel as though you’re out of your body, those are non-ordinary states of consciousness caused by disturbed perception. So you don’t actually meet your father in a tunnel of light, for example. But near-death experiences are real in the sense that the person who reported it did have this vivid and intense subjective experience
She is stating as fact they are physiological. She had better make sure that her data absolutely supports that position, or I suspect she may end up with egg on her face like Borjigin.
As always, if you haven’t already visit my book website (click on image below) and buy one from Amazon (or other e-retailers)
AwareofAware 
I did have a chance to interview Dr Martial regarding NDEs where I pressed her quite hard on veridical perception. Unfortunately she requested that the interview not be made public because she felt her answers were unhelpful. But essentially she believes that there is no empirical evidence for veridical perception which can be used to further non physical explanations. She did acknowledge that cases such as those in works like The Self Does Not Die etc are indeed important, but that they cannot be considered empirical. We would need experimentally controlled cases for them to qualify as data. I certainly thought it was a very useful discussion in a subject I haven’t heard her mention before specifically so it was a real shame I had to scrap it.
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Hi Darren, hope all is good. The evidence from the Self Does NOt Die is not scientific evidence in that it was not generated in a pre-determined experiment created after a hypothesis was generated, but observations that have been verified by HCPs who are prepared to go on the record are most definitely strong observational empirical evidence. Moreover the OBE from AWARE I is as close as you can get to scientific evidence as it is possible to get without it actually being scientific evidence. She is factually incorrect in believing there is no empirical evidence supporting NDEs.
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No.pressure lol
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I’m not a doctor, so I probably won’t understand anything. But I keep wondering why a possible complex activity during an NDE would be proof that a purely physicalist explanation is correct — that everything is caused by the brain. Even now, as I’m writing, or when I go to see my mother who has dementia, different parts of my brain are activated. Does that automatically mean that the experience I’m having is an illusion or not real? Hmm…
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I agree Davide. Unless they have a time-stopped OBE they are able correlate with specific EEG activity then any association of EEG activity with a reported NDE is pure speculation. For physicalists it will definitely be a win, but only to a point. It does not prove that NDEs are the result of brain activity, but provides circumstantial evidence that it might be. However, what will still remain is the OBEs verified by HCPs who said that the patients were not only unconscious but had not heartbeat. There are countless others that occurred outside hospital settings too. Martial’s dismissal of these as not being empirical is somewhat arrogant.
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I think it’s first worth noting this researcher appears to me to want to push more relevancy for her research, and therefore for more funding. I think this and ideological bias explains her likely overegging her research and the data.
‘Our preliminary results suggest that the brains of patients who had near-death experiences showed greater complexity than those who did not.’
I don’t know what this means? We need to find out what data this statement represents, what it is supposed to ‘explain’ and then it would need to be independently replicated.
I highly doubt they have EEG activity from after cardiac arrest without CPR, this would contradict all previous research and knowledge in this area, would it not? I still don’t think this would ‘explain’ NDE’s and she would need to explain how a brain without a heartbeat and oxygen is producing this experience, veridical NDE’s etc.
‘what we observed is that as soon as several days after the acute severe crisis, we can see memory change in terms of content of the experience, which challenged what was found in the retrospective literature.
Some features appeared, and some others disappeared in their memories. For instance, you can have someone who doesn’t report an out-of-body experience upon awakening, however, two months later, the person does report it.’
Is this based on just the OBE case? A big statement based on one person. If not a big statement based on a few cases and again, it would contradict all previous research (as she states herself). I am skeptical of this statement, maybe the OBE person didn’t feel comfortable sharing straight away? We need to see details and if it is backed by data, again it needs to be independently replicated.
“Basically, we suggest the NDE is a defense mechanism for coping with a life-threatening situation. It permits the person to disconnect from the environment, from the surroundings, to be absorbed into a more peaceful mental experience.”
‘for some at least, have psychological benefits. A lot of people who experience NDEs say it’s life transforming. It allows them to evolve and change their own behavior or beliefs. We suggest that the NDE arises when you don’t have any other kind of escape. So there is this fight-or-flight mechanism, but when neither fight nor flight is possible, this alternative would arise’
Backing up what you said about this – under natural selection these people would have died and not passed on their genes. If a person had an NDE whilst still alive then they are less likely to survive as a predator, scavenger, another tribe etc could kill them more easily than someone who fights or runs. And again how is a brain without a heartbeat etc producing this experiencer? If the brain creates consciousness, you would not predict or expect this experience.
I think this is a pretty unscientific theory and reflects a personal worldview more than anything else.
‘When you meet entities or when you feel as though you’re out of your body, those are non-ordinary states of consciousness caused by disturbed perception. So you don’t actually meet your father in a tunnel of light, for example. But near-death experiences are real in the sense that the person who reported it did have this vivid and intense subjective experience’
This is a classic ‘cloaking my personal beliefs behind assumed truth (physicalism). If she wasn’t a physicalist and made similar assumed truth statements like this she would get much more push back and criticism for a comment like this. Again very unscientific, I am unimpressed. It is unscientific to ignore data you don’t like so blatantly like this.
I think to summarise this is mainly a scientist pushing for relevancy and more funding and I expect this research to add little to nothing of value to the NDE literature.
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Well put Robbie and welcome.
She is definitely venturing into Borjigin territory with her last statement, and as you say about the rest, we need to see the data before we can fully evaluate the extent to which her statements reflect the reality. The problem is that the media will lap it up, as they did with Borjigin, even if it is patently false or absurd. Borjigin was overtly physicalist and very rude about established researchers. Martial has been less vocal, and has participated in a range of studies, but she is definitely sticking her neck out further now she is ready to get the data out.
I find it interesting that she wouldn’t let Darren publish her interview. When I was interviewed by Darren, I said how important it was to put physicalists on the spot and demand that they either accept that well documented HCP verified OBEs such as those presented in the Self Does Not Die, are currently beyond the explanation of science, or openly say that these highly intelligent, respected, well paid, HCPs are either lying or stupid…and that is literally hundreds of them. That is the choice you are forced to make when considering their accounts.
@Darren…is that would you did, because if it is, then it would have really rattled her physicalist cage.
She would be wise when it comes to the final publication of her work to be a little less strident in shoehorning the data to fit her worldview, and instead let the data speak for itself. As I said, things are shifting. Many scientists now accept that the materialsm does not offer sufficient answers to some of the toughest questions, and likely never will e.g. the Origin of the Universe, life and consiousness.
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Good comment Robbie. Debate is good though, and the lady is quite entitlred to her opinion.
Paul
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I never said she wasn’t entitled to her opinion?
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Hi Robbie. I know you didn’t. We all have a different take on NDEs, and it’s important to listen to all points of view.
I can assure you, I wasn’t having a ‘dig’. I thought your reply was well written, and well thought out. As it happens I agree with you.
Have a great day, ok. I look forward to reading more of your contributions to the forum.
Kind Rgds Paul
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Good piece! I’ll look out for her work in French. So far, I have to say I was left unimpressed by the development of the NDE-C as its validation was based on online self-reports of which 3/4 (if I remember correctly) of NDEs were not in a life-threatening situation or related to death. I wouldn’t develop a useful questionnaire to identify cats if my data criteria were having four legs and a tail…
Her work on the comparison of psychedelics and NDEs were of the same vein. She either seems to try very hard to make the data fit or jump on easier to control data.
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Indeed. That was something you reminded I meant to say in my piece…I think more and more Parnia was right to differentiate NDEs from REDs, and what Martial and Borjigin have done really rams that point home. While some other experiences may be authentic…like mine…for them to be worthy of research they must be associated with an actual period of cardiac death and the experience either occur during that period or in a coma immediately afterwards in which the patient never recovered consciousness at an intervening time point.
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For starters she needs to look at the research of the university of Virginia division of perceptual studies. Like that of Bruce Greyson etc. Also I would recommend her to read Irreducible Mind, Beyond Physicalism and Consciousness Unbound for starters
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Martial states that: “Our hypothesis is that NDEs occur just before or just after cardiac arrest, when a spike in activity can be observed” …
so Martial would be admitting that it is not to be expected—or is simply impossible—for a true perception to occur DURING cardiac arrest.
In her Neptune model, Martial highlights the massive release of neurotransmitters… The chemical synapse (which is mediated by neurotransmitters), despite being the most common, is not sufficient on its own to experience consciousness. Neurotransmitters alone are not capable of enabling the experience (or generation, according to the materialist view) of consciousness.
Consciousness is a complex process in which different brain areas and types of synapses (chemical and electrical—the latter does NOT involve the release of neurotransmitters) interact.
Relying, for example, on dopamine and its profuse release—so characteristic of schizophrenia—as an explanation for hyper-reality and the long-term transformative effects of NDEs would only be justifiable and valid if such transformative effects were first observed in schizophrenics as well, which is not the case… Highly speculative…
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Well put. It sounds like you have some knowledge of neurology…good to have your input.
Chemical and/or electrical activity alone do not prove anything specific about precisely what the brain is producing in terms of perceived effects for the owner of that brain. I have worked in neurology for a few years and my understanding from what I learned is that we have a general understanding of how neurotransmitters activate pathways that allow the brain to function at certain levels, but absolutely no idea how any of these pathways produce consciousness. Each neurotransmitter has so many downstream effects it is quite insane how you end up with such specific outcomes. My sense is that while increasing levels of certain neurotransmitters and/or activating certain frequencies may be associated with certain types of conscious activities, the same NTs and frequencies can be associated with multiple other activities…moreover chaotic production of these NTs would produce chaotic and random conscious experience, not the highly structured, and repeatable NDEs.
I worked in Alzheimers and sleep medicine, as well on the appetite pathway. So interesting.
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Thanks so much for your comment about your work, Orson. Best regards.
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Here’s an article about the Martial NDE study.
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S1053810025001722?via%3Dihub=&fbclid=IwdGRjcARTYX5jbGNrBFNgb2V4dG4DYWVtAjExAHNydGMGYXBwX2lkDDM1MDY4NTUzMTcyOAABHg-uxZMZPgzgju9hgFdGaLL0dyfQY3CA7Yre7wQGBU92o1J1LaIwXHK0JB4Z_aem_LNPMgJf-SskN3PaeGaokPA
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Thanks X. This is about her NDE scale, not about her actual prospective study. Useful though.
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OK ~ I’m not going to mention any names. Obviously.. A dear friend of mine had an out-of-body experience when she was 17. She’s a very good-looking woman. This wasn’t in the UK but in Eastern Europe. A man put a gun to her head and said take your clothes off. You can guess the rest.
My friend said she felt her ‘soul’ leave her body and was above her body. She could see everything that happened but felt no fear.
This is not an NDE, although she felt she would be killed. It raises the question for me. Is the fear of death enough to trigger an OOB experience? I think it is.
Paul
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Lots of OBE’s from climbing falls and parachute failures suggest you are right – it’s some kind of surrender state too.
Lots of different human states/perspectives. Obviously the medical-type NDE OBE usually discussed on here must exhibit some physiological similarity with the climbing falls, and your friends surrender experience.
And we have other tricks like prayer, Ouija, hypnotism, drugs.
All clues to a different way to understand Experience.
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Sure Max. I understand where you coming from. She’s not a ‘thick un’ though. In fact very intellent. She’s played chess at grandmaster level and has a good job in IT.
The story is from some years ago. My friend is much older now but still rembers it well. I trust what she say’s ~ no BS there. Her memory has never gone away. She’s 49 now and still rembers it. That speaks volumes to me.
Paul
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There are some good podcasts about NDES. Seeking I, WTF Just Happened, Round trip death, Beyond with heather, the IANDS podcast and the AJ parr podcast to name a few
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Not only did Martial say:
but she also added:
That observation seems similar to Borjigin’s dying rodent study – which is a good, because I can’t see any way to form a veridical visual OBE (that looks like the everyday world) without some network activity.
She’s used Lempel-Ziv complexity (LZC) to estimate complexity in past studies (i.e. her 2024 induced-fainting study).
Nothing mentioned about OBE’s.
Devil is in the detail, as you say.
Shawn Weeds NDE – accidental strangulation – although not cardiac arrest, for me is now one of the great NDE OBE’s. It puts the otherworldly NDE component as occurring during recovery, and the veridical OBE component occurring before it, as anomalous, and likely from third parties.
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Check out Vincent Todd Tolman NDE. It has a peak in darren experence in it. Very interesting
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Very good account of an NDE with veridical perception
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From my perspective, beyond the arguments discussed in the previous posts, Martial’s theory presents two significant limitations. First, it does not adequately account for “negative” NDEs, which, although representing a minority and likely being underestimated, nonetheless challenge her claim that “the NDE is a defense mechanism for coping with a life-threatening situation, allowing the individual to disengage from the environment and become absorbed in a more peaceful mental experience.” Second, the theory does not address the phenomenon of “shared NDEs,” in which elements of the experience, such as the perception of a tunnel, are reportedly shared between the NDERs and other individuals present in the room.
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so, what would the implications of her study be should the questions in your post all be answered in her study? Would NDEs officially have a strictly materialist explanation? Perhaps a combination of materialist and otherwise when one considers veridical NDE cases? Or is it not that simple as to put labels on such phenomena
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Thank you Orson for another update in the field. Personally I welcome more people studying this phenomenon, regardless of what their views may be. At the very least it will hopefully add new data points to a field that doesn’t seem to be studied much.
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