AwareofAware

Dreams vs Reality

This was presented today in a Neurology conference in Norway. I would love to be able to get hold of the full presentation or even an abstract – I couldn’t find it in the EAN programme, but I’m sure Samwise the sleuth will be able to source it. Some of the “highlights” from the linked article summarizing the “study” are discussed below:

Norway Neurology Conference NDE study

Some of the key quotes:

Mystical near-death experiences where people report a range of spiritual and physical symptoms, including out-of-body sensations, seeing or hearing hallucinations, racing thoughts and time distortion, affect around 10 per cent of people, according to a new study that analysed participants from 35 countries

They say this was the same in those whose situation were non life threatening as those with a life-threatening NDE. They also stated that there was a higher incidence of unpleasant experiences than normally associated with these studies (73% of those claiming to have an NDE said it was unpleasant), although this was not the case in those that had a higher Greyson scale score (>7). Since anything below 7 is not normally considered an NDE then it is likely that this observation is irrelevant since those with a Greyson score >7 reported a much higher incidence of pleasant experiences (53% pleasant vs 14% unpleasant).  This says something about the way conclusions are presented in this study because it would actually be a more accurate key conclusion to say that people who experience genuine NDEs are more likely to have a pleasant experience than those that don’t, rather than making it an after thought.

The central conclusion of the study was food for a skeptical neurology audience.

REM sleep intrusion on wakefulness was found to be more common in people with scores of 7 or above on the Greyson NDE Scale (47 per cent) than in people with scores of 6 or below (26 per cent), or in those below the threshold with no such experiences (14 per cent).

Lead researcher Dr Daniel Kondziella, a neurologist at the University of Copenhagen, said, “Our central finding is that we confirmed the association of near-death experiences with REM sleep intrusion. Although association is not causality, identifying the physiological mechanisms behind REM sleep intrusion into wakefulness might advance our understanding of near-death experiences.”

The most important phrase in that quote is “association is not causality”. The relationship  or association may be due to different factors, something that would be good to discuss further in the comments section. I will throw an example thought in there: The causes of REM sleep intrusion may be due to the way that the conscious interacts with the physical mind, and the ability to experience or remember NDEs may be due to the same underlying physio-chemical reasons. Now while the conscious clearly experiences dreams and they can intrude into that waking stage, it does not necessarily follow that NDEs and dreams are the same or even a similar thing…namely the product of brain activity. They both involve the conscious but are significantly different in terms of context, content and quality; the types of experience (REM vs NDE) are not necessarily both a result of brain function, but the ability to experience them or remember them may be. I probably could have explained that better, but I hope you get the gist of it.

The team recruited 1,034 lay people from 35 countries via a crowdsourcing platform online (to eliminate selection bias) and asked them if they’d ever had an NDE. If they answered ‘yes’, they were asked for more details, using a detailed questionnaire assessment tool called the Greyson Near-Death Experience Scale, which asks about 16 specific symptoms.

I need to see the exact way that this was done before I agree that this methodology somehow removes selection bias. If anything my cynical side suspects that this method is going to attract a substantial amount of less than authentic reports.

Anyway, it is hitting the headlines in various news outlets and will no doubt morph into ammo for skeptics to claim that NDEs are just another form of dreaming. However, the (dodgy) data, for the reasons stated above, does not in any way “prove” that NDEs are just another form of dreaming.

COOL news

OK, so Werner and Z both added links to Dr Parnia’s updated website.

Parnia’s research website

Z said there was nothing new, but buried in the list of studies there is something of great interest to those of us who have been following this field for the last 15 years, and it is this:

Conscious Awareness During Deep Hypothermic Circulatory Arrest

In our studies of cardiac arrest and its effects on consciousness, our data led us to hypothesize that higher-quality resuscitation is associated with a higher level of conscious awareness during cardiac arrest and resuscitation, which in turn is associated with improved survival, less severe brain injuries, and a smaller incidence of disorders of consciousness.

A novel way to study consciousness in a setting that biologically mimics clinical death besides cardiac arrest is to study patients undergoing deep hypothermic circulatory arrest (DHCA), a medical technique in which a patient’s temperature is cooled to approximately 20 degrees Celsius (68 degrees Fahrenheit), shutting down blood circulation and major organ function. This approach is often used by surgeons who need to operate on major blood vessels.

Because DHCA biologically mimics clinical death, but is very well controlled, it provides an excellent opportunity to study consciousness and awareness in a population, which unlike cardiac arrest, has a very high survival rate. We are developing new methods to determine what happens to consciousness before, during, and after this shutdown. We are using various technologies including portable EEG, cerebral oximetry, and visual and audio tools to test implicit and explicit learning as well as recall and memory.

This study complements our work in AWARE II, and we anticipate that we will discover exciting new aspects of the human mind.

This is basically very similar to the COOL study that was started in Montreal, but ended when the surgeon who performed the processes left. It is very exciting since there have been a number of reports over the years that have shown that doing this does indeed create NDE like experiences with OBEs. The key point, that Dr Parnia makes, is that the conditions are predictable and controlled. While there will be many more CAs than these procedures, there is also a much lower chance of survival or recall with a CA, so this route has a chance of producing results more consistently. Very excited to see this happening, and the fact that it is already ongoing, and may lead to results sooner rather than later. Case reports would be very interesting indeed.

Last off-topic post

As I mentioned in my last post, I would create one more post relating to my book, DNA: the elephant in the lab. This is short…a link to a 10 min video giving some background to the book:

YouTube video about origin of life

Next post will be back to NDEs.

DNA: the elephant in the lab – help needed!

So this is what I have been up to for what seems like forever, but is actually only about 15 months. I know it’s not NDE related per se, however, it is directly relevant to the fundamental question of whether or not life is just a material thing. So it is in fact very relevant to the question of whether or not there is more to life than just eating, breeding and dying. This is also the question we look at with NDEs being evidence for the existence of a conscious that is not bound to the material realm. It does tie in…honest!

Anyway, I was “inspired” to write this after seeing the Governor General of Canada ridicule people who believe that life wasn’t the result of random processes (you tube link). This is a subject that I have some expertise in from my Ph.D. in organic medicinal chemistry where I messed around with nucleosides and amino acids, and my subsequent career in clinical research which involved drugs that affect DNA replication. I have also followed the literature on the origin of life over the years and read a number of books on the subject, but most of them are deathly boring…I have tried to break that trend and inject a bit of “life” into the subject. Apparently, according to one of my editors and my graphic designer, I have succeeded, and this is where you, my forum friends and lurkers can give me a massive helping hand.

• Firstly, please buy a copy (I make about US$1.30 per copy whether it is paperback ($9.99 or ebook $2.99) – at worst, even if you don’t enjoy it, look at it as a donation for all the work I have done on this forum J . The ebook is available on Kindle, Kobo and most other ereaders in major markets (US, UK, Canada EU etc…it should even come to ibooks before too long as well). The paperback is more costly as it is print on demand, so the per unit production is the majority of the price. It is available at Amazon globally, and should be available in all other major on-line book stores within the next few days.
• Secondly, if you buy it and enjoy it please please recommend it to all your friends through social media and write a positive review on the platform from which you bought it, giving some details as to why you enjoyed it. Without this it will flop and all the time and money that I have put into it will be for nothing…but more importantly, the truth about our origins will remain buried under the layers of fake news and misinformation that is propagated on this subject by the media and even scientists (examples given). If you hate it, PM me through the contact page as to why…please don’t post a nasty review…it may kill it. Likewise, if you find an error, please PM me.

Lastly the name…yes that is my real name on the cover, Ben Williams was the main protagonist in a novel I wrote years ago called Deadly Medicine. I have mentioned before that Ben is not my real name…so I’m sorry if you missed that and are disappointed that my real name is Orson Wedgwood. It may be that because of another blog I have set up, I may need to change my posting name here to Orson.

On that last point. This blog is about NDEs and specifically research into NDEs. It will remain that, and in fact I will become more active again as time goes by as I already have a working draft for a book that I will be writing on the subject. That working draft is Aware of Aware, but it is a bit rubbish and needs updating…when that is complete many of the regular contributors on here may recognize some of the things they have said since they help inform me and others. With that in mind…get me motivated to get on with that…buy a copy of DNA: the elephant in the lab and make me feel appreciated!

Links to the book at amazon.com are below but searching for “DNA elephant in the lab” on any  book retailer globally, including your local amazon market, should work as well:

amazon US paperback link

amazon US kindle link

Thank you reading this far, and apologies if it was off topic…there will be one more post on this in a few weeks time, but otherwise, back to NDEs!!!

Why all this is so important

Apologies for not taking part in the discussions of late but the reasons will become apparent as you read on.

As regulars of this blog will know, my father had been suffering from Alzheimer’s for a number of years, and that in itself poses questions that we have discussed on here regarding what happens to the conscious person during the slow decaying of the brain. What happens to the memories…are they lost forever or stored in some “central repository” outside of this dimension? Of course we have absolutely no idea other than some of the insights that have been gleaned from various subjective NDE reports over the years. Which brings me on to a very personal NDE report, very close to home.

Usually we focus on the science of NDEs and what evidence we have either way, but today I am going to tell you about the NDE that first got me interested in this subject when I was 13 years old. My father was an honest man. He hated lying, and other than Santa, as far as I know he never lied to me about anything, which makes his NDE account the one that holds the most validity to me. He told me that when he was about 9 years old he got knocked off his bike by a car. Suddenly he was above the scene watching people running towards the boy sprawled on the ground in front of the car. The next thing he remembered was being in a beautiful field. It was warm, and the colors were magically vibrant, and there were flowers like he had never seen. At the end of the field was a brilliant figure in white with his arms open. He was drawn towards the figure, but before he reached him (or her), he was suddenly back in his body and awake.

Last week my father passed on…to a better place. I can say that with absolute confidence, not just because of my personal faith but because of his and countless other NDE reports that have so much consistency in terms of fundamental content, that I do not need the results of AWARE II to believe that they are real. I am certain that our inner beings survive death and enter an eternal place of incomparable beauty, and into fellowship with others that is beyond any relationship we ever experience in this physical world.

Finally, the other reason that I have been “off the grid” is that in the little spare time I’ve had, I have been sorting out the internal design and cover of my book on the Origins of DNA and Life. It should be available next week, and of course I will let my friends on this forum know. You will also learn my real name as well (although I think some have already connected another blog with this, which I am just putting together, so may already know).

Brain damage and personality change: evidence against the existence of a separate soul?

Yesterday afternoon I was sitting in front of my father in his nursing home. He has advanced Alzheimer’s disease. He looks at me with his big sad brown eyes, and I know that he hasn’t got a clue who I am. He can’t speak, but he looks around curiously and he smiles…in fact oddly, he smiles more than he used to, and what I can say is that he is most definitely not the same “person” that I have known all my life. There are traces of the “person” but much of it has gone or changed, and yet he is still there, alive.

This kind of scenario is something I have thought about before with respect to NDEs and forms the basis of a legitimate objection to the belief that NDEs are evidence that the soul is separate from the brain (Chad bought this up once in one of our discussions). The argument goes something like this: if the soul is separate from the brain then when the brain is injured through trauma or disease the “personality” should not change as it is not a “function” of the brain. So this invites the question:

Are Personality and the Soul the same thing?

This is very important for trying to get to the bottom of this question, and to be honest it will not be covered fully in this post. I have actually moved countries recently, from Canada back to the UK, due to my parent’s poor health, and in the process I have changed jobs. I am now working in research in obesity (which is ironic as I am not slim!) and in particular on a drug that targets a receptor on a neuron in the hypothalamus which regulates appetite. I am therefore having to learn a lot more about neurotransmitters and how they affect behavior. People who have genetic defects that result in defects in the pathway I am working on, experience extreme hunger…all of the time, even after they have eaten. This then drives their behavior and the behaviors we observe are what we may perceive as personality…we make judgments, that person has no self-control.

Some people who have brain damage can become much angrier. Again, this affects our perception of their personality. Often they experience more extreme ranges of emotions, since emotions are often the result of hormone changes regulated in the brain. Much of this is what defines our personality, and it is absolutely, without doubt, the result of processes in our brain. But is it our soul? Are the soul and personality the same thing and if so, is the brain therefore producing our soul?

I have my thoughts on this, and one piece of anecdotal evidence that might help us understand this better is from NDE accounts. When people leave their bodies and look at themselves, they often “feel” nothing for the body. People often describe being in a peaceful or observant state as though emotions have all but disappeared. Not all though, as some report fear as well. However, in general people appear to be more “objective” in an NDE, as opposed to subjective when inside your body experiencing “life”. I’m not quite sure how, but I feel this may go some way towards answering the question about personality and soul.

I’d be interested in other’s thoughts on this as it is a really tricky question.

With regard to my father, I have tried to rationalize his situation to align with my beliefs. Specifically I believe that the destruction of large parts of his brain from a disease, has resulted in a massively reduced capacity of his soul to “interact” with his brain, resulting in some of the changes I see. Moreover, if some NDE reports are to be believed, then memory is not actually stored in the brain, but in some “central universal repository” and if this is the case, then perhaps my father’s ability to access that repository has gone. Of course, this is me squishing observations into my belief system, and I fully accept that this “understanding” is totally subjective.

Either way, brain damage causes carnage for those who suffer it and those who love them.

Evidence vs “Bullshit”

I promised I would address this particular publication in a new post, as it has got lost in a long and winding discussion that came out of the last post. Here is the link to the full text of the publication which was published in August this year:

Link to PDF of paper on Researchgate

And here is a link to the kind of media interpretation that this article invoked:

Wired – Turns out near-death experiences are psychedelic, not religious

Or the BBC

DMT trip feels like dying

The paper was written by a group of researchers from Imperial College London. Imperial is a premier research institution, so anything that comes out of it should be taken seriously even when it is published in Frontiers of Psychology, a less than premier journal. However, in spite of the source of the research, namely Imperial, the tone that at least one of the researchers adopts towards NDE experiences reveals a distinctly unscientific approach.

“But it’s bullshit. It’s classic pseudoscience,” says Robin Carhart-Harris, who designed the Psychedelic Research Group study with Chris.

This was a reference to Eben Alexander’s book and claims. Now I am not a wild fan of Alexander’s NDE account, and the publicity it generated, but to dismiss it as “bullshit” shows a chronic bias against the possibility that NDEs are a “supernatural” or genuinely religious phenomenon. If you start a research project with that assumption, then you are unlikely to draw unbiased conclusions.

To be fair, the paper itself does not read as badly as it might given the tone of the author in the interview. The study was designed to assess the similarity between the experience of taking the psychedelic drug DMT, with an NDE. To do this they used the Greyson scale, the scale devised by one of the fathers of NDE research, which includes 15 different elements most commonly associated with NDEs. These include tunnels, bright light OBE etc etc. They assessed how much overlap there was in terms of level of experience and range. Their findings revealed that DMT induced an experience which bore similarities to an NDE, with significant overlap on Greyson scores compared to previously published data on those who had experienced actual NDEs. There were a few exceptions, such as less reported life reviews, no point of no return etc, but in general many of the elements of NDEs were reported by subjects taking DMT.

While the original paper does not go so far as to say that this proves that NDEs are hallucinations induced by the release of various hormones and neurotransmitters in the brain at the time of dying, this is most definitely the tone adopted by the Wired article, and certainly appears to be what at least one of the authors believes.

I view things differently. While it is obvious there are some similarities between the two experiences, there are some important differences, some of which I briefly alluded to above. The lack of the kind of detailed life reviews that NDE experiencers report when compared with these DMT induced experiences is significant. If someone is about to potentially die, and a life review is a part of that process, then it makes sense that someone who is not close to death would not have one. This in some ways, using a bit of twisted logic, provides a bit of validation of the fact that NDEs are real. But you could only draw that conclusion if you viewed the research produced by this group through the biased lens that we believers view things.

The truth is, that you could interpret the data from this study in two completely different ways according to your own world view, and both interpretations would be consistent with the findings of the study.

As a reminder, the essence of the key finding was that taking DMT induces an experience which has significant similarity to an NDE.

The first way you could interpret this data is the way in which Wired magazine and the author have – namely that due to this similarity, this shows that NDEs are just a psychedelic experience produced entirely by the chemical activity of the brain.

The other way that that the data could be interpreted is that DMT disrupts the “anchoring” mechanism of the consciousness to the brain, and thereby causes temporary erratic separations of the conscious from the physical brain, but while the patient is alive and fully technically conscious. Here is a quote from one of the subjects:

“It’s probably the most intense experience I’ve had,” says Iona. “[The sense that] birth and death were just a transformation rather than an end was something that felt true.”

It is entirely consistent with the data from the study to suggest that DMT could indeed cause just the kind of disruption that I describe above. If the brain is just a host of the conscious then pumping a brain full of a drug that is neurotoxic may indeed cause the association with the brain to loosen, and for that conscious to briefly dip into “other realms”. The researcher dismisses this idea out of hand, but provides no rationale for making that assertion.

Ultimately, the evidence from this study is valid, but the conclusions drawn by the researchers themselves in the interview and the media may indeed be “bullshit”, and entirely the result of atheistic bias. At the end of the day, the study, while intriguing, is a great big “nothing burger” in terms of providing evidence that NDEs are not a “supernatural” phenomenon.