AwareofAware

Evolving news on the science, writing and thinking about Near Death Experiences (NDEs)

Archive for the tag “aware II”

15 Sep 2023
81 Comments

“News” about AWARE II publication! (and a comment about “news”)

Yesterday I had a long journey back from vacation, and didn’t arrive home till 3:00am. So firstly apologies for not commenting on all the excitement that Mary and David mentioned in the previous post around the “publication” of Parnia’s AWARE II study yesterday. Secondly, after having my very tired brain shocked into activity by reading those comments, and frantically following up on this “news” I really feel like I could go back to bed…but I won’t. I have another flight on Monday, this time for work, and need to adjust my brain to yet another time zone.

The AWARE II study was not published yesterday, it was published in July. However, it became freely available on the on line version of Resuscitation yesterday and I encourage you to download the PDF and read it:

Link to full AWARE study publication

This is identical to the paper that I discussed back in July . If you recall I focused on the one key piece of data that we had been asking for since December 2019 and had finally been revealed, namely whether there was any EEG data for patients who reported an NDE or RED. This key piece of information was buried in the footnotes of Figure 2:

Two of 28 interviewed subjects had EEG data, but, weren’t among those with explicit cognitive recall.

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.resuscitation.2023.109903

To be fair to CNN they do include an excellent rebuttal to the inference of their own title provided by Bruce Greyson, who presumably also read the small print under figure 2:

“This latest report of persistent brain waves after cardiac arrest has been blown out of proportion by the media. In fact, his team did not show any association between these brain waves and conscious activity,” said Dr. Bruce Greyson, Carlson Professor Emeritus of Psychiatry and Neurobehavioral Sciences at the University of Virginia School of Medicine in Charlottesville.
“That is, those patients who had near-death experiences did not show the reported brain waves, and those who did show the reported brain waves did not report near-death experiences,” Greyson told CNN via email.

CNN article

Thank you Dr Greyson for putting it so perfectly. THERE IS NO ASSOCIATION, OR “TIES” in this study. So CNN are misrepresenting the studies core findings, but what is new about that? Organizations like CNN have been misrepresenting the “news” for decades now. However, I am a little concerned that it is not just CNN, but an organization that should know better:

Up to an hour after their hearts had stopped, some patients revived by cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR) had clear memories afterward of experiencing death and while unconscious had brain patterns linked to thought and memory.

https://nyulangone.org/news/patients-recall-death-experiences-after-cardiac-arrest

This is from the NYU News Hub, and is possibly even more misleading than the CNN headline. By joining the two separate findings of 1. “patients experiencing clear memories of death” and 2. “while unconscious had brain patterns linked to thought and memory” with an “and” in the same sentence, they are guilty of egregious conflation to infer a conclusion that these memories were a result of brain patterns. This is pretty shameful for a reputable medical scientific organization to do . Was this Parnia’s doing, or the work of others who are opposed to the potential for his work to prove the fact that the soul persists after death? Something fishy is going on.

Then David mentioned this interview with Sam Parnia yesterday which was presented on NBC:

More balanced NBC article with interview with Sam Parnia

The written article does not misrepresent the data in the way that CNN does, or NYU, although some dodgy editing of the interview perhaps leads one to conclude the EEG data may be linked. Parnia talks about a book that he is co-authoring with Mary Curran-Hackett who had an OBE. I look forward to that book.

Finally, as promised my comment on the media. In an ideal world the media would report the facts as they appear with balanced commentary, but they do not…they report stories that often support specific preferred narratives based on facts that they often twist. This is most obvious in politics where an event involving either Biden or Trump, will be reported in completely differently ways by Fox and CNN. That’s bad enough, but when it comes to scientific data that has implications on how we view the very essence of our existence, then it is utterly despicable. In fact I would go so far as to say it is evil. I have seen it in the field of origin of life research, and I spent a chapter in my book about the origin of life, DNA: The Elephant In The Lab venting on the issue of media misrepresentation of the science, and that includes scientific media, such as Science magazine, or NewScientist. Here we have something that is my view even worse. Not only is CNN guilty of misrepresentation of facts, but the NYU news hub, the very institution that generated those facts.

You have to ask yourself why do they do this? Why are they so determined to suppress all discussion or science that may point to a non-materialist understanding of our existence, and change the way that man behaves.

I look forward to your comments.

Finally, thank you to those who have bought me a coffee. If you appreciate my writing, then please feel free to buy me a coffee now (or more than 1 as some very generous people have done!)

https://www.buymeacoffee.com/orsonw23W

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16 Jan 2023
112 Comments

AWARE II preprint analysis

So having had time to look through the preprint of the AWARE II paper, I will only add comments on new information that wasn’t present in the talk at AHA, and it basically boils down to two things – the reports of external awareness – in particular the visual report, and the EEG data.

On the report of visual awareness, this is from the paper:

“…one describing “hands being on him” and voices shouting. Another, “heard people talking…” and drugs given but without specifics. The same person (1/28 [3.5%]) perceived visual awareness of doctors. He felt like he was further away but could see what was going on, including hearing/seeing doctors getting organized and a doctor with a “surgical hat and blue scrubs”. He said he “could feel someone rubbing the bony bit” on his chest. During stage 3, no further information for independent corroboration was provided.”

When you look at this case, I would say this is much more likely to be CIPRIC than a genuine OBE. Not what I would like to say, but nonetheless feels true given he reports feeling procedures. It is possible he was “half-in half-out” but no evidence to support this UNLESS they also collected EEG and it was flat during the episode he describes…which brings me on to the EEG data. I refer specifically to this paragraph:

“EEG data were obtained from n=85 subjects, but due to electrical interference, electrode malfunction, motion artifact data, only 53 had interpretable EEG data. Thus, of 851 total EEG images captured, 466(55%) were interpretable (Figure 1.A). Of these 53, n=49 also had rSO 2 with mean SD rSO 2 43.49, consistent with significant ischemia (normal~70%). Those not-interviewed had a similar rSO 2 to those interviewed. Among the 28 interviewed survivors, mean rSO 2 was similar between those with and without memories. Although, absence of cortical brain activity (suppressed EEG) was a dominant finding (47% of data/images), seizure-like (epileptiform) activity also emerged (5%) (Figure 1.B). Importantly, near-normal/physiological EEG consistent with consciousness also emerged: delta, theta activity in 22% and 12% respectively (up to CPR 60 minutes), alpha 6% of data/images (up to CPR 35 minutes) and beta 1% (Figure 1.B). Near-normal EEG patterns were observed throughout CPR, however, their relative frequency declined over time, especially after 50 minutes of CPR. In parallel, there was a relative increase in suppressed (absent) EEG. Seizure-like activity occurred after 10mins of CPR but remained steady (~12-24% of all EEG recordings) throughout (Figure 1.B). Modeling the likelihood of the emergence of the EEG patterns, we identified a significant difference in the predicted probability of the emergence of the three categories of EEG (normal-near normal, seizure like activity, absence) with prolonged CPR duration (p<0.001) (Figure 1.C)2”

Firstly, the Parnia lab are to be congratulated on what is a truly innovative and ground-breaking piece of research. As they state in the discussion, this is the first time that real-time EEG data has been collected in a prospective study during CPR, and given the fact that near normal EEG patterns were observed in some patients throughout CPR, it raises the possibility that NDEs could be explained by brain activity. However, without further detail, and specifically the tables, I am going to guess that it is quite unlikely given that one of the 6 patients who had “transcendental” experiences has EEG data given that less than 10% of all subjects had interpretable EEG (I am assuming the percentages quoted in the above paragraph are for the whole EEG population, not just those who were interviewed…this should be changed by the editor before final publication with numbers as well as percentages). Now if one of the 6 did have interpretable EEG, then it could prove positive for either camp, but would favour the dualists. There are two scenarios if there was interpretable EEG data for any of the 6:

  1. The EEG data was inconsistent with conscious activity. This would be slightly positive for dualists…but only slightly without time stamping of validated external recollections…which we already know don’t exist.
  2. The EEG data was consistent with the potential for conscious activity. This would be slightly supportive or the materialists, but for the same reason as it would not be conclusive in scenario one it would not be conclusive here.

Ultimately, even when we do see the tables, I am pretty certain we will not be able to draw any definitive conclusions about the nature of consciousness, or of the cause of NDEs from AWARE II. Most, if not all of the EEG data, is for people who didn’t report an NDE.

Parnia points to his study in patients undergoing hypothermic circulatory arrest as maybe unlocking the puzzle. My next post will be about this, and why I am concerned that this may be a false hope, and if he did stop collecting data for AWARE II in March 2020, then he may come to regret it.

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