AwareofAware

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

Archive for the tag “Aware study results”

29 May 2025
284 Comments

AWARE IIIa results

Firstly, thanks to Peter for bringing this to my attention. It was published a couple of days ago:

I have called this study AWARE IIIa as it is latest in a sequence of studies involving Sam Parnia (don’t think there is a formal name for this study at the moment). The first author is Joshua Ross, a resident physician at NYU Langone, and Parnia is the last-named author. First and last names on a publication are always considered the principal players in the study.

I call it IIIa because it is a pilot study looking at the feasibility of a larger potential study looking into consciousness during deep hypothermic circulatory arrest (DHCA). We have been waiting for something from this for a while now, especially as I have noted previously that recruitment started summer 2020. This paper confirms that and reports on patients recruited from 7/20 to 1/22 from 10 hospitals. It was funded by NYU and the Templeton foundation.

The idea of a study like this has been bouncing around for a while now. One of the most famous NDEs ever, Pam Reynolds, occurred during DHCA. The patient’s heart is stopped slowly under controlled conditions by cooling the body to less than 20 °C, surgery is performed, usually within 1 hour, then the body slowly warmed and the heart restarted. It is now a relatively routine procedure for types of surgery where stopping blood flow is important.

Given that the heart stops – cardiac arrest or CA – this has often been regarded as a possible model for NDEs under controlled conditions with the massive advantage that patients survive (only about 10-20% of in-hospital CAs survive to discharge). Given that patients undergoing DHCA have actually reported NDEs (or REDs), exploring this further made a lot of sense, and I was previously very excited about such a study. However, despite some early positive data from the Montreal study led by Beauregard, a more recent study showed no NDEs in a cohort of DHCA patients (HCA study from 2021). This led to me being a bit skeptical about a DHCA study producing a hit. My thinking was that maybe the patient had to be conscious prior to CA, and for the experience to be sudden for the consciousness to be “jolted out of the brain” or to allow disinhibition to occur, as Parnia would say.

Anyway, on to the study:

Design: feasibility study using similar equipment to that deployed in AWARE II – namely an ipad with images only visible from above and earbuds repeating words, as well as EEG and oximetry equipment. All of this would obviously be in place prior to CA, a huge advantage to AWARE II, as would patient consent be.

Results: Remember this is only a pilot to establish methodology, so the numbers were small:

  • 35 post procedure interviews
  • No explicit recall of images or words (3 fruits) – i.e. no one remembered seeing the images or hearing the words during the procedure
  • 1 NDE/RED experience, but without an OBE
  • 2 patients had recollections more consistent with CPRIC or ICU delirium
  • 3 patients (8.6%) were able to guess the fruits correctly – the authors suggests this may imply implicit recall (i.e. they heard it, subconsciously recorded hearing it, but don’t remember hearing), I think this is a big stretch, something they acknowledge as well, as I will explain below
  • Cerebral activity showed 70% of patient brains were isoelectric (no activity) during DHCA with about 30% having delta waves

My initial response to this was disappointment as once again we have a study without a hit, but on reflecting overnight on it, I am not so discouraged. Why is that?

Once again the numbers were small. Only 35 were interviewed. Now if these were CAs that occurred in an ICU or ER and were sudden as with most NDEs, you would expect 3-6 NDE/RED reports, but there is only one. If my thinking outlined above is correct – namely that a sudden/unexpected cessation of heartbeat while conscious is normally required for the consciousness to “untether” then you would either expect no NDEs from a DHCA study, or a much lower incidence. That may be why we only see one RED (although that is one more than was seen in the 2021 study).

Given that that there was only one reported RED (i.e. an experience meeting the stricter criteria outlined in the 2022 consensus statement – something I am leaning to much more given some of the physicalist’s adoption of the term NDE to describe all kinds of non-classical NDE events) and that normally only 20-25% of people who have a RED report an OBE (in this dimension at least), then you would not expect an OBE, especially one that noticed the screen.

As for guessing the fruits – banana, apple, pear – I suspect that if you asked 100 people to randomly name the first 3 fruits that came into their heads maybe 5-10% would come up with this combination. If it had been Apple, Banana orange it would probably be 30%. Anyway, the authors acknowledge that not too much should be made of this finding as chance may play a part. (they need to change the words and images for future studies as people familiar with these studies may taint the results)

Sceptics may argue that I am clutching at straws by remaining positive here, and they may be right, but if this had been a study with 10 times the number of patients, and there had been no NDEs with OBEs, then I might agree. As it is, I think my position is rational, if on the optimistic side.

In conclusion (from our perspective), while there was no OBE with explicit recall of images, given the 1 RED, this DHCA pilot study hints at the possibility of using DHCAs as a better method for exploring consciousness during CA, and specifically REDs. However, accounting for the possibility of a lower prevalence of REDs from this procedure than that seen in the unplanned CA population, much larger numbers may be needed. Hopefully they carried on with collecting data after January 2022 and we won’t have to wait another 5 years! Moreover, I hope they are continuing collecting data for AWARE II since it is still possible DHCAs may prove a dead end.

Parnia continues to lead the way in research into consciousness during CA. He is genuinely an outstanding researcher in this field and I hope that one day his labor and perseverance will be rewarded. All power to Parnia!

Finally, if you haven’t already, please visit this site which has my books on NDEs etc and feel free to buy one! If you read a book, liked it but not yet reviewed/rated it, then please do so. Finally I am in process of creating audiobook versions of some of the books which will be available later in June.

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08 Nov 2022
156 Comments

Key points from AWARE II presentation at AHA 2022

Someone very kindly provided me with a copy of the slides from Sunday’s presentation. They sent them to me because I have a Ph.D. and I work in research therefore I will respect the sender’s request that they only be presented in an academic context and I will not post any of the actual slides on here, or supply copies. That being said much of the key bits of data can be found in the abstract that Z posted the following link to:

Link to AHA 2022 AWARE II abstract

Now to the presentation.

The background looks at the physiological factors around death and resuscitation, and has a slide on the pig study. It then looks at the different types of experience that are recalled, and also the psychological impact of these experiences. The historically low percentage of visual recollections is highlighted and he uses AWARE I as a source of evidence for this. He then moves on to the study itself.

Firstly he states 3 specific hypotheses related to Near Death Experiences:

  • Consciousness and awareness – with explicit and implicit learning – and cognitive experiences occur during cardiac arrest
  • Cognitive experiences may be related to the quality of brain resuscitation.
  • Experiences during states of unconsciousness may impact longer term psychological outcomes in survivors

It is important to note that while the first hypothesis refers to consciousness during CA, none of these hypotheses explicitly relate to dualism or refer to the possibility of the consciousness surviving death, which is after all what we initially believed the AWARE studies were about, and what in fact Parnia himself has stated repeatedly in public outside of the context of a clinical scientific audience – an important point. The second and third hypotheses relate more to his medical discipline as an ER doctor.

In subsequent slides he details the design of the study, and there is a new twist to this. Due to the lack of survivors from CA, a sad but inevitable problem that has plagued all his studies, he has decided to include retrospective data from reports of consciousness during CA that did not occur within the prospective AWARE II study. This was to provide qualitative information on experiences. As a researcher myself, I find the inclusion of retrospective data in a prospective study a little troublesome. I get why he might do this, but it makes the research potentially messy. However, thankfully that does not happen when it comes to the presentation of the prospective results.

After this the other techniques are discussed – brain oxymetry, EEG, headphones and a tablet generating audio and visual “clues”.

During the study memories that were reported were measured against a 32 point NDE scale, and any visual or auditory reports were collected and cross referenced with computer files listing the clues that were generated at the various timepoints.

Results:

As the abstract states 567 patients were “recruited”, but only 53 survived to discharge and of these only 28 were interviewed.

This is where I actually want to stop writing this post. It is incredibly disappointing to have such low numbers. In truth after more than 5 years they only obtained a sample of 28 subjects to glean information from. This is less than the number for AWARE I. I am not criticizing Parnia or his team – what they are aiming to do is very hard, and the fact that so few patients survive is the main reason why in my view, and I suspect the view of most who frequent this blog, the study “failed”. Given that from previous studies we know that only 2-3% of patients who experience clinical death and are resuscitated report NDEs with visual recollections, I have always said that you would need to have many hundreds, if not thousands, of interviews to stand a chance of getting a hit. The reasons for this are not just related to low percentages having visual recollections, but also to the chances of someone actually seeing and remembering the projected images if they were lucky enough to have a visual OBE. Anyway, I have flogged that horse to death many times here so back to the results.

In terms of patient characteristics, due to the low numbers of patients who were interviewed vs not interviewed, which mainly reflects survival vs non-survival, most differences do not reach statistical significance, except sex with a higher proportion of men being interviewed than women than the proportion reflected in the total study population, and age, with those being interviewed being younger. The first point is interesting since I think that historically women were more likely to report NDEs than men. Oxymetry data shows a trend of higher levels of oxygen in patients who survived. This has been observed before.

In terms of participating sites, the greatest proportion of patients came from the UK.

Now we get to some interesting tidbits…I’d love to post the graphics, but that would be disrespecting the kind chap who provided me with the slides.

There is a flow chart showing % of patients who had a tablet , oximetry and EEG installed, with the key data being for those who survived to interview (28):

  • 22 had tablets with files recording what was displayed
  • 24 had oximetry with 11 having meaningful files
  • Only 6 had EEG installed and if I am reading the flow chart correctly, only 2 of those interviewed had interpretable EEG files.

This last point is extremely important when it comes to drawing any conclusions about the relationship between reports of awareness and brain activity. You can’t.

How many reported awareness?

  • 11 of the 28 patients had memories or perceptions.
  • 6 reported transcendent experiences of death (he seems to have dropped RED in this manuscript and gone back to TED 🙂 )
  • 2 reported CIPRIC
  • 2 had memories post CPR
  • 3 had dream or dream-like experiences

This data partially verifies his first hypothesis.

The 6/28 is where Parnia get’s his 20% having NDEs (21% to be precise). Given the small sample size this is well within the bounds of error of previously reported numbers of 10%. Now for the core bits of data…the OBEs.

  • 2 of 28 had auditory OBEs
  • 1 of 28 had a visual OBE
  • None of 28 were able to identify the correct image including the patient who had a visual recollection – big miss for us on this blog
  • 1 subject was able to identify the correct fruit from the auditory stimuli. This is the hit that was first mentioned back in 2019. It’s hard to know what to make about this without ECG and/or EEG data correlating with the time of the audio file. It could be a bona fide hit. Either way, this possibly fully verifies his first hypothesis provided the patient was proven to be in CA.

There was no statistical difference (p=0.55) in terms of oxygen levels between patients who had memories or no memories. This possibly falsifies his second hypothesis.

In terms of EEG:

•Absence of measurable cortical brain activity (47% of images)

•Normal/near-normal delta seen in 22% of recordings up to 60 minutes

•Theta activity was seen in 12% of recording up to 60 minutes

•Alpha activity was seen in 6% of recordings, up to 35 mins

However, these are not specific to patients who were interviewed, so all the talk about recollections of consciousness possibly being related to brain activity are 100% pure speculation – UNLESS the 2 EEG files he has from the interviews specifically cross reference recollections with EEG spikes from the 6 patients who had NDEs. However we aren’t told this. It is possible that this data was verbally discussed during the presentation or more likely will be presented in the final publication. It is an important piece of data, but given that there are only 2 EEG files for the 28 who survived, even if there is some correlation with one or two of the six, the numbers are way too low to draw definitive conclusions and so I am of the view that Parnia’s reference to these recollections of Awareness being related to these is at best speculative.

The last section of the presentation refers to the retrospective study and repeats much of what has been said in the consensus statement and distinguishes REDs (yes, he uses RED here rather than TED) from other CPR related experiences such as CIPRIC.

In summary, in the absence of scientifically verified OBE or EEG data correlating specifically with strong NDEs, or an OBE, we are unable to verify or falsify the hypothesis that the consciousness is not a product of the brain. This is entirely attributable to the low numbers recruited in the study. From the PowerPoint presentation that I have, no hypothesis, either his, or ours, relating to the nature or origin of conscious awareness during CA has been validated or falsified. Given how much hope I once had for this study, I am of course very disappointed, but such is life. On a research front though, the collection of so much EEG data from patients who are in CA and having CPR is truly groundbreaking, it is just a shame that without more information we are unable to draw conclusions on the meaning of this data.

I anticipate lots of questions and a lively discussion!!

Lastly I would like to thank the lab for providing the slides for me to look at and pay my respects to the Parnia lab team, all the research sites, and the patients who took part in this study. It is no one’s fault that this study does not satisfy our desire for a “hit”, it was an epic effort and the nature of the population always made this outcome more likely than not. Also, there is another study that we still have to hear about…another day. I live in hope!!

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29 Oct 2022
47 Comments

What are the chances?

This article was posted by Maria in the comments of my last post. Thank you.

Link to article on how to capture visual OBEs

The original article is over 30 years old, and this fact alone highlights just how long we have been waiting for a scientifically verified visual OBE in a research setting. When I say scientifically verified, I mean that a hypothesis is generated, an experiment devised to test that hypothesis, and a positive result recorded within that context. I have taken great pains over the years to point out that adherence to the scientific method is central to insuring the credibility of any results that emerge from a study seeking to verify OBEs or NDEs.

The hypothesis would go something like this:

The consciousness is able to persist and separate from the physical body once the heart has stopped beating and brain stopped working, and observe events externally from the body.

The experiment would then test this hypothesis by creating a method by which the ability to observe events during this state is assessed. This paper describes the type of visual stimuli and location that would be best, based on interviews of people who reported OBEs during their NDEs. Presumably Sam Parnia read this article as a reference for designing this aspect of the AWARE study. He placed cards on shelves near the ceiling in various ICU wards in different hospitals. Despite there being a total of thousands of these cards dotted around hospitals all over the world, none of the reported NDEs from AWARE 1 occurred in a room with a card. The reasons for this have been discussed multiple times before. While reports of NDEs are very common, deliberately setting out to prospectively observe patients who have a CA with an NDE and an OBE and who then survive long enough to be interviewed is extremely difficult. Reports of murders are common, but if you set up an experiment to try to witness a murder, it would be very hard. Maybe a clumsy analogy, but my point is that while a random event may occur commonly, being able to deliberately observe that event may not be straight forward.

This problem has also plagued AWARE II despite its updated methodology and slightly tighter inclusion criteria, and based on the preliminary data presented at AHA in December 2019, it seems unlikely that when the final results are published that there will be a verified visual hit. This quote from the article’s conclusion predicts our torture all the way back in 1988:

the process of accumulating sufficient data in hospital veridicality research may be protracted

No kidding!

There is another problem with the AWARE studies. The above hypothesis that I state is not specifically included in the study, and the studies are not designed with the specific intent of testing this hypothesis. Testing this kind of hypothesis may have been Parnia’s original intent when he started out, but possibly for credibility reasons, he has not been able to explicitly state this in the study designs. The studies have therefore been hampered in their ability to achieve the outcome of proving this hypothesis as a result. If there is a scientifically verified OBE it will be a byproduct of the research in that the stated aim of the visual and auditory experiments is to better understand the nature of reports of conscious awareness rather than prove the above hypothesis.

Finally, any publication that Parnia submits will need to be peer reviewed. Peer review is far from a flawless process and is subject to the personal biases of the reviewers. Given the hostility in the materialistic scientific community to research that might challenge the prevailing materialistic orthodoxy, any evidence that Parnia presents to support this hypothesis will scrutinised very closely and potentially arbitrarily dismissed by reviewers. We only need to look at the COVID lab leak vs natural emergence fiasco to know without doubt that the scientific community is capable of subverting the truth if the truth challenges their preferred narrative.

Given all of this, I am becoming quite gloomy about the prospect of the paper that presents results from AWARE II including any scientifically verified OBE. It is due in the next few months, so we should know one way or the other.

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30 Aug 2022
172 Comments

NDE, RED, REX – is it all just a case of Timantics?

Apologies for the pun, but couldn’t help myself. As some of you may be aware one of the more valued members of this site, Tim, and I had a somewhat acrimonious discussion yesterday that became personal and resulted in Tim saying his goodbyes. Goodbyes, unlike death, can be reversible, so hopefully we will see him again and continue to learn from his outstanding knowledge of this subject.

So what was all the fuss about? For me it was a case of semantics – in this instance the meaning of the word death and its use in the term RED. The reason for us discussing what the word death means was due to this article:

Studying death and near-death experiences requires neuroscientific expertise

First of all, the title is ludicrous and based on a huge assumption. The study of NDEs only requires neuroscientific expertise if NDEs are the result of neurological processes. I have spent the past 4 years of my life working in neuroscience, and I can assure you that there is nothing in human understanding of neuroscience that could explain a genuine OBE. That has and always will be the issue, therefore the study of NDEs does not need an expertise in neuroscience. It might benefit from it to interpret various neurological measurements that are acquired during a CA, but it is not necessary, especially when it comes to any experiments that attempt to validate OBEs. If you have a scientifically validated OBE, then that cannot be explained by science. Moreover, neurologists and neuroscientists were a part of developing the consensus statement.

Obviously starting off with the assumption that an NDE is a natural neurological phenomenon means that the rest of the article is constrained by this materialist assumption and therefore many other things that are said are just incorrect. However, there are a couple of points they make that are very pertinent and worth highlighting, and one in particular that caused the spat between Tim and me. It was my suggestion that I agreed in part with their statement about the use of term RED that set things off. This is what they said:

Second, contrary to what Parnia et al. write, people who recall NDEs are therefore inherently people who have not been dead and have not met brain death criteria. Since the introduction of brain death criteria in 50 the 1960s, not a single patient properly diagnosed as brain dead has come back to life….Because of these scientific inaccuracies, the proposed term “recalled experience of death” is wrong and we firmly reject it. The authors confuse “death” with the process of dying

My initial response of agreeing in part was more a gut reaction given that I was not aware of there being specific definitions for death and therefore given this state of affairs, and given the potentially reversible nature of the condition people are in when their hearts and brains have stopped functioning, stating these people had experienced death seemed a bit of an over reach. This gut reaction is reinforced by having watched all these TV shows in which the ER physician announces “time of death” when they give up CPR…i.e. the person is beyond medical help and the process of dying has become irreversible.

As the discussion continued I started looking into definitions of the word death. Dictionaries and on line resources tend to use the word irreversible, but what really nailed it for me was the UDDA definition which is used in the US:

The Commission ultimately recommended a Uniform Determination of Death Act (UDDA) which aimed to make the total brain standard into law in the states. This recommendation has been adopted by the American Bar Association and American Medical Association, and made into law in some form in all 50 states. The UDDA simply states: ’An individual who has sustained either (1) irreversible cessation of circulatory and respiratory functions, or (2) irreversible cessation of all functions of the entire brain, including the brain stem, is dead. Sarbey B. Definitions of death: brain death and what matters in a person. J Law Biosci. 2016 Nov 20;3(3):743-752. doi: 10.1093/jlb/lsw054. PMID: 28852554; PMCID: PMC5570697

In Canada: Death occurs when there is permanent loss of capacity for consciousness and loss of all brainstem functions .  This may result from permanent cessation of circulation and/or after catastrophic brain injury. In the context of death determination, permanent refers to loss of function that cannot resume spontaneously and will not be restored through intervention.

Now while this is adopted in the US and Canada, it is by no means globally adopted, and there is still uncertainty about the exact moment that the word death is appropriate, as evidenced in this NHS presentation on the subject: http://odt.nhs.uk/pdf/Diagnosis_of_death.pdf

For me the key quote in that discussion is the following:

Dying is a process; Death is a defined point in that process

This is the point that the article by Martial is making, and while it is a semantic point, it is central to the consensus paper and Martial is right to call them out for coming up with the term RED – recalled experiences of DEATH. Basically, using the dictionary, US legal, Canadian and wider medical community’s definition of death, someone who has achieved ROSC has not experienced death. Oops.

Now I understand why Parnia et al came up with the term, and I somewhat agreed with it in principal at the time, but my view has now changed, and I think theirs should too…although that is harder as they might need to retract their paper which is a pretty hideous thing to do from a researcher perspective. NDE is actually the most accurate term, and while it has been abused by people broadening its application from the one originally intended, it would be better to apply clarifications such as authentic, or classical, rather than completely discard it. In fact their recent attempt to completely change the meaning of the term NDE to not include REDs was something that I really objected to.

But it is all just semantics. Fundamentally, while the term RED is technically wrong, we know exactly what condition they are describing: it is a condition in which the body is completely incapable of consciousness and in which the brain is incapable of producing or storing conscious recollections, and yet people report experiences occurring and have been able to “prove” these through human verification. This is why I say I partly agree with Martial et al say, because otherwise much of way they say is complete hogwash. For instance:

“There is hence no “recalled experience of death”; if anything, it should be ‘recalled experience of what might have been the start of the dying process just before consciousness was lost’.

Technically they might right in saying that it could be the start of the dying process, but by adding “just before consciousness was lost” they are betraying their materialist bias. That is an assumption, and the whole point of doing these studies. While they have a point in saying that studies have failed to empirically prove [beyond any doubt] that “people are able to report actual (real-life) events and details happening during e.g., cardiopulmonary resuscitation” neither do these studies, or any others disprove it. Moreover studies such as AWARE I and others, while not providing slam dunk proof, provide very strong evidence supporting the thousands of reports by very credible people, including Health Care Professionals, outside of the context of a clinical study.

Their third point is another tricky one and I find myself agreeing with a part of it:

“Third, the authors write that NDEs in post-cardiac arrest patients fundamentally differ from NDEs made in other life-threatening or non-life-threatening situations, and that the latter experiences are “mislabeled”. Again, the reasoning is flawed. There are no empirical data so far to indicate that the phenomenology of NDE differs in situations that are (a) associated with a threat to life and impaired brain physiology such as  a cardiac arrest, (b) associated with a threat to life but unimpaired brain physiology such as a near-miss traffic accident, and (c) associated with non-life-threatening situations such as drug consumption or  meditation. To the contrary, the data that do exist indicate that all these experiences are phenomenologically  similar (e.g.,12-16). In other words, from the phenomenology of the experience one cannot tell if what happened was a cardiac arrest or e.g., use of a psychedelic drug. Contrary to what the authors state, this similarity suggests that the brain mechanisms behind these experiences are probably also similar, if not identical.”

I agree somewhat with their stating that some aspects of NDEs overlap with other experiences reported in different states. However, there are two ways of looking at this. The first, and one they cite, is that these experiences are the result of similar neurological processes, and the second that these experiences are possible in a variety of states and speak to the ability of the human consciousness to momentarily detach from the physical body. Both, in the absence of scientific, or empirical evidence, are possible explanations, but Martial et al only countenance one, and this is neither objective nor scientific. Moreover, the different conditions they cite are unlikely to produce similar neurological states and therefore it is unlikely they would produce similar psychological outcomes or recollections.

They make a few other statements based on their assumption that NDEs are the result of physiological process, which must be viewed in the light of this unscientific bias. However there is one statement they make that I absolutely 100% agree with, and which has troubled me enormously, and which I have commented on myself previously in this blog.

“Although Parnia et al. question the existence of distressing NDEs which they consider “related to [intensive care unit] delirium, delusions, and dreams in response to toxic metabolic states and withdrawal states (e.g., alcohol withdrawal)” (p. 17 of 127 File S2 from1), the latter claim is not empirically supported.”

The paper that Parnia cites to make this assertion actually suggests the complete opposite. I think this comes from a fundamental flaw in Parnia’s character…he is too nice! He doesn’t even want to consider the idea that people suffer after they die. I get that, but I do not believe that his position is the right one, and explain why in my book.

As for the conclusion of the article:

“Although (near-)death research certainly merits a framework directive, the paper by Parnia et al. is subject to a surprising lack of neuroscientific understanding. It reflects the fact that the field of NDE research (at least in parts) is biased by a widely held belief that there is something fundamentally special, if not supernatural, about NDEs, such as the notion that humans can have conscious experiences in the absence of a functioning brain.”

Yep, that’s the whole point isn’t it, and in the absence of scientific proof that consciousness in the absence of a functioning brain is not present, it should not be discounted as a possibility, and to do so is unscientific. The above statement displays a whopping lack of self-awareness when it comes to understanding their own lack of objectivity.

In summary, I think Parnia et al may need to rethink the use of the term RED. They also need to be aware of their own potential bias, such as on the subject of negative NDEs, and be open to outcomes that might be unappealing, but are nonetheless possible.

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14 May 2022
24 Comments

You say tomat[e]o, I say toma[re]to – NDE/RED/CPRIC

Thanks again to the eternally vigilant “Z” for spotting this paper which begs the oft repeated question – are NDEs/REDs just another form of CPRIC (CPR induced consciousness)? It is a question that we have answered at length in many past posts but it is important to revisit this due to the context in which it is raised.

While Parnia is not the main author, his influence on it is present, and his work is mentioned and forms part of the analysis. The other authors are from Southmead in Bristol UK, Toronto and Cologne, Germany. Southmead Hospital has a neurology research centre associated with the University of Bristol, and I have been there a fair bit in recent years due to my work in sleep medicine and Alzheimer’s disease (work that has suddenly come to an abrupt end unfortunately due to the vagaries of government regulatory and reimbursement bodies)

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2666520422000418

Title of the paper: CPR-related cognitive activity, consciousness, awareness and recall, and its management: A scoping review

At first it seems that they are lumping NDEs/REDs in with CPR induced consciousness. From the intro:

“Two types of cognitive activity and awareness were identified [during CPR]. The first includes visible signs of consciousness such as combativeness, groaning, and eye opening and was referred to as CPR induced consciousness. The second, a perception of lucidity with visual and auditory awareness and recall without external signs of consciousness.”

This is then clarified further in the discussion:

“It could be assumed that pain and distress would be expected in patients showing overt physical signs of con- sciousness through CPR. On the other hand, there have also been cases documented where survivors experiencing more transcendental post cardiac arrest experiences whilst not showing signs of pain or distress have benefited from the experience with it having a positive impact on the patient’s life. When considering treatment options, it may be beneficial to consider these two experiences as two separate entities.”

You reckon!? I suspect that the last sentence was most likely due to Parnia’s influence as a co-author.

All of the key pieces of AWARE data published and presented to date, from I (2014) and II (2019), is included in this review, and therefore, in this paper at least, NDEs are lumped in with CPRIC as events of consciousness that occur DURING CPR – related to CPR. This last point is the most important. Association and causation are two different things, and while the first type of experience, where there are physical signs of consciousness, are undoubtedly caused by CPR, the second, RED/NDE type, is only associated in these cases with CPR. The fact that NDEs have been reported outside of the context of CPR further differentiates them from CPRIC, but this is not discussed in the paper, and these types of experience seem to have been put aside for now by Sam Parnia, most likely for very good reasons, possibly to narrow the field of research to experiences that occur in strictly defined situations with scientifically measurable outcomes.

However, despite the fact that the paper does concede that NDE type events are only associated with periods during which CPR is being conducted, you can guarantee skeptics will cite this paper as further evidence that REDs are due to physiological reasons, and nothing else.

As an aside, having lived on both sides of the pond, I can attest to the fact that you really do need to get your pronunciation of the word describing the small round red vegetable correct to be understood. I remember asking a stewardess on a flight to Ottawa for a can of tomato juice, and being a recent arrival to North America, I was still saying Toma[re]to…and despite repeating it 3 times she had no idea what I was saying. It was very strange indeed, I might as well have been asking for a football, it seemed impossible for her to make the connection between the word I was saying and the numerous cans of the substance she had right in front of her on her trolley. It was only when I said Tomat[e]o that she understood. From that point on I reluctantly adopted the local dialect when it came to certain words, particularly important due to the fact that at the time I was smoking and working in HIV (English smokers will know exactly what I am referring to!) Having returned to the UK I have managed to revert back to the mother tongue, except for the word loo…just can’t use it any more, so I still find myself saying washroom! My wife laughs at me for not returning to the British vernacular for the word toilet, despite the fact that she is a Kiwi and therefore has to juggle 3 forms of English in her head. The only concession I make on this is to use the word “bog”, which is another English word to describe toilet, but I generally do not use it other than when I am in a pub with a group of mates, since this word is not deemed polite.

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08 May 2022
63 Comments

AWARE II: 15% of people had REDs

This is the first time I think that Dr. Parnia has mentioned any specific numbers from the forthcoming and much anticipated publication of data from AWARE II. A nice teaser quote from the UK Telegraph this weekend:

“Dr Parnia said soon-to-be published research will show that around 15 per cent of people who have been resuscitated from a coma after cardiac arrest have a Recalled Experience of Death.”

Daily Telegraph, 7th May 2022. Sarah Knapton, Science Editor

Link to latest AWARE II teaser

(it is behind a paywall, and given it is mostly a summary of the consensus statement and the state of the field, useful and informative to the wider public, but won’t be news to most here – except for the quote I have given)

Of course it is possible that this could be from his other research which from my understanding is a retrospective database analysis of reports they have collected from NYU and other establishments over the years, but I don’t think he would necessarily be able to state such a well defined number since, unlike AWARE II, that work is not a prospective study that looks at incidence of NDE among all those who survive a CA. Moreover, the fact that he has been trailing the publication of AWARE II for months now, would suggest it is from this study.

I think this is very important as I assume that he will be using the new criteria for REDs to differentiate from other experiences. It also significantly increases the chances of a “HIT”…by about 50% in fact. Given the rigour with which his team at NYU are conducting this research, I think that 15% will become the established number…provided the wider survivor cohort is sufficiently large.

I also think it is really important to consider that OBEs have largely been redefined as EVAs (external visual awareness), which by their very definition require VISUAL recollections. For a long time here we have been discussing the possibility of auditory OBEs , but in the consensus paper these are only mentioned in the context of accompanying an EVA and not a significant phenomenon in its own right.

There are some good NDEs in the comments section of the telegraph article, including one from a chap who had 3 CAs but only produced a single RED. This has been reported before on numerous occasions and points to Dr Parnia’s assertion that most, if not all, people who die and are resuscitated have an NDE (not a RED), but most can’t recall them due to physiological and/or biochemical reasons (which is why they aren’t REDs). This undermines one of the theories I state in my book, which I would be very happy to see undermined as it is not all that pleasant!!

Reminder in the link of my book which I recently updated (available amazon globally). I will be writing another update post AWARE II publication which, in addition to analysis of the new data, will include adjustments and additions to the possible theories as to why 80-90% can’t recall their NDE. This will reflect some of the excellent analysis provided on this topic in the consensus paper.

Link to my book on the AWARE studies

Really good to see the MSM, particularly a respected broadsheet like The Telegraph, take this seriously and report it in a balanced objective manner.

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29 Mar 2021
52 Comments

Answer to Oxygen levels and OBE report question – sort of

The second video on the page in the link below is a recording of Grand Rounds from March 2020, which for some reason, I had missed until recently.

Link to videos from Parnia lab

This video should be compulsory viewing for anyone who is interested in a scientific overview of NDEs, the AWARE studies and the work of the Parnia lab. It really highlights to me how amazing Sam Parnia is in terms of his persistence, his thoroughness, his balance, and his humanity in his approach to this subject. Lot’s of amazing tidbits in this video, including anecdotal accounts of NDEs, some discussion around explanations (or lack of) for consciousness and the philosophy of it all. Remember, this is in the context of Grand Rounds at one of the world’s leading hospitals…not a meeting of your local chapter of IANDS. This is one of the world’s leading scientists on the science of consciousness during “death” speaking to fellow physicians and scientists.

Anyway, the reason I made a post about it is that I get an answer to a question that has been bugging me for ages, namely the link between R02 (blood oxygen in the brain as measured by brain oximetry) and episodes of conscious recollection. I have repeatedly tried to get some comment from Dr Parnia or one of his research colleagues on whether any of the reports of sufficient oxygen levels to potentially experience consciousness were correlated with reports of auditory OBEs or other conscious recollections, or not. In this video, at about 50 mins, one of the attendees at rounds asks a similar question, and Dr Parnia replies that there is currently insufficient data to comment on that. That’s why it is only sort of an answer.

This was a year ago. It’s hard to assess how much impact COVID has had on AWARE II, but if they were going by their original study plan, they would have completed recruitment by now and be writing it up. Hopefully we won’t have too long to wait before we receive a full read out from this study.

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21 May 2019
72 Comments

Time of death…

Partly due to the fact that the last post has nearly 300 comments and so it is good to start a fresh post, and partly because this really disturbing case study raises a question that is very relevant to the whole subject of NDEs, and therefore worth a discussion all of its own, I am posting this and asking the usual contributors and any new ones, to answer the question…”when are you actually dead?” And also what does this highly unusual case say about the relationship between consciousness and physical death, and NDEs in general:

Patient who remained conscious after heart stopped

“The authors conclude that the high level of patient awareness plus oxygen saturation and arterial gas being almost within the normal range throughout the 90 minutes of treatment indicate that peripheral and cerebral blood flow was good and the chest compressions were highly effective. They note that that even though the patient had a poor prognosis, the termination of CPR after 90 minutes raised ethical questions in the team as the individual was still conscious at the time.”

My thoughts, (the horror of the situation aside):

1. In the overwhelming majority of cases when the heart stops, normal “waking” consciousness is immediately lost. This is proven by the immediate and almost total loss of brain activity as measured by EEG. Prior to modern CPR this was historically defined as the point of death. This is why Dr Parnia refers to NDEs as ADEs…actual death experiences. In other words the patient is technically dead. In this case, the EEG probably showed activity associated with normal levels, although this is not mentioned. The patient experienced heart death but not brain death.

2. Death is a process, and as has been mentioned before, none more so than by Parnia himself, it is reversible, and using various methods, the point at which it can be fully reversed without any long term damage can be stretched beyond the several minutes mark. To me true physical death is the point past this. It is the point at which the cells have endured so much damage that the body, and especially the brain, is no longer able to function properly.

3. This case contradicts something that I had always thought was absolutely true…when the heart stops the conscious either shuts down completely, or starts to “detach itself” from the host as we believe is the case with NDEs. However, it appears that if CPR is immediate, and continuous blood flow is kept going, the conscious can somehow “be fooled” into believing that “its host” hasn’t died. What do these cases say about the nature of the connection between body and conscious? And for the skeptic do cases like this provide evidence against NDEs?

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27 Jan 2018
99 Comments

Brand New Findings Revealed?

Thanks to Eduardo for picking this one up. I am extremely busy at the moment so don’t always have the time to trawl the networks for anything Parnia or NDE related, so appreciate when others email me links or post them in discussions. I felt this was worth pulling out. It was aired earlier this week on Dr Oz on January 22nd 2018. Dr Oz opens the segment with the announcement that brand new findings are going to be revealed (in the show). He then introduces Dr Parnia…well have a look yourself, click on the picture of our favorite intensive care doctor to access the video:

Parnia

Is this a sleight of hand or is there actually new data, or “brand new findings”?

Dr Parnia on one hand seems to describe the design of the most recent iteration of AWARE, AWARE II, then slips in “we did a study…” talking about the results from AWARE I. Given that he categorically stated in emails and on his Twitter feed that the results from AWARE II won’t be made public until after the study is finished in 2020, and that at this stage they have only recruited 350 or so, one can only assume that he is referring to AWARE I. However, the confidence he has in the assertions he makes seem to be growing stronger, which makes me believe that AWARE II has got some verified hits. AWARE I did not have any properly confirmed OBEs (i.e. validated sightings of pictures). There were some interesting accounts, and without doubt some real NDEs, and OBEs, but without the visual confirmation, they are nothing more than has been reported from countless other studies or independent accounts.

I do wonder why he is doing this. Is it to plug his book (Dr Oz does that at the end of the segment)? On some days he seems keen to protect the integrity of the study by not disclosing any preliminary results, but on others he does this kind of stuff. I guess there’s nothing specifically wrong with it, but from my perspective as a scientist, I do find the hyperbole attached to this format of show to be distracting and potentially tainting the credibility of the research, especially when the headlines do not match the reality. From what I can see there are no new major findings presented in this show.

As I say above, I can only assume that he is so confident now in producing paradigm shifting results, that he knows that in the long term, this will not cause any damage.

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15 Jun 2015
14 Comments

Update on status of AWARE II

Just a quick update on the AWARE study. I recently contacted the study team, and they informed me that the study opened and began recruiting on May 1st 2015. I asked for an updated protocol, but they are being a bit cagey about specifics at the moment, which is pretty understandable (if the exact details were known to outsiders it would be easier to discredit any positive results). What info we do have is available on the UK research website link below. The study is anticipated to run for 2 years. As I have stated before, I have concerns about the exclusion criteria not being broad enough, and that potentially we could see a repeat of AWARE I in which they recruited over 2000 Cardiac Arrests, but only a small minority of these were relevant in terms of providing data. In my view, unless they only include all CA survivors who had the crash cart plus LCD monitors in attendance and were able to complete a post event interview, then they should not be included.

Hopefully they have considered this and are proceeding in a more focused way with their new protocol.

AWARE II study

Finally, I know people come here from to time, and are disappointed that new posts are few and far between. As I have explained before, I have a very busy job in research, in addition I write novels in my spare time and this has been the primary focus of my energy of late. I will however attempt to post more thoughts and comments on NDE research as time goes by so sign up for updates so you will be notified when these appear.

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