AwareofAware

If AWARE II doesn’t have a hit I’ll eat my laptop.

For those who don’t follow the comments sections in this blog, there has been a discussion about an article that appeared which has ultimately come from Sam Parnia’s department at NYU.

Is there life after death?

Firstly thanks to Eduardo for sending it to me first, although others picked it up as well. Secondly apologies for not posting it sooner. I tried on the WordPress App, but it crashed (I have to admit I find the app a bit useless for all but following comments, and even then it does not feel intuitive), and since then I have been very busy. I recently gave a talk to 250 people on my recent book on the origin of life and preparing for this sucked up all my time.

As others, and myself, have noted, the tone of this article is completely supportive of the understanding that the consciousness, or soul is an individual entity that is able to survive death. This article was clearly sanctioned by Dr. Parnia, as it is related to the What happens when we die meeting that is due to take place at NYU in November. This implies that he is absolutely of the belief that the consciousness survives death. The implications of this are very clear from my point of view. As a scientist to make such a stand is inviting derision unless there is strong evidence to support this position. hence my belief that he is now sitting on one or more “hits” (i.e. scientifically verfiied OBEs) from AWARE II.

Will he use this event in New York as a teaser for the study results? Please, can someone go and then report back here what happens…if I still lived in Canada I would have nipped over the border to attend, but since I am now back in the UK “nipping” is not an option. I am prepared to provide financial support with respect to the cost of registration if someone serious (i.e. an existing commenter) volunteers and agrees to provide me with a write up and maybe ask a question at either the daytime or evening event. Message me via the contact me link.

Hypothesis Checking and NYU meeting

Firstly, I am currently in the process of writing a book on NDEs. As part of that I am having to reread the book on the front page of this blog, Aware Of Aware. I apologize to anyone who bought that, it is truly a stinker. My new book will be much better (I hope!). As part of the book I am trying to identify what I would have as the central hypothesis that is being tested in AWARE II. This is the best I could come up with…if any of you think this isn’t a hypothesis, or could improve it then let me know:

“If OBEs in NDEs are a real phenomenon then the consciousness is a separate entity that leaves the body when the patient’s heart has stopped beating and brain activity has ceased.”

I then make these predictions of the results that would be needed to prove the hypothesis true:

Approximately 1% of CA survivors who meet the study’s inclusion criteria and who survive long enough to complete all interviews in the AWARE II study will have scientifically validated OBEs (correctly identify the image on the tablet). This is based on 10% having NDEs, 25% of those having OBEs and 40% of those seeing the target. That comes to 1% of the total. So this is my prediction for the different possible totals who complete the study as described above.

250 – 2-3 scientifically verified OBEs

500 – 5 scientifically verified OBEs

750 – 7 scientifically verified OBEs

1000 – 10 scientifically verified OBEs

And so on.

Secondly, can someone who lives in or near NYC please attend this. I will consider sharing some of the registration and (reasonable) travel costs on receipt of a full reliable report of what was said, along with some snapshots of slides and speakers. If I still lived in Toronto I’d fly down for this. PM me if you are up for this by using the contact me link at the top.

NYU what happens when we die

I hope I don’t end up in AWARE II!

I am having a fairly benign procedure this week, but it does involve general anaesthetic. Thankfully there are rarely problems. Here’s the thing though, I am having the procedure in a hospital right next door to Southampton General Hospital in the UK, the home of AWARE, and where Dr Parnia did much of his training and initial research. I believe they are a site in AWARE II, which is why I am hoping not to end up being a subject! That being said, if I end up having a CA (please pray I don’t if you are a believer) and they move me next door to the General, and I am floating near the ceiling, then I will most definitely be looking out for iPads in the resuscitation suite!

Provided all goes to plan, I will shortly be starting my job working on helping to develop clinical research into sleep medicine. It is very focused on Neurology, and I am really excited about learning a lot more about the physiology of the brain and particularly just what the heck happens to the conscious during sleep and dreams. I have done some work on this before, but will now be digging really deep into this area. You can be assured that I will post anything interesting on here.

I am very happy to finally be working in an area of medicine so closely related to the subject of this blog. While I have always worked in science and medicine, and recently my work was on the neuroscience of obesity, this is the first time I will be focused on something so closely related to consciousness. Exciting times!

Any thoughts on dreams, feel free to share!

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.