Explanation of Near-Death Experiences: A Systematic Analysis of Case Reports and Qualitative Research
📄 Original study ↗📌 Appears in:
Plain English Summary
What do people actually experience when they come close to death -- and does it depend on their culture? This huge review analyzed 54 studies covering 465 people from diverse backgrounds worldwide. Out-of-body experiences (feeling like you've floated outside your body) and extraordinarily heightened senses dominated the reports. The really fascinating finding? A core set of experiences -- floating outside the body, tunnel passage, vivid senses, life review -- turned up across every culture studied. Background shaped how people interpreted these experiences, but not what they went through. That pushes back hard against the idea that near-death experiences are simply built from cultural expectations.
Research Notes
Most comprehensive cross-cultural NDE phenomenological taxonomy in the library. Note: catalog ID is misattributed to 'Kondziella'; actual first author is Hashemi. Speaks to controversy #7 by establishing universal NDE core features regardless of religion or culture, which challenges purely cultural-construction explanations.
Systematic analysis of 54 studies (27 case reports, 20 case series, 7 qualitative studies) spanning 1980-2022, involving 465 NDErs across multiple cultures and religions. Screened 2,407 initial records from PubMed, Scopus, EMBASE, CINAHL, and Google Scholar using PRISMA-P guidelines and JBI quality appraisal. NDEs were categorized into 4 main categories with 19 subcategories: emotional, cognitive, spiritual/religious, and supernatural experiences. Supernatural experiences—especially out-of-body experiences (35/54 studies) and heightened senses (39/54 studies)—were the most frequently reported. A universal phenomenological core (OBEs, tunnel passage, heightened senses, life review) was found across all cultures, with cultural variation confined to interpretation rather than experiential structure.
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Related Papers
Cites
- Consistency of Near-Death Experience Accounts over Two Decades: Are Reports Embellished over Time? — Greyson, Bruce (2007)
- The Near-Death Experience Scale: Construction, Reliability, and Validity — Greyson, Bruce (1983)
- Incidence and Correlates of Near-Death Experiences in a Cardiac Care Unit — Greyson, Bruce (2003)
- Seeing Dead People Not Known to Have Died: "Peak in Darien" Experiences — Greyson, Bruce (2010)
- Near-Death Experiences in Non-Life-Threatening Events and Coma of Different Etiologies — Charland-Verville, V (2014)
- Characteristics of Near-Death Experiences Memories as Compared to Real and Imagined Events Memories — Thonnard, Marie (2013)
- Intensity and Memory Characteristics of Near-Death Experiences — Martial, Charlotte (2017)
- Near-Death Experiences Between Science and Prejudice — Facco, Enrico (2012)
Companion
- Non-local Consciousness: A Concept Based on Scientific Research on Near-Death Experiences During Cardiac Arrest — van Lommel, Pim (2013)
- AWARE--AWAreness during REsuscitation--A prospective study — Parnia, Sam (2014)
- Temporality of Features in Near-Death Experience Narratives — Martial, Charlotte (2017)
- The Central Clinical Relevance of Near-Death Experiences in Acute Care Contexts — Michael, Pascal (2025)
- Terminal lucidity: A review and a case collection — Nahm, Michael (2012)
More in Nde
Neuro-Functional Modeling of Near-Death Experiences in Contexts of Altered States of Consciousness
AWAreness during REsuscitation - II: A Multi-Center Study of Consciousness and Awareness in Cardiac Arrest
Which Near-Death Experience Features Are Associated with Reduced Fear of Death?
Advancing the Evidence for Survival of Consciousness
The Mystical Experience and Its Neural Correlates
📋 Cite this paper
Hashemi, Amirhossein, Oroojan, Ali Akbar, Rassouli, Maryam, Ashrafizadeh, Hadis (2023). Explanation of Near-Death Experiences: A Systematic Analysis of Case Reports and Qualitative Research. Frontiers in Psychology. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2023.1048929
@article{kondziella_2023_nde_systematic_analysis,
title = {Explanation of Near-Death Experiences: A Systematic Analysis of Case Reports and Qualitative Research},
author = {Hashemi, Amirhossein and Oroojan, Ali Akbar and Rassouli, Maryam and Ashrafizadeh, Hadis},
year = {2023},
journal = {Frontiers in Psychology},
doi = {10.3389/fpsyg.2023.1048929},
}