Neuro-Functional Modeling of Near-Death Experiences in Contexts of Altered States of Consciousness
📄 Original study ↗📌 Appears in:
Plain English Summary
Ever wonder if near-death experiences are a glimpse of the afterlife or just your brain doing weird things under extreme stress? This paper makes a strong case for the brain-based explanation. The authors pulled together evidence from a fascinating range of sources: people on ketamine and DMT, patients having seizures or undergoing brain stimulation, and -- here's the showstopper -- roughly 1,000 episodes of fighter pilots blacking out from intense G-forces over 16 years. When they compared the themes people report during NDEs (tunnels of light, out-of-body sensations, life reviews) with what happens in these experimentally triggered altered states, there was huge overlap. They even pinpointed out-of-body feelings to a specific brain region called the temporo-parietal junction, where the brain stitches together your sense of where your body is in space. The takeaway: NDEs look a lot like hallucinations produced by brains under duress, not evidence of an afterlife.
Research Notes
Comprehensive neuroscientific case for NDEs as brain-based phenomena. Uniquely integrates fighter pilot G-LOC data (~1,000 episodes) with standard neurofunctional evidence. Represents the neurological/mechanistic perspective in the NDE survival debate (controversy #7 Con side). Note: catalog ID misattributes authorship — actual authors are Romand & Ehret (2023), not Palmieri et al. (2022).
Neuro-functional models of near-death experiences (NDEs) are evaluated to determine whether NDEs can be explained as brain-based phenomena occurring during altered states of consciousness (ASCs). Evidence is drawn from drug effects (ketamine, DMT), epileptic seizures, electrical brain stimulation, anesthetic awareness, and ischemic stress, including ~1,000 fighter pilot G-LOC episodes recorded across 16 years. A large overlap was found between NDE themes from original reports and those induced experimentally. Out-of-body experiences can be localized to the temporo-parietal junction (TPJ). The models collectively suggest NDEs emerge as hallucination-like phenomena from brains in ASCs.
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Related Papers
Cites
- The Near-Death Experience Scale: Construction, Reliability, and Validity — Greyson, Bruce (1983)
- AWARE--AWAreness during REsuscitation--A prospective study — Parnia, Sam (2014)
- DMT Models the Near-Death Experience — Timmermann, Christopher (2018)
- "Reality" of near-death-experience memories: evidence from a psychodynamic and electrophysiological integrated study — Palmieri, Arianna (2014)
- Characteristics of Near-Death Experiences Memories as Compared to Real and Imagined Events Memories — Thonnard, Marie (2013)
- Qualitative thematic analysis of the phenomenology of near-death experiences — Cassol, Helena (2018)
- Temporality of Features in Near-Death Experience Narratives — Martial, Charlotte (2017)
- Near-Death Experiences in Non-Life-Threatening Events and Coma of Different Etiologies — Charland-Verville, V (2014)
Companion
- Epistemological Implications of Near-Death Experiences and Other Non-Ordinary Mental Expressions: Moving Beyond the Concept of Altered State of Consciousness — Facco, Enrico (2015)
- Near death experiences: a multidisciplinary hypothesis — Bókkon, István (2013)
- Explanation of Near-Death Experiences: A Systematic Analysis of Case Reports and Qualitative Research — Hashemi, Amirhossein (2023)
- Non-local Consciousness: A Concept Based on Scientific Research on Near-Death Experiences During Cardiac Arrest — van Lommel, Pim (2013)
- There Is Nothing Paranormal about Near-Death Experiences: How Neuroscience Can Explain Seeing Bright Lights, Meeting the Dead, or Being Convinced You Are One of Them — Mobbs, Dean (2011)
- The Mystical Experience and Its Neural Correlates — Woollacott, Marjorie (2020)
More in Nde
The Central Clinical Relevance of Near-Death Experiences in Acute Care Contexts
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 Near-Death Experience Content (NDE-C) scale: Development and psychometric validation
📋 Cite this paper
Romand, Raymond, Ehret, Günter (2023). Neuro-Functional Modeling of Near-Death Experiences in Contexts of Altered States of Consciousness. Frontiers in Psychology. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2022.846159
@article{palmieri_2022_neurofunctional_nde,
title = {Neuro-Functional Modeling of Near-Death Experiences in Contexts of Altered States of Consciousness},
author = {Romand, Raymond and Ehret, Günter},
year = {2023},
journal = {Frontiers in Psychology},
doi = {10.3389/fpsyg.2022.846159},
}