AWAreness during REsuscitation - II: A Multi-Center Study of Consciousness and Awareness in Cardiac Arrest
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Plain English Summary
This is the biggest study ever to monitor what happens in people's brains during cardiac arrest — when the heart stops and you're technically dying. Researchers wired up patients at 25 hospitals with brain-wave monitors and even placed hidden visual targets near the ceiling to test whether out-of-body experiences are real. The results are a fascinating mixed bag. Nearly 40% of survivors who were interviewed reported some form of awareness — from dreamlike states to profound 'experiences of death.' Here's the jaw-dropping part: even after severe oxygen deprivation, normal brain activity patterns linked to consciousness popped up 35 to 60 minutes into CPR, way longer than anyone expected a dying brain to keep working. However, nobody spotted those hidden ceiling targets, and almost none of the people reporting rich experiences happened to have usable brain data recorded. COVID-19 cut the study short, leaving tantalizing but incomplete evidence that consciousness during cardiac arrest is more common — and more mysterious — than we thought.
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Related Papers
Cites
- Near-Death Experience in Survivors of Cardiac Arrest: A Prospective Study in the Netherlands — van Lommel, Pim. (2001)
- Incidence and Correlates of Near-Death Experiences in a Cardiac Care Unit — Greyson, Bruce. (2003)
- The Near-Death Experience Scale: Construction, Reliability, and Validity — Greyson, Bruce. (1983)
- Surge of neurophysiological coherence and connectivity in the dying brain — Borjigin, Jimo. (2013)
Companion
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📋 Cite this paper
Parnia, Sam., Keshavarz Shirazi, Tara., Patel, Jignesh., Tran, Linh., Sinha, Niraj., O'Neill, Caitlin., Roellke, Emma., Mengotto, Amanda., Findlay, Shannon., McBrine, Michael., Spiegel, Rebecca., Tarpey, Thaddeus., Huppert, Elise., Jaffe, Ian., Gonzales, Anelly M., Xu, Jing., Koopman, Emmeline., Perkins, Gavin D., Vuylsteke, Alain., Bloom, Benjamin M., Jarman, Heather., Tong, Hiu Nam., Chan, Louisa., Lyaker, Michael., Thomas, Matthew., Velchev, Veselin., Cairns, Charles B., Sharma, Rahul., Kulstad, Erik., Scherer, Elizabeth., O'Keeffe, Terence., Foroozesh, Mahtab., Abe, Olumayowa., Ogedegbe, Chinwe., Girgis, Amira., Pradhan, Deepak., Deakin, Charles D. (2023). AWAreness during REsuscitation - II: A Multi-Center Study of Consciousness and Awareness in Cardiac Arrest. Resuscitation. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.resuscitation.2023.109903
@article{parnia_2023_aware_ii,
title = {AWAreness during REsuscitation - II: A Multi-Center Study of Consciousness and Awareness in Cardiac Arrest},
author = {Parnia, Sam. and Keshavarz Shirazi, Tara. and Patel, Jignesh. and Tran, Linh. and Sinha, Niraj. and O'Neill, Caitlin. and Roellke, Emma. and Mengotto, Amanda. and Findlay, Shannon. and McBrine, Michael. and Spiegel, Rebecca. and Tarpey, Thaddeus. and Huppert, Elise. and Jaffe, Ian. and Gonzales, Anelly M. and Xu, Jing. and Koopman, Emmeline. and Perkins, Gavin D. and Vuylsteke, Alain. and Bloom, Benjamin M. and Jarman, Heather. and Tong, Hiu Nam. and Chan, Louisa. and Lyaker, Michael. and Thomas, Matthew. and Velchev, Veselin. and Cairns, Charles B. and Sharma, Rahul. and Kulstad, Erik. and Scherer, Elizabeth. and O'Keeffe, Terence. and Foroozesh, Mahtab. and Abe, Olumayowa. and Ogedegbe, Chinwe. and Girgis, Amira. and Pradhan, Deepak. and Deakin, Charles D.},
year = {2023},
journal = {Resuscitation},
doi = {10.1016/j.resuscitation.2023.109903},
}