Amazing sotry of near-death experience

dont think you understood me Knives....

already know and accept perception can be altered with the use of drugs....(amongst many other things)

dont believe in god or afterlife rubbish....

Did you have a look at the link to the study that the University of Southampton researchers did?

How can anyone perceive anything if there is zero brain activity? Is there residue or something?

In the Southampton study none of the four patients who had near-death experiences had low levels of oxygen or received any unusual combination of drugs during their resuscitation.
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The patients brought back to life were all, for varying lengths of time, clinically dead with no pulse, no respiration and fixed dilated pupils.
Independent EEG studies have confirmed that the brain's electrical activity, and hence brain function, ceases at that time
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All this is just window-dressing anyway... regardless of whether it is JUST hallucinatory. Why would the brain do this? Whats the logical (or evolutionary) reason for it? the last command by the brain to ease the dying process?
 
Surfer said:
How can anyone perceive anything if there is zero brain activity? Is there residue or something?
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Who says it happens then? More likely it happens before then or after then.

And i thought once you where brain dead that was it no coming back? thought it was only heart/lungs/certain organs they could start up?

when was that link posted?
 
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Tefal said:
The how will tell you why if we delve into enough detail as it would tell you what chemicals where released what neurons fired and this (with enough knowledges and experimental data) would tell you roughly what a person would experience,
unfortunately its very hard to monitor this stuff without permenatly implanting things into your brain and then inducing varying circumstances, and possibly even doing something simmalar to the experiments on photosynthesis and dunking your brain in hot methanol, t stop reactions at varying points to monitor levels of chemicals.

What your asking is for science to explain human thoughts, which is incredibly complicated thing to do. (and damn near impossible without horrific and prolonged experiments)
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I agree with this. I'm sure theres been studies recently where scientists did manage to induce similar sort of OBE experiences to subjects by activating certain parts of the brain. There was a study recently where they could tell what the subject was thinking depending on what area of their brain was active when they were responding to questions

So yep in the future this field should become more fact rather than "science-fiction"



It could be because once your brain stops being told it has a body it tries to think of an answer, and it may be that the best one it can think off is it's not in the body any more. some people may just feel disconnected some may be able to look around the room (or at least hallucinate it/dream it) depending on what happens in their brain.
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If that were true and its just vivid structured hallucinations then it has no basis in reality yeah? So how come some people who have an OBE are able to leave the room their body is in, listen to people talking (and accurately report back on it when they are awake again), accurately report location of objects that are not in visual sight of their body etc.

Basically they have access to knowledge and information that is not physically possible. But this is a scientific field in its infancy so i guess we might have to wait a while for definitive answers..
 
Tefal said:
Who says it happens then? More likely it happens before then or after then.

And i thought once you where brain dead that was it no coming back? thought it was only heart/lungs/certain organs they could start up?

when was that link posted?
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Who says what happens? Yeah maybe the experience was "initiated" by the brain but how are they still aware and experiencing events if the brain is by all current measurements -non-functioning- Possibly the brain is still functioning but at a level too low to be determined??

For brain-death yeah there is no coming back but i think that it depends for how long the brain is starved of oxygen. The longer it is deprived the more brain damage there will be and the harder it will be for the patient to be revived, i guess. Not sure on the exact length of time it takes for final brain death, minutes, an hour? Can the brain still be processing information an hour after patient is declared brain-dead?
 
Surfer said:
are all english football supporters hooligans?

are all muslims terrorists? :p

uhmm btw no scientific theory is ever -proven- you should know that :p
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indeed i was going to point that out to knives bout it being a dodgy phrase but couldn't be bothered.

Also magick seams to believe in every conspiracy theory going, and with each one looses credibility.

So when he's on someone side of the argument it is kind of like trying to discus the teachings of Islam with an imam, with Abu hamza next to him screaming at you and calling you an infidel, or having tea wit the vicar and one of those westboro baptist people yelling and calling you a fag.

Just kind of makes it hard to take you seriusly.
 
Here's a few more things to consider.

It was found that out of body experiences could be triggered to a certain extent by electrodes place of the brain or by electromagnetism, though im unsure of the level of the experience but from memory it was just the feeling of the body being elsewhere.

Drugs may just be triggering it to varying degrees while also giving associated chaotic neurone firing and other effects they have as a side effect.

Your body is essentially new after about 7+ years and your energy intake changes daily yet strangely that thing that makes you you, your consciousness stays the same even while all those changes are going on and all other ones as well like new sensory information being inputted and processed etc.

Now I don't believe anything for sure without some evidence but if certain things do make sense based on what is known then I might be more open to it or even go with it until something better comes along and as this thread is based on less science and more philosophy its pointless to claim anything as fact and also to put down others just because you don't agree, that's never been acceptable anyway so keep it reasonable yeah? :)
 
Abu hamza next to him screaming at you and calling you an infidel, or having tea wit the vicar and one of those westboro baptist people yelling and calling you a fag.
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Haha! that would make a great comedy sketch :D

read this info on a dutch study on NDEs

. In those circumstances, the EEG (a measure of brain electrical activity) becomes flat, and if CPR is not started within 5-10 minutes, irreparable damage is done to the brain and the patient will die.
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Weirdly enough.... only 18% of patients experienced NDEs All of em had similar cardiac arrest conditions so why dont they all experience an NDE....hrmmm

http://www.mikepettigrew.com/afterlife/html/dutch_study.html

aint busy at work today as you can see :D
 
yet strangely that thing that makes you you, your consciousness stays the same even while all those changes are going on and all other ones as well like new sensory information being inputted and processed etc.
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How would you know if you were different?

Say awareness has property X and if all awareness neurons are of same property x then even if you replaced human brain matter with similar artificial matter but yet it manages to duplicate the same exact function of organic matter then how would you know any difference?

e.g.

What if you woke up after an operation (tonsilitis). Felt fine...sore throat but meh. And then the consultant comes over to you plops a big jar on the table with a dark spongy mass inside and tells you that there was serious problems with your op "thats your brain bud" You were brain dead for 30 minutes so they had to remove parts of your brain and replace with highly advanced artifical cells that performed the same function as your organic brain.
 
The current conclusion i get is that there's likely more to consciousness than just the brain.

edit: also until such artificial replacement is used the user won't know so it would be speculation anyway.
 
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can i get a theoretical physicist in here to talk about multi-dimensional reality? :)

(or basically what their opinion is on the nature of reality)

might be possible to split this into two sides

1. Consciousness is not a mere malleable property of the brain. It is much more fundamental than that. It "inheres" in appropriate forms of matter determinable to the level or development of consciousness that the "being" is currently existing at.

2. The truth of reality is in the objective world not in subjective consciousness. Given how easy it is to induce hallucinatory experiences (that seem Real) using objective scientific tools. This shows that "it is all in your mind".

If the tools of science can make and shape what kind of conscious experience you have - does this not debunk no.1


I mean ive seen studies where in one case experiment they induced OBE like symptoms in a participant where the participant felt that someone an "entity" was close by to them and the particpant felt strongly connected to this "entity"

Now as soon as the researchers stopped stimulating the part of the brain that was producing these experiences in the participant...the "entity" faded away from the view of the particpant and they no longer felt connected to them. (they felt a great loss at the "entity" leaving).

Conclusions from that:

Is the brain a conduit/conductor/pathway for other-dimensional experiences? :eek:

Is this a mere hallucinatory experience? (based on the particpant's own memories and psychology)


The question is: does the manipulation and stimulation of certain parts of the brain *create and determine* the experience or does it merely *open a door* ?

The ramifications of such studies could honestly be mind-boggling...and could involve a paradigm-shift to how we approach thinking about what we are and our relationship with reality.
 
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I sort of think I know what you're saying, but then I confuse myself. There seems to be a paradox in what you are saying.

Surfer said:
1. Consciousness is not a mere malleable property of the brain. It is much more fundamental than that. It "inheres" in appropriate forms of matter determinable to the level or development of consciousness that the "being" is currently existing at.
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So everything has 'consciousness', including the brain, body and mind...?

Surfer said:
2. The truth of reality is in the objective world not in subjective consciousness. Given how easy it is to induce hallucinatory experiences (that seem Real) using objective scientific tools. This shows that "it is all in your mind".
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How can the world I percieve be anything other than subjective? And what's an objective scientific tool exactly?
 
Nice thread revival.

On a related note, OcUK is a hotbed for closed-minded attitudes. Just need to take a look at this thread to see that. Such a shame really, with all these 'educated' people around.
 
magick said:
Sorry but the nutjobs are the people that think the universe and all the life in it is just an accident and random event.
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It may not be an accident but that doesnt mean people go tripping on dark energy from the deep vortex's of the space overlord kingdom.
 
Gackt said:
Nice thread revival.

On a related note, OcUK is a hotbed for closed-minded attitudes. Just need to take a look at this thread to see that. Such a shame really, with all these 'educated' people around.
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Don't think closed-minded is right, logical maybe. On a computer forum you'd expect most people to be logical and analytical.
 
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