- One in ten cardiac-arrest patients report 'near-death
experiences'. Now a large-scale study aims to find out what's going on.
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- When Jeanette Atkinson was 18 years old she was admitted
to hospital with deep-vein thrombosis and seven pulmonary embolisms (blood
clots on the lungs). At 9pm, Jeanette remembers the light changing, and
she had the sensation of floating out of her body, down the ward and past
the nurse station. The light changed again, and she found herself entering
a long black tunnel. "It was turning like a corkscrew and at the bottom
of this tunnel were these most fantastic lights, just like a child's kaleidoscope,"
she recalls. "I was going towards these lights and it was wonderful,
it was peaceful, and then all of a sudden, a voice said to me: 'Come on
you silly old cow, it's not your turn yet.' And I was back in my body.
Back in pain, with a crash team round me. I don't remember anything else
after that."
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- Jeanette had a strange but by no means unique experience.
As many as one in 10 patients who recover from cardiac-arrest report a
near-death experience (NDE), a term that came into common use in 1975 after
the American physician, Raymond Moody, published the seminal book on NDE,
Life after Life. It sold more than 13 million copies. Everyone wanted proof
of eternity, and Moody seemed to supply it. Since then, much of the excitement
has waned. People have made up their minds: either they believe NDE to
be real, or they think it's just New Age mumbo jumbo; opinions have become
entrenched. Nevertheless, serious scientific research has been going on
in the USA, the UK and Holland.
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- In the UK, Dr Sam Parnia, of Southampton University,
and Dr Peter Fenwick, a neuropsychiatrist, are about to embark on a large-scale
study that will, among other things, look at the phenomenon of out-of-body
experience (or, to use the medical parlance, "veridical perception").
They will place objects out of the line of sight of cardiac patients and
ask them to report on what they saw during their out-of-body experience.
Smaller studies have so far proved inconclusive. Dr Parnia and Dr Fenwick's
study will cover at least a dozen hospitals in the UK.
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- Many people who have an NDE have reported similar experiences:
a feeling of floating out of the body; a journey through a dark tunnel;
a light at the end of the tunnel; feelings of indescribable joy, love and
peace. Sometimes they meet a supernatural being, maybe Jesus or Buddha.
There may be a reunion with deceased relatives or friends. There is often
a review of their life. At some point on this journey, they get a strong
pull to go back, because it's not their time yet. These experiences are
fairly consistent, regardless of culture, age or religious conviction.
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- These people have all been dead, in a clinical sense
- in other words, they have no pulse, and their pupils are fixed and don't
react to strong light. Of course, they're not brain dead. There's no coming
back from brain death. So are they really dead? This has been a bone of
contention throughout the whole NDE field. Surely this is just a dream?
An hallucination caused by a brain starved of oxygen and sugar? But Dr
Parnia points to studies that have shown that during cardiac arrest and
advanced cardiac life support, global brain function ceases. EEG studies
have shown that electrical activity in the brain ceases at least 10 seconds
prior to the heart stopping, and doesn't show any activity for up to two
hours after the heart has been started again.
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- Of course, there's nothing to say that these experiences
don't happen during the recovery phase. This is one of the arguments Dr
Parnia wants to verify, by hiding his test objects in places that are only
visible from above. "The key to solving this mystery lies in the accurate
timing of the experiences," he says. "If it can be proven that
this period of consciousness has indeed taken place during cardiac arrest,
it will have huge implications."
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- But not everyone in the scientific world is prepared
to accept that the mind and the brain might be separate entities. After
a near-death experience of her own, Dr Susan Blackmore began studying the
phenomenon, but the more she examined NDE, the less convinced she became
of a transcendental explanation for it.
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- Meanwhile, the researchers Stanislav Grof and Joan Halifax
have claimed that NDEs are simply the patient reliving their birth experience.
Bright light at the end of the tunnel - the opening of the womb. An ineffable
being suffused in white light - the midwife. Others have claimed that the
experiences are mere hallucination. But why would everyone share the same
hallucination on their deathbed?
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- As Moody says in Life after Life: "[People] will
regard their own orientations as sources of explanations that are intuitively
obvious, even when cases are brought up that seem to weigh against that
particular explanation. Those who espouse the theories of Freud delight
in seeing the being of light as a projection of the subject's father, while
Jungians see archetypes of the collective unconsciousness, and so on."
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- But Dr Blackmore has examined all the arguments and believes
she knows what causes these NDE visions. Firstly, the light at the end
of the tunnel is simply "noise" in the visual cortex. It is often
experienced by epileptics, migraine sufferers and those who meditate. It
is not unique to NDE. The out-of-body experience? Well, if you think about
the last time you walked along a beach, for example, where do you see yourself?
Probably not through your eyes, but from a vantage point above or to the
side of you. Most people have a bird's-eye view of themselves when remembering
past events. What Blackmore found in her own studies is that people who
dream from a bird's-eye perspective are more likely to have out-of-body
experiences.
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- The American cardiologist Michael Sebom, said that some
of his patients reported the exact behaviour of needles on monitoring apparatus,
even though their eyes had been shut and they had been unconscious. But
Dr Blackmore reminds us that the last sense to be lost is our hearing.
Isn't it possible that these cardiac-arrest survivors are remembering conversations
between medical staff? If Dr Parnia's study shows results, this is exactly
the sort of thing that could be ruled out. An unconscious patient, even
with their hearing still functioning, couldn't know that there is a red
triangle taped to the top of a medical cabinet.
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- As for the survivors' lives flashing in front of their
eyes, Dr Blackmore says that people who suffer from temporal lobe epilepsy
have similar experiences. In fact, "life reviews" have been artificially
induced in subjects by stimulating their temporal lobes. And the feel-good
factor could simply be a release of endogenous endorphins into the brain
during the trauma.
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- However, Dr Parnia says that these are only theories.
Whether these experiences are transcendental, psychological or physiological
is still open to debate. What is certain, however, is that NDEs are life-
changing. "I don't fear death any more," says Jeanette. "For
me, death is a progression of life. You go on to somewhere better."
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- "My first near-death experience was more real than
ordinary life," says Dr Blackmore. "You feel as though you've
woken up for the first time and that this is real and ordinary life isn't.
But good science will explain those experiences to people and help them
to value them, without making false leaps into paranormal belief."
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- So Dr Parnia and Dr Fenwick may never prove that the
mind is separate from the brain, but even if they don't, their study could
provide other benefits: "We may also be able to discover the biochemical
pathways that convey the sense of joy that accompanies NDEs, and in so
doing harness their power to treat patients with severe depression,"
says Dr Parnia.
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- © 2004 Independent Digital (UK) Ltd
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- http://news.independent.co.uk/uk/health/story.jsp?story=499073
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