S
SpiritWalker
Guest
Science Looks Through Death's Door
No Easy Explanation of Near-Death Experiences
By Daniel DeNoon
Dec. 13, 2001 -- They know they are dead, but feel at peace. They float outside their bodies. They fly through a tunnel. They communicate with beings of light, or with dead people. And then ... they come back.
They are ordinary people from all places, culture, and times. Their stories are similar. What they describe is called a near-death experience (NDE). What can we learn from them? A Dutch research team is the latest to try to find out. They report their findings in the Dec. 15 issue of The Lancet. Study leader Pim van Lommel, MD, is a cardiologist at Rijnstate Hospital in Arnhem, Netherlands.
"The long-lasting transformational effects of an experience that lasts for only a few minutes of cardiac arrest is a surprising and unexpected finding," write van Lommel and co-workers. "ociety's negative response to NDE ... leads individuals to deny or suppress their experience for fear of rejection or ridicule. Thus social conditioning causes NDE to be traumatic, although in itself it is not a psychotraumatic experience. ... Only gradually and with difficulty is an NDE accepted and integrated."
The researchers studied 344 patients who were revived after their hearts stopped beating. All of the patients had been clinically dead. As soon as the patients were well enough to talk, they agreed to an interview with van Lommel's team. Two and eight years later, the researchers again interviewed surviving patients.
Nearly one in five patients reported an NDE. It was a profound experience for 41 of the 62 patients reporting an NDE. What was it like?
More than half of the patients said the NDE was a positive experience.
Half said they were aware of being dead.
About one in four had an out-of-body experience.
Nearly one in three said they met with deceased persons. More than one in five said they communicated with light.
Nearly a third reported moving through a tunnel.
More than one in 10 said they reviewed their lives.
More than one in four said they saw a celestial landscape.
A nurse said that one patient was in a coma when she removed his dentures so that he could be intubated. Later, she said, the patient identified her as the person who knew where to find his dentures, and he accurately described their placement in the drawer of a medical cart.
Two and eight years later, surviving patients who agreed to be interviewed were able to recall their experience in great detail. More so than similar patients who did not have an NDE, they tended to believe in an afterlife and had less fear of death. They also were more interested in the meaning of life and in showing love and acceptance to others.
However, getting through their hospital experience was much more complicated for patients who had an NDE. For them, positive changes were more obvious after eight years than they were after two years.
The researchers could not find any medical reason why some patients had an NDE and others did not. Neither length of time spent near death nor severity of their crisis was linked to having an NDE.
Considering their findings in light of previous studies of NDE, van Lommel and colleagues suggest that there is no way to explain NDE based on current understanding of how the brain works.
"NDE pushes the limits of medical ideas about the range of human consciousness and the mind-brain relation," they write.
However, an editorial in the same issue of The Lancet suggests that many patients who report NDEs may have false memories. Author Christopher C. French is a member of the Anomalistic Psychology Research Unit at the University of London.
"Recent psychological studies have shown conclusively that simply imagining that one has had experiences that had in fact never been encountered will lead to the development of false memories for those experiences," French writes.
French suggests that this may come about through patients' natural tendency to try to fill in gaps in their memory caused by their brush with death. Despite his skepticism, he praises the van Lommel team's approach to studying NDE.
No Easy Explanation of Near-Death Experiences
By Daniel DeNoon
Dec. 13, 2001 -- They know they are dead, but feel at peace. They float outside their bodies. They fly through a tunnel. They communicate with beings of light, or with dead people. And then ... they come back.
They are ordinary people from all places, culture, and times. Their stories are similar. What they describe is called a near-death experience (NDE). What can we learn from them? A Dutch research team is the latest to try to find out. They report their findings in the Dec. 15 issue of The Lancet. Study leader Pim van Lommel, MD, is a cardiologist at Rijnstate Hospital in Arnhem, Netherlands.
"The long-lasting transformational effects of an experience that lasts for only a few minutes of cardiac arrest is a surprising and unexpected finding," write van Lommel and co-workers. "
The researchers studied 344 patients who were revived after their hearts stopped beating. All of the patients had been clinically dead. As soon as the patients were well enough to talk, they agreed to an interview with van Lommel's team. Two and eight years later, the researchers again interviewed surviving patients.
Nearly one in five patients reported an NDE. It was a profound experience for 41 of the 62 patients reporting an NDE. What was it like?
More than half of the patients said the NDE was a positive experience.
Half said they were aware of being dead.
About one in four had an out-of-body experience.
Nearly one in three said they met with deceased persons. More than one in five said they communicated with light.
Nearly a third reported moving through a tunnel.
More than one in 10 said they reviewed their lives.
More than one in four said they saw a celestial landscape.
A nurse said that one patient was in a coma when she removed his dentures so that he could be intubated. Later, she said, the patient identified her as the person who knew where to find his dentures, and he accurately described their placement in the drawer of a medical cart.
Two and eight years later, surviving patients who agreed to be interviewed were able to recall their experience in great detail. More so than similar patients who did not have an NDE, they tended to believe in an afterlife and had less fear of death. They also were more interested in the meaning of life and in showing love and acceptance to others.
However, getting through their hospital experience was much more complicated for patients who had an NDE. For them, positive changes were more obvious after eight years than they were after two years.
The researchers could not find any medical reason why some patients had an NDE and others did not. Neither length of time spent near death nor severity of their crisis was linked to having an NDE.
Considering their findings in light of previous studies of NDE, van Lommel and colleagues suggest that there is no way to explain NDE based on current understanding of how the brain works.
"NDE pushes the limits of medical ideas about the range of human consciousness and the mind-brain relation," they write.
However, an editorial in the same issue of The Lancet suggests that many patients who report NDEs may have false memories. Author Christopher C. French is a member of the Anomalistic Psychology Research Unit at the University of London.
"Recent psychological studies have shown conclusively that simply imagining that one has had experiences that had in fact never been encountered will lead to the development of false memories for those experiences," French writes.
French suggests that this may come about through patients' natural tendency to try to fill in gaps in their memory caused by their brush with death. Despite his skepticism, he praises the van Lommel team's approach to studying NDE.
