Near Death Experiences: The Only Thing Missing Is "Death"

More fun from Unbelievable...

The good folks at Unbelievable from Premier Christian Radio in the UK had an interesting episode Saturday the 6th of December. The topic was Near Death Experiences (NDE). The True Believers were represented by Eben Alexander, a physician who recovered from a grievous illness with an interesting story, and Graham Nicholls, who claims to be able to have Out of Body Experiences (OBE) at will, complete with veridical accounts no less. Defending the scientific view was neuroscientist Dr. Jane Aspell, PhD, MBPsS (Dr. Steven Novella of Neurologica blog and The Skeptics Guide to the Universe, was originally slated to participate but did not). Host Justin Brierly was evenhanded, even favoring the science side of things, perhaps because his evangelical outlook is cautious of non-biblical mystical experiences. These are my comments on the show sent to Justin via email and posted under the show notes:

When it comes to the Near Death Experience (NDE) the first and most important thing to remember is that they don’t involve death. The brain is not dead. It may be poorly oxygenated and operating well below normal levels, but the reason there are reports of NDEs is because the resuscitation effort was both continuous and effective. When does the brain stop perceiving stimuli and stop laying down memories? We don’t know for sure, but the brain doesn’t quit the moment we close our eyes and remain dormant until the moment we open them again. As in dreams, we have no reason to believe “reality testing” and our sense of elapsed time are accurate while in a coma. The more we learn about the limitations of eyewitness testimony the more we realize that memory is a highly mutable thing. If the ability to lay out events accurately and in their proper sequence is challenging in a waking state, imagine how the brain might conflate images, memories, wishes, and stimuli while its body fights for its life. 

Apart from 20th century quantum mumbo jumbo, the allegedly new pseudoscience of non-local consciousness is essentially a rehash of ancient theological, philosophical, and pre-scientific intuitions regarding the body, soul, spirit, life, death, the cosmos, and the nature of reality. Except for the minority of those whose NDE takes them on a visit to hell, the beatific visions frequently share some common features, but are also wildly divergent in the fine details. As with mystical religious experiences, newly minted true believers promptly cleave to their holy books and discard their former commitments to science, logic, and critical thinking. Among the first things a new pseudoscientist does (other than to write a book) is ask that long accepted standards of evidence be relaxed. There is no such thing as “materialist science,” there is only science. There is of course rigorous science and poorly done science. Most studies of NDE and OBE necessarily take the form of phenomenology - evaluating reports of subjective experience - which is not science in the way we normally think of it. Randomized, placebo-controlled, blinded studies that can be duplicated remain the Gold Standard of scientific evidence. True Believers would insist on it if it supported their case, until then they will rely on special pleading. 

Spiritualists, mind readers, and faith healers are notorious for the number of hucksters in their ranks. Then there are the credulous wishful thinkers who no longer recognize their confirmation bias. As for those who claim veridical experience, there is precious little evidence for it and none of it is good. While we can all agree that creating NDEs in the lab is unethical, those who claim the ability to have OBEs at will (like Graham Nicholls) ought to be able to prove their claims, using criteria established in advance. That hasn’t happened, even though there’s a million dollar prize on offer for anyone who could actually do it. The few names - Greyson, Parnia, Sartori, Van Lommel - repeated over and over by Alexander and Nicholls are just about all the big names in this pseudoscientific parapsychological field. Alexander touts four books (two of them his; buy them for the details), but the overlapping fields of neurology, psychology, psychiatry, cognitive science, neuro-imaging, etc. publish thousands of papers and hundreds of books each year. 

NDE and OBE effects can be duplicated by stimulation of the temporal lobes, hallucinogens, meditation, breath control, hypoxia, brain injury, certain forms of epilepsy, extreme emotion, virtual reality machinery, and other stressors. As with other mystical experiences, several of which have given rise to whole religions, there is no reason to believe these events occur anywhere but within our embodied brains.

UPDATE: Dr. Novella did debate Dr. Alexander earlier this year.

ANOTHER UPDATE: In the immortal words of John Candy in Splash "They published my letter!"  Justin read about half of my email during the comments sections the following week.

When it comes to the Near Death Experience (NDE) the first and most important thing to remember is that they don’t involve death. The brain is not dead. It may be poorly oxygenated and operating well below normal levels, but the reason there are reports of NDEs is because the resuscitation effort was both continuous and effective. When does the brain stop perceiving stimuli and stop laying down memories? We don’t know for sure, but the brain doesn’t quit the moment we close our eyes and remain dormant until the moment we open them again. As in dreams, we have no reason to believe “reality testing” and our sense of elapsed time are accurate while in a coma. The more we learn about the limitations of eyewitness testimony the more we realize that memory is a highly mutable thing. If the ability to lay out events accurately and in their proper sequence is challenging in a waking state, imagine how the brain might conflate images, memories, wishes, and stimuli while its body fights for its life.  

Apart from 20th century quantum mumbo jumbo, the allegedly new pseudoscience of non-local consciousness is essentially a rehash of ancient theological, philosophical, and pre-scientific intuitions regarding the body, soul, spirit, life, death, the cosmos, and the nature of reality.  

NDE and OBE effects can be duplicated by stimulation of the temporal lobes, hallucinogens, meditation, breath control, hypoxia, brain injury, certain forms of epilepsy, extreme emotion, virtual reality machinery, and other stressors. As with other mystical experiences, several of which have given rise to whole religions, there is no reason to believe these events occur anywhere but within our embodied brains. 

Image credit: Ascent of the Blessed by Hieronymus Bosch