Lately more than a few major media outlets such as the BBC have been publishing articles surrounding the discussion of scientists who have apparently come to the newly arrived conclusion that ‘Vivid experiences in near death survivors may happen due to a surge of electrical activity in the brain.’
This was on the basis of a study they conducted in dying rats at the university of Michigan. As quoted from the lead author of the study Dr Jimo Borjigin ”A lot of people thought the brain after clinical death was inactive or hypoactive, with less activity than the waking state, and we show that is definitely not the case.”
The reason as to why the media has blown this out of proportion is inconceivable to me, as anyone who has a specific interest in this area and has done a little research will know that studies of a similar nature have been carried out since the early 1980’s by those such as Michael Persinger the developer of the ‘Koren Helmet’ who claims that all major functions of Near Death Experiences can be simulated by Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation of the Temporal Lobes. Persinger’s work is based on the premise that abnormal activity in the temporal lobe may trigger a Near Death Experience.
As quoted from an article from nature world news: ‘What this says Borjigin concludes, is that a lack of oxygen or oxygen as well as glucose can stimulate brain activity similar to that experienced in a conscious brain and, going forward, could offer a framework for those near death experiences reported by so many.’
Other sceptics on the nature of Near Death Experiences or proponents that state these experiences are all as a result of brain activity have arrived at very similar conclusions in the past. Dr Susan Blackmore, whom is a psychologist and physiologist propounded the ”dying brain” hypothesis: that a lack of oxygen (or anoxia) during the dying process might induce abnormal firing of neurons in brain areas responsible for vision, and that such an abnormal firing would lead to the illusion of seeing a bright light at the end of a dark tunnel.
This study was surrounding the Near Death Experiences of those who have had Cardiac Arrest and have been declared ‘clinically dead’ focusing on the main aspects of a Near Death Experience such as seeing a tunnel with a bright light at the end. The experiment is described here in this excerpt from i09:
To investigate the possible neurophysiological basis for near death experiences, Borjigin, Wang and their colleagues decided to take EEG (electroencephalogram) readings of nine rats while they were awake, under anesthesia and undergoing cardiac arrest. They looked particularly at gamma oscillations, or gamma waves. Neurons in the brain oscillate or fire at different frequencies, with these frequency bands correlating to different types of brain waves (delta, theta, alpha, beta and gamma).
The team found several signs of conscious activity in all nine of the dying rats’ brains. First off, within the first 30 seconds after cardiac arrest, there was a sharp increase in gamma frequency power. But it wasn’t just random firing — neurons across the brain fired synchronously. Previous research has suggested that this “gamma coherence” underlies conscious perception, such as when you focus all your attention on understanding something.
The researchers found that dying rats showed an eight-fold increase in top-down processes and five-fold increase in bottom-up processes following cardiac arrest. Borjigin suggests that anything the rats experienced during this time would likely have seemed “hyper-real.” Interestingly, patients have described near death experiences as being “realer than real.”
For anyone who has done research on various studies by those who look into Near Death Experiences and has seen their hypothesis, they would know that others have arrived at more or less the same conclusion that cardiac arrest or a flat EEG where a patient has been ‘verified’ as clinically dead doesn’t necessarily mean brain death. As Michael Persinger said on Alex Tsarkiris’s website, Skeptiko when he was asked by Alex as to how can there be a continuation of consciousness when there is no EEG or EKG for a number of patients that have been verified as clinically dead in a hospital. Persinger replied to this with the following:
”The electroencephalogram or brain waves simply measures a very, very small component. It’s in the microvolt range. It’s about a thousandth times smaller than the actual steady state potential of the brain itself which can last for several minutes to half an hour under sort of deprived conditions. The EEG also reflects only the cortex. It doesn’t tell you very much at all what’s going on deep within the cortex. So when you have these near-death experiences and flat EEG’s, that just tells you what the cortex is doing. It doesn’t tell you necessarily the integrity or the activity taking place deep within the brain.”
Persinger also said this: ”Information is being stored deep within the brain. It’s not in the cortex at all and you can’t even see it from an EEG. For example, the areas of the brain we call the hippocampus that store memory, you can’t even see the activity from a EEG. You have to actually put electrodes deep into the brain in order to see that activity.” The main point Persinger was trying to emphasise is quoted here: ”There’s a common misconception that a flat EEG means no brain activity. In actual fact, it simply tells you a kind of activity is no longer common.”
Going back Borjigin who said ”People thought that the brain after clinical death was inactive or hypoactive, with less activity than the waking state, and we show that is definitely not the case.” – This may well be a common misconception but that doesn’t mean that no one has arrived at a similar or more or less the same conclusion in the past. The data was produced by electroencephalograms of the nine rats which revealed a ”highly organised” brain response in the seconds after cardiac arrest – The whole notion of the brain still being active during cardiac arrest or when an EEG is flat and Near Death Experiences being a result of a lack of oxygen thus causing a firing of neurons at certain areas of the brain apparently causing hallucinations which lead to what individuals perceive as ‘Near Death Experiences’ in reality has been concluded by various Neurotheologists, Neuroscientists and Psychologists with the likes of those such as Dr Michael Persinger or Dr Susan Blackmore for years and as to why Borjigin’s study has been so blown out of proportion when evidently this has all been said before is nothing shorter than strange in my opinion.
In regards to relating the ‘consciousness’ of rats to that of human beings, this has naturally attracted some scepticism such as in this excerpt of Neurologist Nicholas Schniff:
‘Schiff find the study “very interesting” and novel, but is very skeptical about any near-death interpretations.
“There’s no intrinsic reason to believe that these rats are in some heightened state of awareness,” he said. He believes the spike in activity is simply a shock to the system response by the brain cells to a major change in physiology.’ Another Physician Dr Sam Parnia said: “I don’t think that this particular study helps in any way to explain near-death experiences in human beings. We have found no evidence at all that the rats had any near-death experiences or whether animals can have any such type of experience, first of all and other studies in dying humans and dogs have found no brain wave activity that was parallel to what the researchers found in the new study.” Parnia said that after oxygen flow to the brain stops, calcium floods brain cells as they die, and that, rather than consciousness, could explain the electrical activity the researchers saw.
So in retrospect this certainly isn’t any new discovery and what Borjigin said here: “A lot of people believed that what they saw was heaven, science hasn’t given them a convincing alternative” is just plain wrong. Her study very much correlated with that of the likes of Dr Michael Persinger and Dr Susan Blackmore’s work which as I stated previously goes back to research which started in the early 1980’s. This is not a newly discovered hypothesis which offers an explanation for the cause of Near Death Experiences, on the contrary it’s merely a correlation of previous studies on the Near Death Experience Phenomenon in the field of neurotheology and neuroscience, and in reality doesn’t shed any more light on the subject than previous studies which have arrived at similar conclusions in the past. For the hardcore rationalist sceptics this will give them a stronger ground to nail their beliefs into the surface even further. For the open minded sceptic such as myself, who believes in the possibility of many Near Death Experiences being attributed to a paranormal explanation, I would be lying if I said I was wholly impressed.
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