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Near-Death Research

Dr. Raymond Moody is recognized as the father of NDE research. He has chronicled and studied many of these experiences in his books The Last Laugh, Life After Life and Reflections on Life After Life. Another early pioneer is Dr. Kenneth Ring, co-founder and past President of the International Association for Near-Death Studies (IANDS).

Major contributions to the field include the construction of a Weighted Core Experience Index (Ring, 1980) in order to measure the depth of the Near-Death experience, and the construction of the Near-Death Experience Scale (Greyson, 1983) in order to differentiate between subjects that are more or less likely to have experienced a genuine NDE. These approaches include criteria for deciding what is to be considered a classical or authentic NDE. Well-known researchers in the field who support a moderate view, or sympathize with aspects of the after-life view are Kevin Williams, Bruce Greyson, Michael Sabom, Melvin Morse, PMH Atwater, Yvonne Kason, Sam Parnia, Peter Fenwick, Jody A. Long and Jeffrey P. Long. Much of this research is co-ordinated through the field of Near-Death Studies.

Among the researchers who support a naturalistic and neurological base for the experience we find the British psychologist Susan Blackmore, and founding publisher of Skeptic magazine, Michael Shermer. The possibility of altered temporal lobe functioning in the near-death experience is suggested by Britton & Bootzin (2004). In this study Near-Death experiencers were also found to have altered sleep patterns compared to subjects in the control group. Dr. Rick Strassman has attempted to induce NDE in a clinical setting by injecting subjects with DMT. This research is described in his book DMT - The Spirit Molecule (2001).

According to Martens (1994), the only satisfying method to address the NDE-issue would be an international multicentric data collection within the framework for standardized reporting of cardiac arrest events. The use of cardiac arrest-criteria as a basis for NDE-research has been a common approach among the European branch of the research field (Parnia, Waller, Yeates & Fenwick, 2001; van Lommel, van Wees, Meyers & Elfferich, 2001).

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As an afterlife experience

Many see near death experiences as an afterlife experience, and some accounts include elements that they say are most simply explained by an out-of-body consciousness. For example, in one, a woman accurately described a surgical instrument she had not seen previously, as well as conversation that occurred while she was clinically dead. In another from the proactive Dutch NDE study[1], a nurse removed the dentures of an unconscious heart attack victim, and was asked by him after his recovery to return them.

But researchers have been unsuccessful in running proactive experiments to establish out-of-body consciousness. There have been numerous experiments in which a random message was placed in a hospital in a manner that it would be invisible to patients or staff yet visible to a floating being, and thus far, no person experiencing a near death experience has been able to reproduce the message.

Regardless of the origin of the phenomenon, the subjective experience of NDEs is well-documented, and follows certain patterns:

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  It is generally accepted that some people who reported NDEs were shown to be clinically dead, sometimes longer than a day. However, it is not shown that the experiences themselves took place in any time other than just before the clinical death, or in the process of being revived. In altered states of consciousness such as this and during dream states or under the influence of drugs, the subjective perception of time is often dilated.
  
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  Those who report NDEs typically respond by a major change of life perspective and direction, generally away from self-orientation toward outward orientation, or what they call a more loving life. The NDE is reported by some to feel "more real than life"[2]. Some former atheists have adopted a more spiritual view of life after NDEs[3] (for example Howard Storm and George Rodonaia).
  
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  Those who report NDEs typically look forward to death, but despise suicide.
  

The similarities amongst the experiences of the many documented cases may simply show that the pathology of the brain during the dying and reviving process is more or less the same in all humans, as written by Russian specialist Dr. Vladimir Negovsky in Clinical Death As Seen by Reanimator.

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As a naturalistic experience

Many see near death experiences as a purely naturalistic phenomenon.

One scientific hypothesis that attempts to explain NDEs was originally suggested by accounts of the side-effects of the drug Ketamine (see Dr. Karl Jansen). Ketamine was used as an anesthetic on U.S. soldiers during the Vietnam War; but its use was abandoned and never spread to civilian use because the soldiers complained about sensations of floating above their body and seeing bright lights. Further experiments by numerous researchers verified that intravenous injections of ketamine could reproduce all of the commonly cited features of an NDE; including a sense that the experience is "real" and that one is actually dead, separation from the body, visions of loved ones, and transcendent mystical experiences.

Ketamine acts by blocking the receptor for the neurotransmitter glutamate. Glutamate is released in abundance when brain cells die, and if it weren't blocked, the glutamate overload would cause other brain cells to die as well. In the presence of excess glutamate, the brain releases its own glutamate receptor blocker to defend itself; and it is these blockers Dr. Jansen (amongst others) hypothesize as the cause of many NDEs.

Critics of this hypothesis point out that although some aspects of the experience may be similar, not all NDEs exactly fit the ketamine experience; and that while it might be possible to chemically simulate the experience, this does not refute the possibility that spontaneous NDEs have a spiritual component. As even Dr. Jansen notes:

Claims that NDE's must have a single explanation (e.g. Ring, 1980), or that a scientific theory must explain all of the experiences ever given the name of NDE (e.g. Gabbard and Twemlow, 1989) are difficult to justify.

Swiss scientists published in 2002 in Nature[4] found that electrical stimulation on the brain region known as the right angular gyrus repeatedly caused out-of-body experiences to the patient[5].

Also see out-of-body experience in which experiences like NDE occur in epilepsy or during brain stimulation and lucid dreaming in which subjects also report experiences that seem more "real" than waking life.

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