Five years ago, last Sunday evening, I was getting ready for bed when I stopped breathing. I experienced a massive heart attack or a myocardial infarction. Doctors referred to this kind of heart attack as a “widow maker.”
On the way to the hospital, I was in and out of consciousness. The paramedics tried to shock my heart back into rhythm. That’s when my heart stopped beating for the first time. After getting my heart beating again, the doctors wanted Sue to sign a DNR order — “Do not resuscitate.” It’s a good thing she refused because, after a helicopter ride to one of the best cardiac units in the Midwest, I survived the night.
I don’t remember the next three days but I’m told that my heart stopped two more times. I woke up in restraints because I kept ripping the breathing tube out of my lungs.
Then, they moved me to the less critical cardiac care wing of the hospital, where I promptly suffered another heart attack. This time, I had what might have been either a dream or a near-death experience. I remember flashes of it, but I distinctly remember asking if I was dead and an annoyed doctor saying, “Of course you’re not dead.” Nurses and orderlies were bustling about, but no one was paying attention to me.
While recovering for the next 10 days in the hospital, I tried to make sense of what I experienced. I was hugely disappointed that I didn’t experience a bright light or see a familiar face to lead me into it. I had no sense of “floating” or of “looking down” on the scene of my death.
This is what many survivors of near-death experiences report seeing and experiencing. In fact, the phenomenon is one of the great mysteries of science and metaphysics, and scientists have just begun to try and unlock the mysteries surrounding near-death experiences.
For far too long, scientists scoffed at the notion of near-death experiences being anything more than the random firing of neurons when the brain begins to die or, because the experience has been so well documented and has become part of the culture, that near-death survivors are reporting on myths they heard before their experience.
As scientists begin to better understand the human brain and how it works, theories about how NDEs (near-death experiences) arise in the brain are receiving serious attention. Researchers have put forward the first comprehensive model “outlining the conditions that may give rise to the vivid mental phenomena that some people experience as they near death,” according to Scientific American.
An incredible 5 to 10 percent of the general population reports memories of an NDE. Oftentimes, people’s recollections are similar: perceiving separation from the body and viewing it from above, passing through a tunnel and seeing a light, encountering deceased loved ones or compassionate entities and being overcome by ineffable wisdom and a feeling of profound peacefulness. Many people describe these memories in crisp detail and say that they felt “more real than real.”
How a person’s faltering consciousness produces such fantastical experiences is unknown. But scientists have been piecing together hypotheses, constructed from interviews with survivors, studies in animals and experiments in which people were given certain psychedelic drugs. Now one of the preeminent research groups investigating NDEs has published what it describes as the first comprehensive neuroscientific model for the phenomena.
The scientists involved in creating the model first reviewed all the studies and literature they could find, ranging from neuroscientific investigations to spiritual perspectives. They found that people with certain predispositions, including those who daydream a lot and those whose rapid eye movement (REM) sleep bleeds into wakefulness, are more likely to experience NDEs.
NDEs themselves are triggered by a precipitating event, such as a cardiac arrest, that causes a cascade of physiological stress. The authors propose that certain networks of neurons go into overdrive to produce high levels of specific neurotransmitters in the drastically altered brain environment. The researchers investigated several of those systems and hypothesized ways that they may contribute to distinct mental experiences as the person approaches death.
It’s more than neurons firing willy-nilly to achieve an NDE. Specific neurotransmitters affecting memory, “fight or flight,” and focus all contribute to the overall effect on the brain to produce an NDE.
Other brain chemicals, like serotonin, which regulates mood, and endorphins, which give us feelings of euphoria, are also released.
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This might explain the feelings and visions of an NDE. But why the eerie unanimity of the experience across all races and cultures?
The model does not account for every facet of an NDE. The researchers did not find an explanation for common reports of reliving past memories or having the sense of approaching a point of no return. The team hypothesized that these features may be driven by psychological processes or biological factors that have yet to be identified. More research is also needed to identify the brain regions where the chemical surges that trigger NDEs primarily occur, Martial says, but a 2023 study suggests that the junction of the temporal, parietal and occipital lobes may play a key role. “This is one of the main regions for consciousness,” she adds.
This is a new field of study, and we’ve only just begun to scratch the surface of the phenomenon. I suspect that the more we learn about the brain, including the metaphysics of consciousness, the more the answers will reveal themselves.
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