.png){kind=logo}
May 31, 2010 at 10:08 am 
Daniel Fincke That the phenomenon of seeing a bright light before one dies has a brain-based cause is hardly a surprise, but rather the clearly most likely inference. But it is still wonderful to live in a time at which it may be possible neuroscientifically to ascertain that precise cause and hopefully undermine those who would reinforce and exploit our superstitious wishful thinking to keep us away from living truthfully:
“We think the near-death experiences could be caused by a surge of electrical energy released as the brain runs out of oxygen,” said Lakhmir Chawla, an intensive care doctor at George Washington University medical centre in Washington.
“As blood flow slows down and oxygen levels fall, the brain cells fire one last electrical impulse. It starts in one part of the brain and spreads in a cascade and this may give people vivid mental sensations.”
In the research he used an electroencephalograph (EEG), a device that measures brain activity, to monitor seven terminally ill people.
The medical purpose of the devices was to make sure that the patients, suffering from conditions such as cancer and heart failure, were sufficiently sedated to be out of pain. However, Chawla noticed that moments before death the patients experienced a burst in brainwave activity lasting from 30 seconds to three minutes.
The activity was similar to that seen in people who are fully conscious, even though the patients appeared asleep and had no blood pressure. Soon after the surge abated, they were pronounced dead.
Chawla says the study is an important first step in understanding near-death experiences but is now planning further research using much more advanced EEG machines to see if he can confirm a link between the observed surge in brain activity and patients’ experiences.
Of course, it is the nature of prejudicial religious faith to only cite the dubious evidence of personal subjective interpretations of “going into a light” as positive reason to believe there is an after-life and to ignore counter-evidence as at all disconfirming the hypothesis supposedly supported by evidence. And that’s why faith is totally disconnected from genuine knowledge. It is a willful commitment in advance to only accept evidence which conforms to its desired beliefs and it is equally committed in advance to disregard or rationalize all counter-evidence.
Nonetheless, for those interested in evidence, rather than faith or more than it, this seems to be an exciting discovery about what is happening in the brain as at least some of us die.
Thanks to Styvyn for the find.
Your Thoughts?
Posted in 
Tags: 
I’d say this is at best a dubious interpretation of data. It’s not scientific (the value being posited in your post) for the researchers (or you) to conclude that this “explains” near-death “experiences”, when what this tells us is something about PRE-death NON-experiences (these patients were “sedated” and could not be observed to be experiencing anything, not even the presence of EEG monitoring.
My comment is not in any way to defend a religious interpretation of near-death experiences, but to object to facile inference-making about ANYTHING as complex as the nature of a richly significant thing like “experience”. This kind of claim is fraught with and encourages more slip-shod conceptions of what it means to “explain” the “mental”, and one thing we do NOT need in these times are slip-shod explanations–or acceptances of explanations–of anything as important as the “mental”.
I was careful to qualify with phrases like “may explain”, “may be possible neuroscientifically to ascertain”, and “hopefully undermine”. In the title and the paragraph, those were three weakeners. And then in the final paragraph a “seems to be an exciting discovery” for good measure. And, more importantly, the researcher specifically discusses the need to correlate these brain phenomena with those who claim “going into the light experiences”, etc., and I deliberately included that section. So, I stand by the post as sufficiently tentative and cautious.
But, beyond that, I’m not sure I see what you’re driving at. To correlate brain activity with the subjective/qualitative/internally-conscious experience of that brain activity is a form of “explanation”. Granted, you’re right that finding the correlation between a particular kind of experience and a particular set of brain activities is complicated. But the simple point is that if a connection can be forged by a specific, regularly observable set of brain reactions at the moment of death can be correlated with those particular experiences that people report after being revived late in the dying process, then that is a form of “explanation” of why there are such experiences, even if it does not explain all the nuances of their character.
Hmm, I think you’re being a bit selective in characterizing your presentation as “sufficiently tentative and cautious.” Yes, you used those qualifiers you mention, but only after introducing the whole research about the brain-based causes as “the clearly most likely inference” as your first statement after the rather remarkable title. The rhetorical effect, as linked to the attempt to discredit the supernatural explanation, is to shift the impression of explanatory adequacy onto a reductive model, and to leave the impression that the powers of effective inference are on the side of the reductive explanation simpliciter. Of course, you may not mean to imply all this, but in a short post heralding what–no matter what the qualifiers–is a rather triumphalist claim some scientists have gotten put into a press release, it invites a critique of the possible fuzzy use of rhetoric. In situating the reductive causal explanation without laying out the philosophical problems with reduction, and without qualifying the notion of explanation in regard to complex mental phenomena, you somewhat participate (unintentionally, I certainly believe) in the distorted way the public is led to think about ‘causation’ and ‘scientific explanation’ and the ‘mind-brain’ connection. I’m mostly objecting to the way the rhetorical dimension of the post (and probably the real substance of the research–do you have a source I can look at?) leaves the reader in a simple dichotomy between silly supernaturalism married to obstinate rejection of evidence, and the scientific research that will soon (no matter how many perhapses you interject) give us the “precise cause” (btw, that link is dead–should it lead somewhere?).
Fixed. Here’s the link again http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/science/medicine/article7140165.ece
Thanks for the heads up.