(2019-08-02, 07:30 AM)Chris Wrote: [ -> ]Courtesy of the SPR Facebook page, here's a new review article on NDEs:
https://link.springer.com/article/10.100...019-0983-2
That webpage does have links to about 90 additional resources. I didn't follow all of those links, so don't know what is out there, but in at least one case the full text of the linked document is freely available.
It could be a useful list of reference material at the least.
Courtesy of the SPR Facebook page - here is a paper from the journal
Scientific Reports by researchers at the University and University Hospital of Liège, Belgium, on an EEG study of the recall of OBEs in normal consciousness and under hypnosis. The full text is available:
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6773844/
(2019-11-01, 12:44 PM)Max_B Wrote: [ -> ]sci-hub is your friend...
Not to speak for Raf, but - to my knowledge, there are studies comparing the effects of DMT and/or ketamine to NDEs, but I've not come across any where people who have had a deep NDE later went on to try these drugs and offer a comparison, or vice versa.
Courtesy of the SPR Facebook page, here's a new analysis of accounts of NDEs that has just been published online:
Vanessa Charland-Verville, Demetrius Ribeiro de Paula, Charlotte Martial, Helena Cassol, Georgios Antonopoulos, Blaine Alexander Chronik, Andrea Soddu and Steven Laureys
Characterization of near death experiences using text mining analyses: A preliminary study
https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0227402
https://journals.plos.org/plosone/articl...ne.0227402
Abstract: The notion that death represents a passing to an afterlife, where we are reunited with loved ones and live eternally in a utopian paradise, is common in the reports of people who have encountered a “Near-Death Experience” (NDE). NDEs are thoroughly portrayed by the media but empirical studies are rather recent. The definition of the phenomenon as well as the identification of NDE experiencers is still a matter of debate. To date, NDEs’ identification and description in studies have mostly derived from answered items in questionnaires. However, questionnaires’ content could be restricting and subject to personal interpretation. We believe that in addition to their use, user-independent statistical text examination of freely expressed NDEs narratives is of prior importance to help capture the phenomenology of such a subjective and complex phenomenon. Towards that aim, we included 158 participants with a firsthand retrospective narrative of their self-reported NDE that we analyzed using an automated text-mining method. The output revealed the top words expressed by experiencers. In a second step, a hierarchical clustering analysis was conducted to visualize the relationships between these words. It revealed three main clusters of features: visual perceptions, emotions and spatial components. We believe the user-independent and data-driven text mining approach used in this study is promising by contributing to the building a rigorous description and definition of NDEs.
And here's a commentary on the work and the findings from the Tech Xplore website:
https://techxplore.com/news/2020-01-near-death.html
And also courtesy of the SPR Facebook page - here's an article about NDEs by Christian Jarrett at Science Focus ("the home of BBC Science Focus magazine") entitled "To death and back: what near-death experiences could tell us about dying":
https://www.sciencefocus.com/the-human-b...out-dying/
It spends a lot of time discussing the claimed similarity between NDEs and psychedelic trips, though it does also include some criticism of the idea.
I thought this paper from Stephen Laureys' coma group was interesting. I've never before seen them 'address' or give any credence (whatsoever) to the veridical out of body experiences reported during OBE's (They have of course noted them during their work but always linked them to brain pathology).
"So far, it is uncertain whether experiencers have an explicit awareness of the contents of consciousness when experiencing the NDEs (i.e., meta-consciousness). It is also unclear whether some external or real-life-based stimuli may still trigger or be incorporated in the NDE itself, and hence indicating connectedness (Table 1). Although many anecdotes have been reported [36,37], no empirical study has confirmed that NDEs include some real external events. Among the most rigorous studies, Parnia and colleagues [38] stated that one of their experiencers reported afterwards some elements from the environment experienced during cardiopulmonary resuscitation, which were subsequently corroborated by the medical records.
However, their protocol did not allow to exclude that the reported memories were based on retrospective imaginative (re)constructions built up from memories, prior knowledge, and/or expectations about the world. Based on current empirical research, it is difficult to draw any conclusions regarding the accuracy of such descriptions. We need more refined methodologies to objectively examine the validity of specific reports associated with actual (real-life-based) events in NDEs."
This may not seem like much of a movement but in Belgium, they have some of the most vociferous hard-line sceptics in the world who are watching this group of researchers very closely. Presumably that is why they have deliberately omitted the important feature of Parnia's Mr A (from the Aware study), namely the patient's memory of hearing the automated defibrillator, which is actually impossible.
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/ar...1319303122
https://www.medicalnewstoday.com/article...hind-NDEs?
"Expectation surely plays a part in the overall NDE; the differences between cultures mentioned above are testament to that. But expectation seems to play an even deeper role.
Interestingly, NDEs sometimes occur in people who were, in reality, nowhere near death, they just thought they were.
One study that included 58 patients’ experiences of NDEs found that 30 were not, in fact, close to dying."