I'm at the 46th conference for the Society of Psychical Research

He didn't talk about that. This is all brand new, and it's only just got ethical clearance to proceed. In fact, a couple of questions after his presentation seemed to give him ideas about what he should be looking for.

Hi, ersby, do you have any more specifics on this potential new study? Is it not synonymous with Sam Parnia's cool study, where they intend (I believe) to put targets up in the OR to see if patients undergoing deep hypothermic circulatory arrest (standstill) can be somehow aware?

Thanks for being there, hope it goes well.

I was wondering, did Adrian Parker mention the difficulty of amnesia in such cold conditions. I'm aware of one instance where a woman was dead for a very long time in very cold conditions on a mountaintop. Afterwards, she could not recall the period prior to the event, where she had hiked up the mountain with a partner. That is, we can't tell whether or not there was an interesting NDE which was not recalled, but it is known that there was a real-world journey to the location which was not recalled. A whole section of memory was 'blanked-out'.

Experiments with rats have shown that with these animals anterograde memory loss is induced by hypothermia (see https://psycnet.apa.org/record/1984-03172-001 ). Anterograde amnesia is a type of memory loss that occurs when you can't form new memories. This kind of amnesia is probably common to most mammals including humans. That would mean that for NDEs during which the NDEr was deeply hypothermic, afterward the NDEr probably would have little or no memory of experiences during the NDE including transcendental experiences during OBE, due to neurological impairment caused by the extreme cold. Presumably the memories are held in the spirit and would come back into consciousness after physical death.

However, I recall that in one famous NDE, Pam Reynolds's, the subject was deliberately cooled down to a deeply hypothermic state in order to safely allow the needed brain operation to remove an aneurism. Despite this, Reynolds remembered a lot of her NDE and gave a detailed account of it. There must be some more complications to this picture. Maybe the cooling down wasn't to a low enough temperature to cause the neurological amnesia.

That would mean that for NDEs during which the NDEr was deeply hypothermic, afterward the NDEr probably would have little or no memory of experiences during the NDE including transcendental experiences during OBE, due to neurological impairment caused by the extreme cold.

Yes, good point, but somehow some do, including Pam Reynolds, who was cooled to below twenty degrees C.
Even when she heard the conversation about her femoral arteries being too small etc she was at a temperature of 32 degrees. Between 6 and 10 % of brain function is lost for every degree downwards apparently. 

Reynolds shouldn't have had amy memories of any kind let alone the detailed veridical ones. Her extreme cooling, cardiac arrest and blood drained from the head should have prevented them according to expert conventional medical opinions, but I won't go there, lol.

Hi, ersby, do you have any more specifics on this potential new study? Is it not synonymous with Sam Parnia's cool study, where they intend (I believe) to put targets up in the OR to see if patients undergoing deep hypothermic circulatory arrest (standstill) can be somehow aware?

Parker mentioned Parnia's work but he seemed to be more interested in what kind of memories that people would report after having been "dead" for so long. Of course, he admitted there'd be little chance to test for veridical data like Parnia tried. It all seemed quite exploratory.

Parker mentioned Parnia's work but he seemed to be more interested in what kind of memories that people would report after having been "dead" for so long. Of course, he admitted there'd be little chance to test for veridical data like Parnia tried. It all seemed quite exploratory.

Thanks, ersby ! What do you think he means by that ? As far as I know they're just the same as the memories that are reported by people that have been dead for a short time, but I could be wrong of course. I think George Rodonaia might be one of the longest.

I talked to a man who was dead, in cardiac arrest for about four minutes. He told me he felt like he'd been on the other side as they say (he went to the other side...)  for months. An example of someone who was extremely cold and dead (as a doornail) who was dead for hours was that of Ward Krenz from Clearwater in the USA who disappeared under the ice on it's lake when his snowmobile went down a hole or something like that. 

He had an NDE and reported in a very economical manner but you could tell it was fairly typical.

I'll try and post the abstract later, if I can find it.

Thanks, ersby ! What do you think he means by that ? As far as I know they're just the same as the memories that are reported by people that have been dead for a short time, but I could be wrong of course. I think George Rodonaia might be one of the longest.

I talked to a man who was dead, in cardiac arrest for about four minutes. He told me he felt like he'd been on the other side as they say (he went to the other side...)  for months. An example of someone who was extremely cold and dead (as a doornail) who was dead for hours was that of Ward Krenz from Clearwater in the USA who disappeared under the ice on it's lake when his snowmobile went down a hole or something like that. 

He had an NDE and reported in a very economical manner but you could tell it was fairly typical.

Googling "Ward Krenz Clearwater" reveals a few reports about his incident and revival but nothing about he should have had an NDE. Do you have any sources?

Googling "Ward Krenz Clearwater" reveals a few reports about his incident and revival but nothing about he should have had an NDE. Do you have any sources?

It's so long ago that nearly everything related to the incident is behind a pay wall, because they want money for it. They know it's very interesting.

Krenz did have an NDE and I posted a summary of the small amount of it he revealed (hardly anything) somewhere a decade ago but I can't find it. I tried to contact Mr Krenz years ago (unsuccesfully) I would have paid him handsomely to get it down in detail but he doesn't want to reveal what he saw (Dagnabbit !!).

All I remember now is that he said, " I can't even describe what I saw; I tell people that death is something beautiful and not to be afraid of it"

An Update on Prolonged NDEs: "Being Alive When You are Cold and Dead"
Annekatrin Puhle and Adrian Parker

A major impasse in current research on Near-Death Experiences (NDEs), which are currently being reframed as "Recalled Experiences of Death" (REDs) is that the medication given at cardiac arrests severely reduces memory recall of experiences during surgical operations. A review of current research in this field reveals the enigma that veridical perceptions are often reported during these REDs and cognitive activity is beyond what might be expected from a brain devoid of brain stem reflexes and cortic activity. Yet it can still be argued that some subcortical areas are responsible for the experiences reported and thus the claims of ESP are illusory. It is proposed here that a means of resolving some of the basic issues, is to focus on cases of resuscitation with prolonged accidental hypothermia due to drowning, snow avalanches and similar events. In these cases, brain activity is literally frozen and according to conventional neuropsychological belief, then REDs would not occur. We do not know if they do.

Interventions in Norway pioneered the use of gradual re-warming of the brain prior to the re-starting We the heart with the record of recovery from cardiac arrest being nearly 7 hours. Much credit in accelerating this advance is due to the case of Anna Bågenholm who, while skiing in Norway, became wedged in an ice hole and suffered severe and prolonged hypothermia (anal temperature 13.7°C). She was subject to more than 2 hours of cardiac arrest, her body temperature was gradually raised successively in units of ten degrees. Bågenholm survived without any major sequalae. The case received much media attention and a detailed report on the case was published in The Lancet (Gilbert, Busund, par Nilsen, 2000). The favourable result pioneered resuscitation practice and led to the much-improved success rate in the treatment of accidental hypothermia as shown by Norwegian follow-up studies (Hilmo, Naesheim & Gilbert 2014). This has been extended to the treatment of cases due to drowning with hypothermia, cardiac arrest and asphyxiation. Further publicized cases have been recorded in Denmark where seven children recovered from a boating accident (Wanscher et al, 2012) and on the Swedish-Norwegian border concerning three children in a similar boating accident (Carlsen et al, 2017). The record for surviving lengthy cardiac arrest is now given as seven hours.

The dictum became "You are not dead until you are warm and dead"- which we rephrase in the title as "being alive when you are cold and dead". Similar interventions have been used successfully also in mountainous and lake areas in Sweden, Denmark, Germany and Austria. Medical induced hypothermi is moreover an accepted procedure in inventions where treatment CPR is applied but the treatment of arrests is delayed.

Given accident rates, it is expected that there are now at least several hundred cases during the last twenty years in the regions mentioned. It is however not customary in medical post-operational assessment to ask or to report patient experiences. However, the project is aided by some authoritative guidelines and recommendations for dealing with this issue of patients' experiences were recently (2022) published in the Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences. These guidelines will be followed in this project. The project aims to collect any such cases and to spread information in accordance with these guidelines. Cases will primarily be obtained through internet interest groups and journalistic contacts in the above countries mentioned. Where possible medical records would be requested in deference to the usual ethical requirements. Any resulting cases will be analyzed with the conventional used for REDS and compared to those obtained in cases of cardiac arrest hypothermia.

Yet it can still be argued that some subcortical areas are responsible for the experiences reported and thus the claims of ESP are illusory.

Thanks for posting that, ersby ! There are a couple of statements in there, maybe three or so which I don't agree with, (above and below, not that that matters of course). I'm not qualified myself to refute them, only from what I've been able to learn from medical experts. 

In these cases, brain activity is literally frozen

It isn't literally frozen, though. I'd be surprised if he meant to say that, it's probably just his turn of phrase. If the brain tissue was frozen then the cells would be destroyed. The hypothermia (down to about 18 degrees or so) merely vastly reduces the metabolic need for oxygen and other nutrients.
 
But more to the point, what he seems to be saying is that there is going to be a retrospective study on people who have survived a period of being dead through succumbing to deep hypothermic conditions. And who hopefully have some memories of the time they had no brain activity. 

I wish him the best of luck with it, I really do, but I can't see why this would impress sceptics at all, personally. They will easily wriggle out of anything other than a real time hit on a double blind target when the brain was demonstrably out of action.