Latest from Dr Sam Parnia

Max_B why do you think the OBE is real but they can't see targets above people's heads? it already happened once, anectodal of course but still really interesting, came from an anesthesiologist who had a patient read a number on top of some medical equipment, nobody knew the muber or could have seen it without climbing up on a ladder. he posted the experience on Quora.

Yes, there have been a handful, but it's hard to be certain of the circumstances. A lot of information surrounding these cases will be discarded as unimportant, because certain events are not currently seen as having any bearing on the matter, so people simply don't talk about them. It's a bit like having a certain level of knowledge about your car, which develops a fault, and you take it to a mechanic at the garage to fix. You explain the symptoms, and suggest what you think might be wrong. The mechanic fixes the fault, but it turned out not to be any of your suggestions - it was something else entirely different. I think that's sort of where we are... everybody is grasping for the best way of explaining these events based only on our current knowledge, and that knowledge is simply not sufficient.

For myself, I'm pretty certain we're accessing information, in a way that is quite different to how we currently understand things. I've had one unique childhood OBE myself, that was verified... so I'm a believer... and uploaded a little video of my Dad's recollections 30 years later (for those who were interested). I've also had one very strong STE-type experience, and in 2007 one apparitional experience that my partner investigated (what they found out gave me real pause for thought).

But all my investigations over the years suggests during my childhood OBE, I was not out of my body, instead I suspected I was experiencing somebody else's experiences. Today I understand things in terms of the raw information underlying our everyday experiences, probably being stored very differently, to the way we experience the information. We seem to experience the information after it has been processed. But it actually seems to be stored in such a different way (in a different number of dimensions) that when this is allowed for, it might explain all of our anomalous experiences that don't fit our current understanding, without really undermining any of our scientific observations.

As regards the classic NDE OBE, I can only understand it in terms of all my own learning on this subject... I can't just jump off and propose something wild that doesn't fit our existing observations... I have to link the NDE OBE in some solid way to what we know. Because those observations are correct, even if the current theories which are generally used to understand those observations (that is the stories we tell ourselves to link our observations together) may not be correct.

At a local level only, you can sort of see what I mean by this crude picture of my early ideas, describing roughly how ones sense of 'self' might naturally relocate to the most logical position (above), based on the compatible information intersecting the patients vulnerable brain.

There's only you who thinks so, Max. I wasn't aware that your theory has gained acceptance ?

Max said > " If so, Aware 2 won’t get any target hits at all."

Maybe you'd be better rephrasing that, to you hope they won't get any hits ? That would be rather more accurate.

They would probably get hits, if somebody else knew the target information, but the patient still didn't. They won't get hits on hidden, secret, real-time information.

I still don't get Max_B theory about OBEs and NDEs, as far as I can tell he thinks that thoghts and sensation of other people can mix up with a dying person's brain? through some sort of EM field.

Yes, locally compatible EM fields within which a vulnerable brain is embedded, seem like they may be capable of resynchronizing it's networks into a 'pattern'... if patterns match, a second non-classical mechanism - as yet undiscovered - within the networks allows something like quantum coherent interference to occur between the matching patterns.

Yes, locally compatible EM fields within which a vulnerable brain is embedded, seem like they may be capable of resynchronizing it's networks into a 'pattern'... if patterns match, a second non-classical mechanism - as yet undiscovered - within the networks allows something like quantum coherent interference to occur between the matching patterns.

Interesting theory for sure! Although I'm not sold on it, it has some basis. Probably better than believing that people with a flat EEG are registering perfectly what happens around them ?

Interesting theory for sure! Although I'm not sold on it, it has some basis. Probably better than believing that people with a flat EEG are registering perfectly what happens around them ?

Yes, I suggest that it all may be incorporated so you can get objective veridical, and non-objective incorrect stuff in the OBE, as well as other stuff about what people are thinking.

I occasionally update a resource thread on here where you can read about studies which show just how incredibly weak the magnetic fields can be, which are demonstrated to affect the behavior of some animals... and we seem to keep reaching new lower limits...

At a local level only, you can sort of see what I mean by this crude picture of my early idea

Providing a pictorial representation of your theory, with dramatic colour and wavy EM field lines for effect, gives it no more credibility than if I were to draw a representation of a disembodied mind floating around the room up above.

Apart from the obvious problem that there isn't a shred of evidence that such fields even exist that can actually do what you assure us they can, I can see numerous problems even without that.

The heads around the patient are depicted 'statically' when in actual fact they would be moving around. Even if their was some kind of 'interlocking' of brain fields, it would all get jumbled up by the movement of the heads. And what allows you to relocate the position that the patient has seen it all from, to vantage point above ? That's just wishful thinking on your part.

Anyway, Max, no need to answer. We've been here before and you're not going to shelve it. Instead it seems to be updated every year to cover every new scenario.

Providing a pictorial representation of your theory, with dramatic colour and wavy EM field lines for effect, gives it no more credibility than if I were to draw a representation of a disembodied mind floating around the room up above.

Apart from the obvious problem that there isn't a shred of evidence that such fields even exist that can actually do what you assure us they can, I can see numerous problems even without that.

The heads around the patient are depicted 'statically' when in actual fact they would be moving around. Even if their was some kind of 'interlocking' of brain fields, it would all get jumbled up by the movement of the heads. And what allows you to relocate the position that the patient has seen it all from, to vantage point above ? That's just wishful thinking on your part.

If we take just one aspect of your post... the last part... we know that there are both 'floating above' and 'non-floating first person' OBE perspectives reported by classic veridical NDE OBE experients... those two perspectives need an explanation...

If you understand how an object should look (represented below by a grid of evenly spaced horizontal and vertical lines on a floor surface), then it seems reasonably to me that sensory data from different third party sources would be unified by the brain, just like we unify the sensory data coming from each eye, and to try and make sense of this information.

That might mean locating 'self' into a logical position that describes the information being received. With just one third party being present, there seems a higher correlation with 'non-floating first person' OBE's. When there are multiple third parties present, there seems a higher correlation with 'floating above' OBE's as shown in the diagram.

The heads around the patient are depicted 'statically' when in actual fact they would be moving around. Even if their was some kind of 'interlocking' of brain fields, it would all get jumbled up by the movement of the heads.

Taking just this part... you don't have any problem playing the radio in the car when you are stopped, or when you are traveling 70mph down the motorway...

Apart from the obvious problem that there isn't a shred of evidence that such fields even exist that can actually do what you assure us they can, I can see numerous problems even without that.

The resource thread where you can read about studies which show just how incredibly weak the magnetic fields can be which are demonstrated to affect the behavior of some animals... so yes, really really weak fields are demonstrated as having and affect on organisms... although we have no accepted mechanism to explain these observation...

This is a great little easy to understand video... the comments right towards the end about quantum effects are really important...



So yes, there is plenty of evidence... that weak fields can have an effect....

Taking just this part... you don't have any problem playing the radio in the car when you are stopped, or when you are traveling 70mph down the motorway...

We know how radios work. The radio isn't trying to make sense of jumbled up signals, it works because it is built to receive what is sent out at the other end (The transmitter). When the signal gets jumbled up (interfered with) then the radio or the TV programme fails.