NDE study by Kondziella and Olsen

People can actually dream without REM sleep.
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/20...121817.htm

We've known people can dream under anesthesia since 1970.
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/ar...1217505188

another more recent study
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4970206/


Am I missing something?

As far as I know yes, people can dream during GA, juat not in burst suppression

[Laird]

Letseat, the quote you've attributed to Max_B in this post is actually from tim in this post.

People can actually dream without REM sleep.
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/20...121817.htm

We've known people can dream under anesthesia since 1970.
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/ar...1217505188

another more recent study
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4970206/


Am I missing something?

I don't know if you're missing something, Lets eat. I stand by what I've previously posted, that the majority consensus from the experts (certainly not me) is that patients don't dream under adequate general anaesthesia. There is, however clearly some research which suggests otherwise. 

General anaesthesia is a reversible drug induced coma (that is a fact) which knocks out the brain stem (apparently). That's why patients have to be artificially ventilated (they can't breathe on their own).  Secondly, the eye reflexes are also a property of the brain stem so there can't be any rapid eye movement (REM).

But some of those papers seem to suggest that REM eye movement is not necessary for dreaming ? Whatever, I don't see what it's got to do with NDE's during cardiac arrest ?   
  
"Humans spend approximately one third of their lives asleep. Sleep, a state of decreased arousal that is actively generated by nuclei in the hypothalamus, brain stem, and basal forebrain, is crucial for the maintenance of health.^7,8 Normal human sleep cycles between two states — rapid-eye-movement (REM) sleep and non-REM sleep — at approximately 90-minute intervals. REM sleep is characterized by rapid eye movements, dreaming, irregularities of respiration and heart rate, penile and clitoral erection, and airway and skeletal-muscle hypotonia.⁷ In REM sleep, the EEG shows active high-frequency, low-amplitude rhythms (Fig. 1). Non-REM sleep has three distinct EEG stages, with higher-amplitude, lower-frequency rhythms accompanied by waxing and waning muscle tone, decreased body temperature, and decreased heart rate.

Coma is a state of profound unresponsiveness, usually the result of a severe brain injury.⁹ Comatose patients typically lie with eyes closed and cannot be roused to respond appropriately to vigorous stimulation. A comatose patient may grimace, move limbs, and have stereotypical withdrawal responses to painful stimuli yet make no localizing responses or discrete defensive movements. As the coma deepens, the patient’s responsiveness even to painful stimuli may diminish or disappear. Although the patterns of EEG activity observed in comatose patients depend on the extent of the brain injury, they frequently resemble the high–amplitude, low-frequency activity seen in patients under general anesthesia¹⁰ (Fig. 1). General anesthesia is, in fact, a reversible drug-induced coma. Nevertheless, anesthesiologists refer to it as “sleep” to avoid disquieting patients. Unfortunately, anesthesiologists also use the word “sleep” in technical descriptions to refer to unconsciousness induced by anesthetic drugs.¹¹ (For a glossary of terms commonly used in the field of anesthesiology, see the Supplementary Appendix, available with the full text of this article at NEJM.org.)

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3162622/

But some of those papers seem to suggest that REM eye movement is not necessary for dreaming ? Whatever, I don't see what it's got to do with NDE's during cardiac arrest ?   

It wasn't a comment about NDE's, merely that dreaming can occur while under GA and that the expert claim that the brain would be too depressed to go into REM isn't conclusive - since people can dream without REM.

It wasn't a comment about NDE's, merely that dreaming can occur while under GA and that the expert claim that the brain would be too depressed to go into REM isn't conclusive - since people can dream without REM.

That clearly hasn't been established yet or all anaesthesiologists would agree and they don't (agree). 

Eric Silverman M.D., M.D. Anesthesiology, University of Arizona College of  Medicine (1993)

Answered Aug 20, 2018
[url=https://www.quora.com/Why-cant-we-dream-under-general-anesthesia#][/url]
  In 25 years, no patient has ever reported to have had a dream under a full general anesthetic, but many reports what a great “sleep” that was. I do admit it is fun to ask the patient “where do you want to go for the next few hours”, sometimes due to the premedication “cocktail” provided, the answers can be quite interesting.

That clearly hasn't been established yet or all anaesthesiologists would agree and they don't (agree). 

Eric Silverman M.D., M.D. Anesthesiology, University of Arizona College of  Medicine (1993)

Answered Aug 20, 2018
[url=https://www.quora.com/Why-cant-we-dream-under-general-anesthesia#][/url]
  In 25 years, no patient has ever reported to have had a dream under a full general anesthetic, but many reports what a great “sleep” that was. I do admit it is fun to ask the patient “where do you want to go for the next few hours”, sometimes due to the premedication “cocktail” provided, the answers can be quite interesting.

He may simply be unaware of the evidence collected by scientists, as he is a medical doctor and the two fields don't necessarily overlap that much. Nevertheless experts don't all have to agree with something to make it true, and often experts disagree.

Anyways, I have sent him a message through Quora and hopefully he clarifies this for us.

He may simply be unaware of the evidence collected by scientists, as he is a medical doctor and the two fields don't necessarily overlap that much. Nevertheless experts don't all have to agree with something to make it true, and often experts disagree.

Anyways, I have sent him a message through Quora and hopefully he clarifies this for us.

Good idea, letseat !  I would have done the same if I thought it was relevant to NDE's.

I received a response from Dr. Long today regarding questions from earlier in this thread:

Hello William,
 
Thanks for sharing those very interesting articles!  There has been almost nothing written about vision in blind NDErs since Kenneth Ring’s book Mindsight that was originally published in 1999.  I devoted a chapter to NDEs in the blind in my book Evidence of the Afterlife.  My book chapter included case reports of NDEs in the blind.  The most recent version of the NDERF.org survey of NDErs includes a direct question about vision during their NDEs, and they are asked to compare their earthly vision to their vision in their NDEs.  I have not formally analyzed and published the results of responses to this question, but vision during NDE the significant majority of the time is ‘better’ than earthly vision.
 
The articles you shared make a good case that some type of awareness analogous to, or actual, ‘vision’ may occur among the blind including those congenitally blind.  I still think vision among the blind during NDEs is not explainable by physiologic function because:
 
1.  Blind NDErs believe their vision during the NDE is substantially different than any other visual awareness they had during their lives.  The majority of these NDErs dream, so they are able to compare visual awareness in their NDEs with visual awareness in their dreams.  They would be much better able to make this comparison than any external researcher.
 
2.  Blind NDErs describe vision that is vastly more detailed than would be expected from limited visual awareness that they would have during their earthly lives.  Here is an example:
 
Excerpted from: https://www.nderf.org/Experiences/1marta_g_nde.html :

I slowly breathed in the water and immediately lost consciousness. A beautiful woman dressed in bright white light pulled me out and, looking into my eyes asked me what I wanted. I was completely satisfied and could think of nothing until it occurred to me to take a trip around the lake.  I did and saw detail I would ever have seen in "real" life. I could go anywhere, even to the tops of trees, by simply intending to do so.  I was legally blind and for the first time saw leaves on trees, bird's feathers, bird's eyes, details on telephone poles and in people's back yards that were far more acute than 20/20 vision.  
 
Thanks again for sharing those most interesting articles!
 
Best regards,
 
-Jeffrey

Courtesy of the SPR Facebook page - here is the paper reporting this study. The draft paper I linked to above has been significantly revised, and has acquired an additional author.

Daniel Kondziella, Jens P. Dreier and Markus Harboe Olsen
Prevalence of near-death experiences in people with and without REM sleep intrusion.
PeerJ - the Journal of Life and Environment Sciences 7:e7585 (2019)
https://peerj.com/articles/7585/