NDE study by Kondziella and Olsen

I think the point is somewhat moot when it comes to the Reynolds case. She wasn’t only under burst suppression, but also had the “clickers” on her. It takes more than a mere dream to describe her surroundings under such conditions.

Sure, E. Flowers. But some sceptics say that Pam implicitly learned under general anaesthesia.

Max said > where you deny one type of well known experience under general anesthesia by trying to invoke science arguments,

I'm not denying anything. Those three links I provided are the opinions of experts in anaesthesia. Who should I cite ? An expert heating engineer ? Sometimes I wonder, Max if you actually read my posts to you.

And what does trying to invoke science arguments mean ? You mean instead of invoking a load of old cobblers that I just made up ? Can you find one of my posts that invokes bullshit ?  I hate bullshit.

I goggled Ian Russell and got this :

https://www.newyorker.com/books/page-tur...anesthesia

That is about anaesthesia awareness. That's not dreaming, she remembered a conversation and I believe it's called implicit learning and it does seem to occur occasionally in general anaesthesia. But it doesn't occur under burst suppression.

Oh, you've always got your cherry picked experts opinions (whilst ignoring any other evidence lol) I'll grant you that... evidence trumps theory Tim... I really shouldn't need to press this point home again.

People dream during general anesthesia, people have explicit recall, people have implicit recall... deeper levels not so much, very deep levels under burst suppression nope, but note that even here, do summat slightly odder like draining the blood out of somebodies brain... and we get very rare but intriguing observations... and during Cardiac Arrest with Anesthesia we get some other strange recollections from patients.

Ian Russell advocated the Isolated Forearm Technique (IFT), because there is no absolutely reliable way using modern EEG-type equipment on it's own to know when somebody is having experiences, or isn't having experiences, and there are far too many patients who appear to have have had such experiences, but have no explicit recall of them. In Russell's 2006 paper "The Narcotrend ‘depth of anesthesia’ monitor cannot reliably detect consciousness during general anesthesia: an investigation using the isolated forearm technique", demonstrated that patients having major gynecological surgery, where general anesthesia was induced and maintained had memories from a tape recording played to them through headphones, and one lady recalled a nice dream about her daughter.

Patient
number - Memory
1 - Not asked
2 - Not asked
3 - ‘Squeeze my fingers’, lemon, pear, gooseberry. Felt hungry and
wanted some of the fruit. Good dream about her sister’s little dog
walking on her abdomen
4 - Not asked
5 - ‘Green pear’, ‘sour lemon’
6 - None
7 - None
8 - None—good dream about daughter
9 - None
10 - ‘This is Dr Russell speaking, open and close your fingers.’
Something about the colour ‘green’
11 - ‘This is Dr Russell speaking’—remembers some pain in her
abdomen at this time but does not know when/where this was
12 None

Anesthesia is more an art than a science, we don't know how anesthesia works, everybody is different, respond differently to different amounts and types of anesthesia. You can look at this meta study to see the numbers of patients where anesthesia/EEG (ie. BIS) does not correlate with reality because the patient has IFT responses...

Max said > "Oh, you've always got your cherry picked experts opinions (whilst ignoring any other evidence lol) I'll grant you that... evidence trumps theory Tim... I really shouldn't need to press this point home again."

So what you're saying is that the experts I've quoted (wherever) are in error ? But the experts you quote are not ? Yeah, well that's one way to try to win an argument, Max :/

Max said > " People dream during general anesthesia, people have explicit recall, people have implicit recall

According to the majority consensus, patients do not dream under adequate general anaesthesia. I provided you with the opinion of three experts but I agree there is some debate about it and I suppose it's fair to say it's not 'proven' one way of the other. Here's an article that appears to support your statement

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-dream...0420070220

The similarities between the patients’ dreams while under anesthesia and during natural sleep suggest that the dreams during anesthesia occur during the early recovery period when patients are still lightly sedated, but are in a definite sleep state, Leslie’s team concludes (therefore not under general anaesthesia but coming out of it)

Back to the bolded statement

Max said > evidence trumps theory.

It doesn't seem to be the case with regards to your theory, does it, Max ? Your theory trumps everything. Can you see the irony of that (bolded) statement ?

Edit: With reference to cherry picking, it just occurred to me, that's rich coming from you...who cherry picks NDE's that' 'suit' your theory and ignores the many that don't.

The isolated forearm technique anyways shows us that we know nearly nothing about consciousness a s how G.A. really works. Now is people can dream or not during it seems not so relevant, REM intrusions were cited as cause for NDEs and those would be detectes by a EEG monitor. They don't seem to be present at all in patients  suffering from CA.

It doesn't seem to be the case with regards to your theory, does it, Max ? Your theory trumps everything.

Dude, after years of back and forth you should know two things about Max:

1- He always speaks of his theory as *the* truth, everywhere.
2- He always tries to find anyone, or maybe anything, in the vicinity of the NDEr to justify his theory.

Its a shame that he never goes into his credentials (you know, so we could weight them against those of the “cherrypicked experts”) or actually proposes an experiment to put it to the test, but... You, Tim, should know best than to continue this cycle.

Dude, after years of back and forth you should know two things about Max:

1- He always speaks of his theory as *the* truth, everywhere.
2- He always tries to find anyone, or maybe anything, in the vicinity of the NDEr to justify his theory.

Its a shame that he never goes into his credentials (you know, so we could weight them against those of the “cherrypicked experts”) or actually proposes an experiment to put it to the test, but... You, Tim, should know best than to continue this cycle.

I should know better, you're quite right, E. Flowers. A couple of other very savvy forum members also advised me to stop  wasting my time doing this...and it was good advice. Why didn't I listen ?

I guess I really hoped Max might put his energies into something else but he's not going to, is he. Point taken.

I did e-mail Dr. Long, and he replied very quickly and courteously. He plans to give a full reply to my questions after reviewing the relevant papers over the weekend.

People blind from birth still function well in space time, indeed in some particular areas they have better skills, and perform much better than the sighted. so they still develop a spatial model of the world, but they definitely will have problems understanding colour without sight, and also because colour arises from processing in the brain.

I don't doubt that. But just looking at the two drawings in the paper Chris linked to, the blind put beams around the sun, and used other typical graphic shorthand to accurately convey the shapes of palm trees, sail boats, and clouds - the last of those, they couldn't possibly get an idea of shape from via other senses. Those are the kinds of things I have a hard time being able to imagine if one were blind from birth - and the fact that they can still seem to appear in dreams is the more interesting question.

Apologies if this has been covered, but I recall reading about people who were blind but whose eyes were functioning, ie it was the processing of the signal in the brain, not the eye and optic nerve, where the problem lay. I wonder if this possibility has been considered. Sometimes people so affected actually seemed perceive objects and perhaps colours (IIRC) but at a subconscious level so that in practical terms they are blind however their brain still received the signal but was unable to process it visually meaning that at some level they had a conception of objects but were unable to use it.

Hope that made sense.

I did e-mail Dr. Long, and he replied very quickly and courteously. He plans to give a full reply to my questions after reviewing the relevant papers over the weekend.


I don't doubt that. But just looking at the two drawings in the paper Chris linked to, the blind put beams around the sun, and used other typical graphic shorthand to accurately convey the shapes of palm trees, sail boats, and clouds - the last of those, they couldn't possibly get an idea of shape from via other senses. Those are the kinds of things I have a hard time being able to imagine if one were blind from birth - and the fact that they can still seem to appear in dreams is the more interesting question.

I agree, we don’t understand these things, but I would be cautious about interpreting a drawing from our visual perspective, it’s just not clear that our visual experience is what they are experiencing. The images are spatial representations of sensory data, and that’s a world the blind understand perfectly well, common to both of us. The sun gives off heat which can be sensed in a directional manner, and seagulls make a lot of bird calls when they are flying around above your head.

If a patient in under adequate anesthesia level when used as the primary technique, it does not matter what is the agent used is (propofol, volatile anesthetics, etc), there is sufficient depression of higher brain functions such that dreaming is not theoretically possible, since REM sleep occurs at lighter level where dreams occur.

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?