Sam Parnia Aware II Update

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=XkgLBCATUg...e=youtu.be

Update on aware 2 from Sam - what's everyone's thoughts? 

Some evidence of brain activity (spikes rather then continued activity) in a small percentage of people for up to an hour plus. What do people think about this?

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=XkgLBCATUg...e=youtu.be

Update on aware 2 from Sam - what's everyone's thoughts? 

Some evidence of brain activity (spikes rather then continued activity) in a small percentage of people for up to an hour plus. What do people think about this?

https://psiencequest.net/forums/thread-aware-ii-results

Someone on the Aware of Aware blog posted this link to Parnia's upcoming paper. it's the pre-peer reviewed version with a few more details. 

Awareness During Resuscitation - II: A Multi-Center Study of Consciousness and Awareness in Cardiac Arrest by sam parnia, Tara Keshavarz Shirazi, Jignesh K. Patel, Linh Tran, Niraj Sinha, O'Neill Caitlin, Emma Roellke, Amanda Mengotto, Shannon Findlay, Michael McBrine, Rebecca Spiegel, Thaddeus Tarpey, Elise Huppert, Ian S. Jaffe, Anelly M. Gonzales, Jing Xu, Emmeline Koopman, Gavin D. Perkins, Alain Vuylsteke, Ben Bloom, Heather Jarman, Hiu Nam Tong, Louisa Chan, Lyaker Michael, Matthew Thomas, Veselin Velchev, Charles Cairns, Rahul Sharma, Erik Kulstad, Elizabeth Schrerer, Terence O'Keeffe, Mahtab Foroozesh, Olumayowa Abe, Chinwe Ogedegbe, Amira Girgis, Deepak Pradhan, Charles Deakin :: SSRN

(I want to read the supplementary information but I can't see where it is,  even though it is referred to in the paper)

 It certainly does not support a reductionist physiological explanation for NDE's (RED'S),  although as we've previously seen, many sceptics are highly delighted that some brainwaves appeared (came to the rescue) during prolonged CPR. I don't think there is anything particularly surprising about that, when the object of prolonged resuscitation (more than half an hour) is of course to return patients back to life but that won't make any difference, I agree.

The one case of visual awareness (an OBE) is too vague to be of any evidential importance, that is what the sceptics will say (and I agree). But as we know, even when specific details are recalled in other cases, sceptics insist that the information must have been learned through physiological pathways/contamination of the scene/after the fact etc, that have an ordinary explanation etc. So the one case of visual awareness must be (according to sceptics) some kind of involuntary or voluntary self deceiving mental confabulation, caused by the brain's natural tendency to want to fill in the blanks with creative imagination etc. 

It's very odd, though, if that is the case, that no one else successfully confabulated an episode of visual awareness. Very odd indeed, seeing as lots of other experiences "clustered" (repeat) very consistently.  

The paper also obliquely refers to the equal possibilty (as regards not) of what would amount to a "soul" at work creating these experiences. But the numbers recruited are miniscule and far too few to have been able to test the hypotheses (tablet image) so without a hit, sceptics can carry on denying there is anything going of any great significance (they'd be wrong to do that but they will).

I disagree though; I think the clustered RED's are enormously significant and from what the researchers have said about them, they occur when the patients are actually dead, which is impossible.

Someone on the Aware of Aware blog posted this link to Parnia's upcoming paper. it's the pre-peer reviewed version with a few more details. 

Awareness During Resuscitation - II: A Multi-Center Study of Consciousness and Awareness in Cardiac Arrest by sam parnia, Tara Keshavarz Shirazi, Jignesh K. Patel, Linh Tran, Niraj Sinha, O'Neill Caitlin, Emma Roellke, Amanda Mengotto, Shannon Findlay, Michael McBrine, Rebecca Spiegel, Thaddeus Tarpey, Elise Huppert, Ian S. Jaffe, Anelly M. Gonzales, Jing Xu, Emmeline Koopman, Gavin D. Perkins, Alain Vuylsteke, Ben Bloom, Heather Jarman, Hiu Nam Tong, Louisa Chan, Lyaker Michael, Matthew Thomas, Veselin Velchev, Charles Cairns, Rahul Sharma, Erik Kulstad, Elizabeth Schrerer, Terence O'Keeffe, Mahtab Foroozesh, Olumayowa Abe, Chinwe Ogedegbe, Amira Girgis, Deepak Pradhan, Charles Deakin :: SSRN

(I want to read the supplementary information but I can't see where it is,  even though it is referred to in the paper)

 It certainly does not support a reductionist physiological explanation for NDE's (RED'S),  although as we've previously seen, many sceptics are highly delighted that some brainwaves appeared (came to the rescue) during prolonged CPR. I don't think there is anything particularly surprising about that, when the object of prolonged resuscitation (more than half an hour) is of course to return patients back to life but that won't make any difference, I agree.

The one case of visual awareness (an OBE) is too vague to be of any evidential importance, that is what the sceptics will say (and I agree). But as we know, even when specific details are recalled in other cases, sceptics insist that the information must have been learned through physiological pathways/contamination of the scene/after the fact etc, that have an ordinary explanation etc. So the one case of visual awareness must be (according to sceptics) some kind of involuntary or voluntary self deceiving mental confabulation, caused by the brain's natural tendency to want to fill in the blanks with creative imagination etc. 

It's very odd, though, if that is the case, that no one else successfully confabulated an episode of visual awareness. Very odd indeed, seeing as lots of other experiences "clustered" (repeat) very consistently.  

The paper also obliquely refers to the equal possibilty (as regards not) of what would amount to a "soul" at work creating these experiences. But the numbers recruited are miniscule and far too few to have been able to test the hypotheses (tablet image) so without a hit, sceptics can carry on denying there is anything going of any great significance (they'd be wrong to do that but they will).

I disagree though; I think the clustered RED's are enormously significant and from what the researchers have said about them, they occur when the patients are actually dead, which is impossible.

The problem is that to make the religious materialists at least think, a EEG reading proving that the brain activity happening is not enough to generate waking consciousness on a materialist scenario is needed.
But even then, in the scenario where it's proven that waves cannot explain the NDE's, materialists will move their goalposts and say something like consciousness being in the spine or similar

a EEG reading proving that the brain activity happening is not enough to generate waking consciousness on a materialist scenario is needed.

If you're alluding to cases where the activity of the mind is present without brain function, we already have plenty of those but only two in prospective studies. And even when it happens, they've always got some excuse because they are not true sceptics at all, they are closed minded, dogmatic, ideologically driven pseudo sceptics.

If you're alluding to cases where the activity of the mind is present without brain function, we already have plenty of those but only two in prospective studies. And even when it happens, they've always got some excuse because they are not true sceptics at all, they are closed minded, dogmatic, ideologically driven pseudo sceptics.

The EEG in the dying human brain will be the new rat study, supposedly explaining the life review. Yet the dishonest people in BBC presented both it and that DMT study as proof that "death is like a hallucinogen" , as if it their conclusion was a fact when even articles from naturalist publishers said it's speculative.
But I'm alluding to the possibility that "minor" brain activity is found, and the skeptics go wild and say "end of the mystery" given the way they react to those things.

Someone on the Aware of Aware blog posted this link to Parnia's upcoming paper. it's the pre-peer reviewed version with a few more details. 

Awareness During Resuscitation - II: A Multi-Center Study of Consciousness and Awareness in Cardiac Arrest by sam parnia, Tara Keshavarz Shirazi, Jignesh K. Patel, Linh Tran, Niraj Sinha, O'Neill Caitlin, Emma Roellke, Amanda Mengotto, Shannon Findlay, Michael McBrine, Rebecca Spiegel, Thaddeus Tarpey, Elise Huppert, Ian S. Jaffe, Anelly M. Gonzales, Jing Xu, Emmeline Koopman, Gavin D. Perkins, Alain Vuylsteke, Ben Bloom, Heather Jarman, Hiu Nam Tong, Louisa Chan, Lyaker Michael, Matthew Thomas, Veselin Velchev, Charles Cairns, Rahul Sharma, Erik Kulstad, Elizabeth Schrerer, Terence O'Keeffe, Mahtab Foroozesh, Olumayowa Abe, Chinwe Ogedegbe, Amira Girgis, Deepak Pradhan, Charles Deakin :: SSRN

(I want to read the supplementary information but I can't see where it is,  even though it is referred to in the paper)

 It certainly does not support a reductionist physiological explanation for NDE's (RED'S),  although as we've previously seen, many sceptics are highly delighted that some brainwaves appeared (came to the rescue) during prolonged CPR. I don't think there is anything particularly surprising about that, when the object of prolonged resuscitation (more than half an hour) is of course to return patients back to life but that won't make any difference, I agree.

The one case of visual awareness (an OBE) is too vague to be of any evidential importance, that is what the sceptics will say (and I agree). But as we know, even when specific details are recalled in other cases, sceptics insist that the information must have been learned through physiological pathways/contamination of the scene/after the fact etc, that have an ordinary explanation etc. So the one case of visual awareness must be (according to sceptics) some kind of involuntary or voluntary self deceiving mental confabulation, caused by the brain's natural tendency to want to fill in the blanks with creative imagination etc. 

It's very odd, though, if that is the case, that no one else successfully confabulated an episode of visual awareness. Very odd indeed, seeing as lots of other experiences "clustered" (repeat) very consistently.  

The paper also obliquely refers to the equal possibilty (as regards not) of what would amount to a "soul" at work creating these experiences. But the numbers recruited are miniscule and far too few to have been able to test the hypotheses (tablet image) so without a hit, sceptics can carry on denying there is anything going of any great significance (they'd be wrong to do that but they will).

I disagree though; I think the clustered RED's are enormously significant and from what the researchers have said about them, they occur when the patients are actually dead, which is impossible.

A careful reading of this abstract of the paper is rather disappointing to me. That was not made easy: it is rather technical and obscure and doesn't explain much for the layman. What I got out of it: Out of 567 in-hospital cardiac arrests, a total of only 6  (around 1%) were able to and actually did report apparent transcendent recalled experiences of death. 11 reported cardiac arrest memories/perceptions suggestive of consciousness of some sort. None of the on ceiling targets and no verified other details of the rooms, doctors' actions, out of body travel outside the hospital room, etc. were reported as apparently experienced and perceived, or a least were not mentioned in the abstract. And very importantly, apparently (at least it is not mentioned), these patients' experiences were not verified as actually occurring during actual periods of cerebral ischemia (a cessation or drastic reduction of brain activity).
   
The paper's stated conclusions are accordingly rather limited: "Consciousness and awareness may occur during CA. The emergence of normal EEG may reflect a resumption of a network-level of cognitive activity, and a biomarker of consciousness, lucidity and REDs (recalled experiences of death, authentic 'near-death' experiences)." Implying that the recalled experiences of death may have actually been after resumption of consciousness and therefore not during the period of brain dysfunction. This is one of the favorite excuses or "outs" resorted to by materialist skeptics. 

None of this study invalidates the very extensive data base of well investigated veridical NDEs that mostly occurred under uncontrolled and uninstrumented conditions.

The very small percentage reported of NDEs out of total cardiac arrests in this study is in sharp contrast with the various much higher estimates made from the data obtained by other investigators of other NDEs occurring mostly in daily life under uncontrolled and uninstrumented conditions.

It seems to me that one of the lessons from this study as reported so far could be construed as possibly that it is an example of a well-known phenomenon in parapsychology where experimental proof of high-strangeness paranormal events (especially psychical phenomena) seems to be extraordinarily difficult; it is very elusive, exactly as if it is somehow deliberately avoiding scientific proof for some reason.

A careful reading of this abstract of the paper is rather disappointing to me. That was not made easy: it is rather technical and obscure and doesn't explain much for the layman. What I got out of it: Out of 567 in-hospital cardiac arrests, a total of only 6  (around 1%) were able to and actually did report apparent transcendent recalled experiences of death. 11 reported cardiac arrest memories/perceptions suggestive of consciousness of some sort. None of the on ceiling targets and no verified other details of the rooms, doctors' actions, out of body travel outside the hospital room, etc. were reported as apparently experienced and perceived, or a least were not mentioned in the abstract. And very importantly, apparently (at least it is not mentioned), these patients' experiences were not verified as actually occurring during actual periods of cerebral ischemia (a cessation or drastic reduction of brain activity).
   
The paper's stated conclusions are accordingly rather limited: "Consciousness and awareness may occur during CA. The emergence of normal EEG may reflect a resumption of a network-level of cognitive activity, and a biomarker of consciousness, lucidity and REDs (recalled experiences of death, authentic 'near-death' experiences)." Implying that the recalled experiences of death may have actually been after resumption of consciousness and therefore not during the period of brain dysfunction. This is one of the favorite excuses or "outs" resorted to by materialist skeptics. 

None of this study invalidates the very extensive data base of well investigated veridical NDEs that mostly occurred under uncontrolled and uninstrumented conditions.

The very small percentage reported of NDEs out of total cardiac arrests in this study is in sharp contrast with the various much higher estimates made from the data obtained by other investigators of other NDEs occurring mostly in daily life under uncontrolled and uninstrumented conditions.

It seems to me that one of the lessons from this study as reported so far could be construed as possibly that it is an example of a well-known phenomenon in parapsychology where experimental proof of high-strangeness paranormal events (especially psychical phenomena) seems to be extraordinarily difficult; it is very elusive, exactly as if it is somehow deliberately avoiding scientific proof for some reason.

"Skeptics" are very close minded. They were not satisfied with Pam Reynolds and Van Lommel's teeth study, just look at Digital Gnosis's awful video, it was only a series of assumptions without any proof.
For me the most concerning thing is the lack of data regarding the exact nature of the EEG during those experiences.

It seems to me that one of the lessons from this study as reported so far could be construed as possibly that it is an example of a well-known phenomenon in parapsychology where experimental proof of high-strangeness paranormal events (especially psychical phenomena) seems to be extraordinarily difficult; it is very elusive, exactly as if it is somehow deliberately avoiding scientific proof for some reason.

I do wonder if part of the issue is trying to capture a phenomena in a way that is almost certain to fail. NDEs are possibly just very rare, and then beyond that it isn't clear the OOBE part will be in a position to see stickers.

If the patients were of a special group, say trained meditators, it might also give us some better data.

I actually wish these sorts of studies were in dialogue with people who have had OOBE/clairvoyant experiences, AFAIK that hasn't been the case.

A careful reading of this abstract of the paper is rather disappointing to me.

True but we already knew it was going to be so, since 2019. Nothing has changed because the numbers interviewed are just too few. It's as simple as that.

None of the on ceiling targets and no verified other details of the rooms, doctors' actions, out of body travel outside the hospital room, etc. were reported as apparently experienced and perceived, or a least were not mentioned in the abstract. And very importantly, apparently (at least it is not mentioned), these patients' experiences were not verified as actually occurring during actual periods of cerebral ischemia (a cessation or drastic reduction of brain activity).

Again, they only had one OBE out of the six RED's which is within the normal range of what one would expect  

The paper's stated conclusions are accordingly rather limited: "Consciousness and awareness may occur during CA. The emergence of normal EEG may reflect a resumption of a network-level of cognitive activity, and a biomarker of consciousness, lucidity and REDs (recalled experiences of death, authentic 'near-death' experiences)." Implying that the recalled experiences of death may have actually been after resumption of consciousness and therefore not during the period of brain dysfunction. This is one of the favorite excuses or "outs" resorted to by materialist skeptics. 

The emergence of some brainwaves when trying to bring patients back to life is not really that surprising. Of course, sceptics will point to them as a causation but they would be technically incorrect to do so. From the paper:

"The identification of a potential biomarker of consciousness doesn’t resolve this conundrum, as an association doesn’t imply causation. However, the finding of paradoxical lucidity and heightened reality when brain function is severely disordered, or has ceased raises the need to consider alternatives to the epiphenomenon theory "

There is another problem with trying to parse out genuine brain activity from artifact (muscle movement and other activity during CPR). The muscle movement signals are hundreds of times stronger than brainwaves (I'm aware that they only use the signal from pauses in CPR) and there are other chemical changes going on in the brain in these conditions such as calcium uptake in the cells etc. Now, I'm not qualified to make statements about those things, but what I'm saying is broadly correct. What we don't know (yet) is how the experts (not me) will sort it all out. 

The very small percentage reported of NDEs out of total cardiac arrests in this study is in sharp contrast with the various much higher estimates made from the data obtained by other investigators of other NDEs occurring mostly in daily life under uncontrolled and uninstrumented conditions.

  
No, if I may correct that, nbtruthman. In fact it's exactly what we would have expected 10- 20%-30% from a prospective study. You are referring there to retrospective studies where the person comes forward on request.

With the new classifications of when and how a RED can be defined (must be during deep unconsciousness/death) and the fact that although the numbers are very small, finding the clustering of six transcendent experiences is very significant indeed. If physicalism is correct they shouldn't be there. But I agree that sceptics will only accept laptop hits as evidential, anything else to them is a failure but that's to be expected.