Sam Parnia Aware II Update

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.

Without wishing to sound like an apologist, Sci, I think there's plenty of positives to take from this study, small as it is. Those RED's should not be there. The researchers believe they happened when the patients were dead. Otherwise they couldn't be classified as RED's in the first place. But they've already said that.

[Ninshub]

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.

Is it that small though? I'm just beginning to read it, but this struck me:

Of 567 IHCA, 53(9.3%) survived, 28 of these (52.8%) completed interviews, and 11(39.3%) reported
85 CA memories/perceptions suggestive of consciousness.

So I understand that to say that the data starts with only 28 interviews (!), and then going from there there's 39% of something going on.

"Recent reports of a surge of gamma electrical activity (ordinarily seen during conscious perception) during
324 cardiac standstill, led to speculation that a biomarker of lucid consciousness at death may exist. While, our
325 data supports this intriguing possibility, the mechanism of consciousness and its relationship with brain
326 resuscitation and function remain undiscovered. “Bottom‐up” or “top-down” mechanisms are proposed for the
327 emergence of consciousnes. The former considers consciousness as an epiphenomenon from brain
328 activities; the latter, as a separate undiscovered entity not produced by conventionally understood brain
329 mechanisms, which can independently modulate brain activity.
.
The identification of a potential biomarker of
330 consciousness doesn’t resolve this conundrum, as an association doesn’t imply causation. However, the
331 finding of paradoxical lucidity and heightened reality when brain function is severely disordered, or has ceased
332 raises the need to consider alternatives to the epiphenomenon theory."
Is there any study relating to the higher lucidity in spite of lower brain functions?

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.

There's another important statistic in the paper:

• Results: Of 567 IHCA, 53(9.3%) survived, 28 of these (52.8%) completed interviews,
  

That is, if I understand things correctly, there were only 28 patients able to describe anything at all. There may have been EEG or oxygen levels measured on the others but there's no way to correlate that with anything in terms of awareness.

Hence the figure of 6 patients you refer to were out of a pool of 28 interviews. That is 21.4%. As I've mentioned in the previous study, these patients were all very seriously ill and the low numbers reflect the extreme difficulty in saving patients' lives in these circumstances.

(apologies if I'm repeating something already posted)

there were only 28 patients able to describe anything at all.

I think there were eleven with defined memories, Typoz but there were also many with no defined memories, just a general awareness that they had retained consciousness, so to speak (this number was exactly the same as those who felt they were somehow aware in the first (aware) study).  But one of the audio reports was also attributed to the person with the OBE and you can count thirteen if you look at the abstract. 21.4% has to regarded as a good yield, I would have thought, as you rightfully allude to. 

These patients were not quick shocks, as Parnia put it. They should not have had any awareness, they were dead. Somes sceptics make it sound like the patients were just in a deep sleep or something and just needed waking up.

Is there any study relating to the higher lucidity in spite of lower brain functions?

Robin Carhart Harris conducted a study using psychedelics (psilocybin=magic mushrooms) which contrary to what was expected showed a decrease in brain activity allied with a peak experience. (Google his name and it should come up)

As to Parnia's study, the spikes are not what many sceptics now think (or hope) they are. Spikes do not equal an organised brain capable of creating complex experiences with reasoning and memory formation, like those defined as RED's. Patients would need to have the return of their eye and gag reflexes (brain stem back online) to create an NDE (from the perspective of sceptics) and they only very rarely come back whatever CPR is performed. 

This is the view of Peter Fenwick for instance (and therefore the standard and recognised view from a qualified expert). If anyone cares to listen to that, I can post the podcast where he clarifies this.

The only way this argument is going to be settled (at least in this line of study) is if Parnia can expand to ten times the number of sites, or get funding to pay for many more staff, particularly at night and at weekends when more cardiac arrests appear to take place. For what it's worth (not much) I think it's patently obvious that there's something else going on but it seems like many people are (wilfully perhaps? ) unable to read a map. Just my thoughts, we all have our biases.

There's another important statistic in the paper:

• Results: Of 567 IHCA, 53(9.3%) survived, 28 of these (52.8%) completed interviews,
  

That is, if I understand things correctly, there were only 28 patients able to describe anything at all. There may have been EEG or oxygen levels measured on the others but there's no way to correlate that with anything in terms of awareness.

Hence the figure of 6 patients you refer to were out of a pool of 28 interviews. That is 21.4%. As I've mentioned in the previous study, these patients were all very seriously ill and the low numbers reflect the extreme difficulty in saving patients' lives in these circumstances.

(apologies if I'm repeating something already posted)

To Typoz and Ninshub: you're right. It's apples and oranges. We don't know enough to resolve all the differences between Pim van Lommel's well-known 2001 prospective study 22 years ago in the Netherlands (published in Lancet), and the AWARE II study results. It actually appears that the percentages of patients with NDEs of the total number of survived cardiac arrest resuscitations may be similar between the two very different studies conducted 22 years apart.

From a cursory examination of the data: The van Lommel study was with 10 hospitals. His results were, of 344 successful resuscitations after cardiac arrest there were 62 reported NDEs (18%). Apparently most of the survivors were able to be interviewed. 41 were "deep" NDEs (13%). The total number of cardiac arrests out of which this number survived with resuscitation is not given in the van Lommel abstract summary, so we can't compare this earlier survival percentage with the dismal record of the AWARE II study results, where only 6 surviving patients reported NDEs out of a pool of only 28 interviews of survivors (23%), out of a total of 53 survivors from 567 cardiac arrest resuscitation attempts in-hospital (9%). It looks (very nonintuitively) that the survival rate must have been much better for the earlier van Lommel study, unless van Lommel's total number of cases was really large. AWARE II had a drastically lower number of reported NDEs than van Lommel, but the percentage this represents of the much lower number of cardiac arrest resuscitation survivors is similar to the van Lommel study's percentage (23% versus the earlier 18%).

So it look like the main anomaly is the apparent probably much poorer cardiac arrest resuscitation survival rate with the AWARE II study compared to van Lommel's 22 years before. 
This difference over 22 years is probably an artifact mostly due to major changes in the criteria used by the two studies, and also due to changed hospital procedures and protocols, techniques and equipment. On the surface, improvements over the years in resuscitation techniques and equipment should have resulted in a much higher percentage of survival.

What about the COOL studies? could they yield more concrete answers?
Also, I fear that because brain waves were detected this could cause less funding and interest in NDE research, given how "skeptics" love lying by omission.

So it look like the main anomaly is the apparent probably much poorer cardiac arrest resuscitation survival rate with the AWARE II study compared to van Lommel's 22 years before. 

Approx 80% of Van Lommel's patients were resuscitated within 2 minutes of their cardiac arrests, so I suspect (might be wrong) he was able to get more NDE's from fewer patients, because more came back to be interviewed. 

But with Aware 2, they had to get the equipment (laptop and spectral monitors + EEG etc) set up which took at least 5 minutes and if the patient had been resuscitated (that is CPR stopped) when they got there, that patient was then not eligible for the study. Obviously because they weren't in cardiac arrest anymore. But I don't know why they couldn't have been interviewed anyway. Must be a reason, though.

Just to add, Van Lommel had unpaid volunteers but Parnia's were all being paid. You'd think Parnia would have got more, I guess.

What about the COOL studies? could they yield more concrete answers?

Yes.