What is going on in the Brain Stem during Near Death Experiences

And I know about the amount of evidence thruthman but I just like to air on the side of caution. We have to be the harshest critics towards ourselves, and even if like Typoz said the 1 brain cell kinda argument sounds silly, I feel it's important to weight it up despite of the other evidence that exists alongside NDEs. But then I've always been very...I dunno prone to doubt or influence from skepticism when it comes to this stuff. Easy to second guess myself.

There seem to be multiple entangled aspects here.

• psychic phenomena
  
• survival of death
  
• role of the body
  

If we set aside the survival question for a moment. Let's look at the psychic aspects. I'm not so much interested in conjuring tricks or feats. What concerns me is ordinary everyday life, and our connections with other people. There are examples of things like a person being involved in a car crash or other dangerous situation, and thousands of miles away on the other side of the world, that person's mother or son or partner will wake up from having a good night's sleep, know something is wrong and which person is in trouble. Those things will never be demonstrated in a laboratory, but they happen in real life because the emotional bonds between people form a link. This stuff does happen.

In the sort of case I just described, we don't ask which part of the brain was involved. Instead, we ask, did this actually happen? When we find out it did, or it actually happens to ourselves, what can we do? Just be amazed that there are things which neuroscience can never explain, and it is pointless to try.

I rather suspect the real problem is the survival question. Lots of people have concerns over that. But I really don't see how pointing at a part of the brain, even a large part, plays any role. It doesn't explain any of the phenomena such as seeing deceased relatives. After all, there are Shared Death Experiences - see for example Raymond Moody's book Glimpses of Eternity: An investigation into shared death experiences, or  his youtube talks on the topic. In these cases, we know the person's brain was active, not just the brainstem, but all the other parts too, as they were caring for or being present with someone else at their passing from this life. Clearly, having a shut-down brain is not a requirement for these SDEs.

Raymond Moody, MD, PhD: Shared Death Experiences