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Doubts about near-death study
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LEXINGTON, UNITED STATES. “Near death” has biological basis” was the headline on the BBC News website on 11 April, reporting a study, published in “Neurology”, on near-death experiences (NDEs). “Sleep-wake mix-up may lead to near-death sensation”, reported Reuters. And the American ABC News website claimed: “Neuroscientist finds possible explanation of near-death experiences”.
But those involved in NDE research insist that this study, conducted by Dr Kevin Nelson, does not offer an explanation nor does it address many of the issues around such experiences which particularly interest researchers.
Nelson, a neurophysiologist at the University of Kentucky, Lexington, compared the sleep patterns of 55 people who have reported unusual sensations during a near-death experience to those of 55 people who have not.
For the purpose of the study, a near-death experience was defined as “a time during a life-threatening episode of danger, such as a car accident or heart attack when a person experienced a variety of feelings, including a sense of being outside of one’s physical body, unusual alertness, seeing an intense light, and a feeling of peace”.
He and his colleagues discovered that the near-death study group had a significantly higher rate of a sleep disorder known as rapid eye movement (REM) intrusion, which causes one of the most active dream states of sleep to intrude into wakefulness, producing feelings of paralysis, leg muscle weakness or sounds others cannot hear.
Whereas 60 per cent of those who experienced NDEs displayed this tendency, only 24 per cent of the non-experiencers were shown to have it.
Nelson theorises that, as some people come out of unconsciousness, some mental wires may be crossed. But, describing his study as “spiritually neutral”, he says his study was looking to explain how NDEs occurred, not why, and he was anxious to emphasise that it “does not impact on the personal meaning of these experiences.”
Those whose involvement in NDE research far exceeds that of Dr Nelson are likely to be critical of the media’s interpretation of his findings, if not of the study itself. It has already been claimed that the questions asked of the subjects in both groups were extremely ambiguous, and that the control group consisted of Dr Nelson’s friends and colleagues.
There have also been well-documented cases in which near-death experiences have occurred while a person has been brain dead. We’ll return to this subject as and when NDE researchers publish their comments on Dr Nelson’s study.
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Posted on Monday, September 04, 2006
Category: Afterlife
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