Dying to know the truth

Dying to know the truth: visions of a dying brain, or false memories?





The nature of mind-brain relationships and the possibility of life-after-death are some of the most profound issues relating to mankind’s place in the universe. The report in today’s Lancet by Pim van Lommel and colleagues of near-death experiences (NDEs) in survivors of a cardiac arrest provides intriguing data that are relevant to these issues. Theirs is the second prospective study of this type, the first being a smaller-scale study done in Southampton by Parnia and colleagues. Both groups of researchers think that their findings indicate a need for radical revision of current assumptions about the relationship between consciousness and brain function. van Lommel and colleagues ask, “How could a clear consciousness outside one’s body be experienced at the moment that the brain no longer functions during a period of clinical death with flat EEG?”. But the truth is that nobody knows when the NDEs reported by these patients actually occurred. Was it really during the period of flat EEG or might they have occurred as the patients rapidly entered or gradually recovered from that state?







Elsewhere, Parnia and Fenwick have reviewed NDEs during cardiac arrest and have considered the latter possibility. They think that such an explanation is unlikely, mainly because of anecdotal reports of patients accurately recalling events that took place during the actual cardiac arrest, apparently during the out-of-body experience (OBE) phase of the NDE. An OBE can be defined as an experience in which a person seems to perceive the world from a location outside the physical body. One such anecdote was reported to van Lommel and colleagues during the pilot phase of their study by a coronary-care-unit nurse. Unfortunately, they do not report whether any attempt was made to corroborate details with the patient.







Blackmore lists several alternative non-paranormal explanations as to why people may sometimes seem to accurately describe events occurring during their NDEs. These include “information available at the time, prior knowledge, fantasy or dreams, lucky guesses, and information from the remaining senses. Then there is selective memory for correct details, incorporation of details learned between the NDE and giving an account of it, and the tendency to tell a good story”.







Having said that, the OBE component of the NDE offers probably the best hope of launching any kind of serious attack on current concepts of the relationship between consciousness and brain function.







Recent psychological studies have shown conclusively that simply imagining that one has had experiences that had in fact never been encountered will lead to the development of false memories for those experiences. Interestingly, susceptibility to false memories correlates with tendency to dissociate which in turn correlates with the tendency to report NDEs. The prospective nature of the studies by van Lommel and colleagues and Parnia and colleagues is to be welcomed as a major advance over previous retrospective approaches.






Christopher C French
Anomalistic Psychology Research Unit, Goldsmiths College, University of
London, London SE14 6NW, UK
(e-mail: c.french@gold.ac.uk)