Repetition seems to be all he’s got.
No, my point is that this event contradicts what we would expect from a material explanation of consciousness.
Just two questions:
- Do you find that this event aligns with what we know about the brain?
- Could this event be expected based on a material explanation of consciousness?
Firstly we don’t know that to be the case, that is your interpretation, it is an objective fact that material explanations are possible, we have no objective evidence that anything supernatural is possible. Since our understanding of consciousness is incomplete, we can’t say there isn’t a material explanation we are currently unaware of.
I don’t trust anecdotal claims, obviously, and the other medical claims you originally made were challenged by existing medical knowledge, but ultimately this story does not objectively support any conclusion.
Again you’re talking about anecdotal claims, the word “event” does not seem apropos, and I have no expectations, either there is sufficient objective evidence to support a conclusion, or there is not, this falls into the latter, since there is no objective evidence anything supernatural occurred or is possible. It certainly doesn’t objectively evidence an afterlife, which was the thread topic you originally posted it in.
No, it doesn’t. NDE is the same thing as ‘Phantom Limb Syndrom’ When a brain experiences an absence of impulses from a body part, it is a known fact, that the brain will reproduce that same input and create a phantom limb. The person experiencing the phantom limb may reach for things with the missing limb, try to walk with a missing limb or experience pain with a missing limb.
When the brain no longer receives information from the body, it creates a phantom body. This is the core process in astral projection. During the night your body naturally separates from your brain. If this were not the case, you would dream about running and then wake 5 miles away from your bed.
When people do wake or gain wakeful consciousness, they experience ‘sleep paralysis.’ This is the sensation of being away and paralyzed. The person is consciously awake but unable to move their body.
In the OBE the body is asleep and the brain generates a phantom body or 'Astral Projection" This is a brain state. Anyone can experience an OBE with practice. Many people do. There are instructions, most immersed in unsubstantiated woo woo, all over the internet. Anyone can experience this with just a little effort, and no one needs the woo woo. The simple goal is to be conscious or in a semi-wakeful state when the body goes to sleep, enters sleep paralysis, and stops sending information to the brain.
OBE is a simple brain state that anyone can achieve with practice.
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…without measurable brain activity…
Brain stem remains active even in the absence of brainwave activity, I have explained this and linked the medical literature several times.
Note, when I pointed this out you claimed brain activity was impossible with that procedure, but when I asked you to cite some objective evidence that specifically and unequivocally said this, you offered none, just repeated your claim. I could not find any explicit assertion in the literature you originally linked that made that assertion either.
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If you do not have measurable brain activity, you are dead, No one has ever been revived from a state of no measurable brain activity. Brain death is a legal definition of death. It is the complete stopping of all brain functions and cannot be reversed. It means that, because of extreme and serious trauma or injury to the brain, the body’s blood supply to the brain is blocked, and the brain dies. Brain death is death.
Without any brain activity, the expectancy for a system to continue functioning without a brain is anywhere from 1 to 10 days.
You have no medical evidence of a person being brought back to life after being brain-dead. It does not happen according to all medical literature.
***"## Brain death is different from a vegetative state
The difference between brain death and a vegetative state (a disorder of consciousness), which can happen after extensive brain damage, is that it’s possible to recover from a vegetative state, but brain death is permanent.
Someone in a vegetative state still has a functioning brain stem, which means:
- some form of consciousness may exist
- breathing unaided is usually possible
- there’s a slim chance of recovery because the brain stem’s core functions may be unaffected***
It is a perfectly reasonable assumption to believe that a brain with no blood flow and that has been cold for 45 minutes is not producing any brainstem activity. After all, this condition is commonly referred to as “clinical death.” Unfortunately, I have not found any specific reference explicitly stating that “no brainstem activity has been observed” to definitively resolve this debate.
However, in my research, I found that severe hypothermia (below 28°C) can cause effects similar to brain death, meaning that breathing must be maintained artificially, the heart stops beating, and so on. These are the functions controlled by the brainstem. In such cases, doctors must verify that the brain cannot recover by observing severe brain damage or other factors to confirm clinical death.
The procedure we discussed occurs at temperatures between 25°C and 20°C, so it is a reasonable assumption to conclude that brainstem activity would not be present in this state. In short, this represents an induced clinical death from which recovery is possible because there is no brain damage, not because brainstem activity does not stop—it likely ceases due to hypothermia.
Nevertheless, the presence of brainstem activity would not make a significant difference because brainstem functions could still explain the observed effects in the case we discussed.
There is some context you need to know. In the thread “What happens after we die?” I discussed Pam Reynolds’ NDE, which is certainly fascinating.
If you read that, you will understand why I mentioned “without brain activity.”
Music is explainable by being able to hear through the earplugs, and by the earplugs not being capable of blocking out the drill noise into her skull (it was a drill, not a ‘bone saw’ in the way you might imagine one.) She doesn’t appear to have claimed that she saw the bone drill, but that she heard it. Here’s a pretty thorough examination of the case:
https://digital.library.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metadc461684/m1/1/
CONCLUDING COMMENTS:
The well-known experience of Pam Reynolds is extraordinary and appears superficially to be wonderous proof of the separable nature of the conscious mind. Yet, careful examination of the facts of Sobom’s 1998, excellent report and details of the procedure published by Spetzler et. al. (1988) reveal the nature of this experience to be different than it initially appears. This discussion of how she could hear four episodes of veridical sounds, speech, and music, is but one aspect of the explanation of her experience. As stated earlier, other aspects have been published in earlier articles. So, her experience, while wonderous, is one whose explanation is rooted in the functioning of the human mind, the effects of a surgical technique, the mental manifestation of drugs used to provide general anesthesia, and possibly inadequate monitoring. Even so, the experience, while explicable with natural phenomena, does reveal many facets of the functioning of the human mind during anesthesia and surgery, as well as the deepest hopes and fears of one person, Pam Reynolds.
Why do we need to do your Google searches for you? Do your fingers work? Do you know how to find research articles? Do you plan on remaining ignorant for the rest of your life? The information is out there and it is right at the tips of your fingers. “Pam Reynolds Debunked” will take you to dozens of qualified research studies into her surgery and her assertions.
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Ah so the claim was pure assumption, and you cannot evidence it, and since your ironginal citation said no brain wave activity, and I cited medical literature stating unequivocally that brain stem activity continued even in the absence of brain wave activity, no it was not and is not a reasonable assumption. You may base beliefs on biased assumptions, I cannot.
I have explained half a dozen times or more that clinical death is the cessation of the cardiovascular system, or cardiac arrest, and how this differs both medically and legally from brain death, which is the cessation of all brain activity, including brain stem activity, and the medical citation I offered stated no one recovered from the latter, but medical science has kept people alive during cardiac arrest, a few of whom have presented anecdotal claims.
That does resolve it, the medical literature easily explains this as possible, and the claims are anecdotal anway. What conclusions are you suggesting we draw from this anecdotal story?
No it isn’t, I don’t base beliefs on unevidenced assumptions that are contradicted by medical facts, and those state that brain stem activity is possible in the complete absence of brain wave activity, which was all the medical facts stated in your citation.
- What observed effects, a patient catatonic under anaesthetic?
- Brain stem activity means this was clinical death, not brain death.
- The claims made by the patient were a) while her brain was still alive, and b) anecdotal.
Read what @Cognostic posted, you could offer no evidence that the patient in that story was brain dead, and you have just admitted it is pure assumption on your part. The facts support no conclusions, beyond a patient made some anecdotal claims to have imagines things, something the medical literature accepts is possible in this case.
Thank you for your report. It prompted me to do more research, and I was able to confirm that the brainstem also ceases functioning during this procedure (as I have correctly deduced all along).
It seems you are trying to close this topic as quickly as possible, perhaps because it causes you some discomfort. You described it as if it has been perfectly explained and there is no longer any mystery, but that is not true. The opinions of some people are not evidence; this is not how things work. More importantly, nobody seems able to offer a convincing explanation—not even the paper you cited, which has only 13 citations…
You’ve shared a series of opinions and then used them to claim “case closed” because these opinions suggest that a possible explanation might exist. Let me tell you, this is not the same level of rigor that science demands. And not everyone agrees with these explanations. This is what I call the “science of the gaps.”
Here is a link; please read pages 47 and 48. Then we can revisit this discussion.
That link has only 13 pages?
Look at the page numbers.
On page 48 I read this:
" Pam stated that she was vividly able to
see Dr. Spetzler use the bone saw to make an
incision in her scalp, along with overhearing
the nurse say that the vein on her left side
was too small so she would need to use the
vein on the right. One interesting thing about
this is that, although technically Pam was not
brain dead yet and was only under general
anesthesia at this point, her eyes were taped
shut and she had speakers in her ears
delivering clicking sounds to measure her
brainstem activity (Greyson, 2009; 2010;
Holden, 2006; Sabom, 1998)."
I saw nothing in there supporting you claim that she was brian dead, and found a passage stating the exact opposite, her claims remain anecdotal.
Quote where it says this please?
- 11:05am: Cardiac arrest was induced
and Pam’s EEG of her outer brain went
flat. The EEG of her inner “brainstem
function weakened as the clicks from her
ear speakers produced lower and lower
spikes on the monitoring electrogram”
(Sabom, 1998; p. 43). - 11:25am: Pam’s core body temperature
reached 60 degrees. The clicks from the
speakers in her ears no longer elicited a
response and there was zero brain wave
activity. Then, “the head of the operating
table was tilted up, the cardiopulmonary
bypass machine was turned off, and the
blood was drained from Pam’s body like
oil from a car” (Sabom, 1998; p. 43). Dr.
Spetzler then repaired the aneurysm and
began heating Pam’s body back up.
How many times are you going to falsely equate no brain wave activity with no brain stem activity? It says brainstem function weakened, it does not state there was none, and very specifically says she was not brain dead.
Your claim was untrue, and the claims the patient made remain anecdotal, and the patient’s brain was, as has been stated, alive.
No you certainly are not, not from that link.
The clicks are used to measure the brainstem; this is stated very clearly here:
And then …
> no longer elicited a response and there was zero brain wave
(Remember, it measures the brainstem.)
How many times are you going to falsely equate no brain wave activity with no brain stem activity? It says brainstem function weakened, it does not state there was none,
and your link very specifically says she was not brain dead.
Cite your source: That is not a fact from anything I have read. Your report was March 2011. The link I gave you specifically addresses it. And was compiled about the research done by your paper around October of the same year. The study I posted is an evaluation of the research supposedly done by the paper you posted.
" So, her experience, while wonderous, is one whose explanation is rooted in the functioning of the human mind, the effects of a surgical technique, the mental manifestation of drugs used to provide general anesthesia, and possibly inadequate monitoring.
It’s called a follow-up study and also what we rely on in science “Independent Verification.” The original story is not verified.,
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