The News
A posting at Scientific American has taken the time to aggregate all of the scientific findings on near death experiences (NDEs). As this is a big deal for the skeptic community, I though that I would summarize the evidence for you here, for resource purposes.
The Science of Near-Death
Although only approximately 3% of Americans declare to have had a near-death experience, their seemingly paranormal components have perpetuated pseudoscience for years. Until now.
You DO NOT have to be actually dying to have them
One study showed that out of 58 patients that reported experiencing “unusual” experiences associated with NDEs, 30 of them were not actually in any danger of dying, although they thought they were.
The scientific assumption is that there is a biological underpinning to all of the effects experienced by those who have NDEs. Therefore, taking this study into consideration, we could come up with a plausible account for why people only have to think that they are dying, and not be actually in danger, to have these experiences.
Death is a scary thing. We could imagine the body having a response mechanism to such fear, such as producing chemicals in the brain that calm the individual and produce euphoric sensations, so that the individual experiences less trauma. This is an artifact of how the brain is evolutionarily wired. If we truly believe that we are going to die, with the accompanying dread, it is very possible that the brain will produce the same calming effects. This may sound like speculation, but as we will see below, it is supported by evidence.
The evidence shows that most people who are dying do not even experience a NDE. Large scale studies showing the number of people who report NDEs show that a large proportion (82%) of near-death survivors do not report near-death experiences. Furthermore, around half of the people who reported near-death experiences in these studies were not in danger of dying.
You do not have to be, in reality, dying to go through a NDE. Even if you are dying (but survive), you probably won’t have one. This contradicts the notion that NDEs are the hallmark of your spiritual passing over. This evidence speaks to a purely physical phenomenon, brought on by fear and grounded in neurology, not anything paranormal.
People who have had NDEs felt like they were dead
I’m sure they did but this experience is not even limited to them. Patients with Cotard or “walking corpse” syndrome hold the delusional belief that they are deceased. This disorder has occurred following trauma, such as during advanced stages of typhoid and multiple sclerosis, and has been linked with brain regions such as the parietal cortex and the prefrontal cortex.
If experiencing yourself as a corpse is explained by damage or alterations to your brain, a purely physical cause, it is then extremely unlikely that the exact same effect is produced by something paranormal. Why invoke an explanation that requires so many more assumptions to be true and so much more science to be overturned? Following Occam’s Razor, the natural explanation suits us just fine.
Science can explain out-of-body sensations
Quoting from Scientific American:
Out-of-body experiences are now known to be common during interrupted sleep patterns that immediately precede sleeping or waking.For instance, sleep paralysis, or the experience of feeling paralyzed while still aware of the outside world, is reported in up to 40 percent of all people and is linked with vivid dreamlike hallucinations that can result in the sensation of floating above one’s body. A 2005 study found that out-of-body experiences can be artificially triggered [emphasis mine] by stimulating the right temporoparietal junction in the brain, suggesting that confusion regarding sensory information can radically alter how one experiences one’s body.
Being that out-of-body experiences can be triggered remotely from inside your brain leads us to the obvious conclusion: it is all in your brain. You don’t even have to be dying!
People may feel like they are outside of their own bodies, but they are merely remembering memories of the room, and not experiencing it in real-time as a “floating spirit.” For example, Dr. Penny Sartori placed playing cards in obvious places on top of operating room cabinets at a hospital in Wales in 2001, while she was working as a nurse, as part of a supervised experiment. Although she’s a believer in the afterlife, and documented fifteen cases of reported out-of-body experiences by patients during her research, not one person ever reported seeing the playing cards or even knowing they were there. We would expect differently if patients were actually floating around up there.
Trauma can have severe effects on your brain. Your own sense of where you body is in space is a complex construction of sensation and cognition. When this sense is affected by trauma, such as being close to death, many “weird” things may be felt. Imagine if instead of locating “you” somewhere behind your eyes, trauma in your brain caused that location to be switched to the bottom of your feet. This would surely feel “out-of-body” and go beyond anything we have ever experienced before. This confusion is at the root of this experience.
Science can explain the sight of loved ones during NDEs
Again, quoting from Scientific American:
A variety of explanations might also account for reports by those dying of meeting the deceased. Parkinson’s disease patients, for example, have reported visions of ghosts, even monsters. The explanation? Parkinson’s involves abnormal functioning of dopamine, a neurotransmitter that can evoke hallucinations [emphasis mine]. And when it comes to the common experience of reliving moments from one’s life, one culprit might be the locus coeruleus, a midbrain region that releases noradrenaline, a stress hormone one would expect to be released in high levels during trauma. The locus coeruleus is highly connected with brain regions that mediate emotion and memory, such as the amygdala and hypothalamus.
During an NDE you may be “seeing” loved ones, but the evidence shows that these meetings are constructs of memory evoked during stress. As in the other explanations, if a chemical in your brain can produce the exact same effects, the paranormal explanation is no longer plausible.
The benefit of seeing your loved ones or reliving your life is the calming effect that it produces. Evolution, as one possible explanation, may have selected for this so that during times of high stress you brain secretes hormones and chemicals in order to bring about this calm. It makes sense, paranormal ghost contacting does not.
Near-death experiences are not unique
Research has found that recreational drugs produce similar effects as NDEs. Drugs such as ketamine can also trigger out-of-body experiences and hallucinations. Ketamine affects the brain’s opioid system, which can naturally become active even without drugs when animals are under attack, suggesting trauma might set off this aspect of near-death experiences.
Insights like this again lead us to the conclusion that our brain is producing certain chemicals that give us these experiences.
But I saw a bright white light at the end of a tunnel!
Tunnel vision can occur when blood and oxygen flow is depleted to the eye, as can happen with the extreme fear and oxygen loss that are both common to dying. This sensation is also linked to having high levels of carbon dioxide in the brain, which is why many people who have not been in danger of dying have experienced this tunnel vision.
Conclusions
Quoting Scientific American:
Altogether, scientific evidence suggests that all features of the near-death experience have some basis in normal brain function gone awry [emphasis mine]. Moreover, the very knowledge of the lore regarding near-death episodes might play a crucial role in experiencing them—a self-fulfilling prophecy.
It makes no sense that people don’t have to be dying to have a NDE, or that not every dying person experiences an NDE, or that drugs and chemicals exactly mimic NDEs, or that brain trauma produces similar effects, if the supernatural “crossing-over” theory is correct.
We have a scientific explanation for every component of the near-death experience. But this does not diminish its importance to us, as the experience itself has had profound, life-changing results on people. However, proceeding with the debunked notion that a near-death experience shows you the “other side” or Heaven or the afterlife is to proceed in ignorance of science.
It is surely an interesting phenomenon, and plays to our emotions and our beliefs, but is absolutely of this world.
Science-Based Life 
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I once had similar to NDE but i was a kid not aware that this could be death my brother suddnly just tried to chock my neck i was not even aware of that i just saw him coming and then i was calmly walking with a daemon like in lord of the rings and was not feeling anything bad etc but then i saw my family and started to loose his hand and as i loosen his hand i awake , i dont know how to judge it?
It’s kind of ridiculous how some will believe Scientific American’s different explanations for just about every symptom of a NDEs, rather than considering the possibility of spirituality :)
What’s ridiculous is believing something based on a gut feeling. It’s not like we haven’t considered spirituality as a possibility, we have looked into that and found no evidence to support it.
This once again proves that “spiritual experiences” are not actually that, they are happening in your imagination. If there was something supernatural going on, those people should have been able to see those cards, i.e. gain new information. But all they ever see is stuff that fits what they already know or believe to be true.
Why would it be ridiculous to believe in something based on a gut feeling? Also, it’s not that you have found no evidence to support it. If anything you found evidence to support it. Because if you would have found no evidence, you would not have been able to reproduce NDE, without being NDE. For example, if we say that death is a illusion, then it makes totally sense that you can have NDE without beeing near to death… Why would you say that having hallucinations is not supernatural? I mean I don’t really care what you call it. The fact is. Those things happen. Repeatable. And you can study them. So if anything this article proofs more then it disproofs. Thanks very much. ;)
I think you’re missing the point here. The possibility of spirituality still exists. Science is only searching for the truth. Believing something just because you want to doesn’t help you understand spirituality. Eliminating the falsehoods is the only way to truly understand.
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Hi Kyle.
I learned from a documentary on the subject that there are more than 30 verified examples of blind people experiencing NDE’s,and gaining temporary sight during the experience. How is this explained?
Hey Simen,
Well, people who are blind can still have visual stimulation in their brains. For example, just like the rest of us, blind people still dream and “see” things. The scientific argument is that some sort of brain trauma is causing a hallucination during a NDE. Blind people who “gain temporary sight” may be having one of these hallucinations. Are there any examples of blind individuals being able to see things in their immediately environment during an NDE? That would be and interesting case. However, even people who report “floating outside of their bodies” during an NDE are experiencing only memories of their environment, as investigations to see if these “floating” individuals can pick out playing cards placed around the room, for example, have shown.
I’d also like to point out that we’re now discovering that humanity has the capacity for genetic memory. There was recent study that showed children who come from people who suffered “traumatic” and “life changing” events, gave birth to children with a higher ratio of depression, anxiety, as well as other mental health issues. Meaning to say .. The Sins of the Father REALLY are visited onto the son. That being said, do not discount the brain of blind people, possibly calling up images that were gathered by a parent or some other ancestor.
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People who are born blind only dream in touch, sound, smell and taste due to the fact that they have no point of reference. But they are able to see for the first time while clinically dead ! Science has not addressed this evidence, the reductionist theories just do not hold up ! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5HbtoX3Q5OI
You point out that blind people can only “see” via their other senses. How would this change when they die, and how could you demonstrate that a dead person has vision similar to your own?
I think this article by Dr Ken Ring who did a 2 year research of NDEs in the blind will answer the questions you ask. http://www.netplaces.com/evidence-of-the-afterlife/science-seeks-an-explanation/near-death-experiences-of-the-blind-dr-kenneth-ring-and-sharon-cooper-phd.htm
And how does he answer the fact that these visions could be generated via hallucinating and that you don’t have to actually die to have an NDE?
Because most of the subjects were clinically dead, and had no brain activity. And has been said, the subjects had never seen from birth, and can’t hallucinate visually even when they have normal brain activity. This evidence has never been addressed by reductionist science, and no satisfactory or plausible cause given.
Again, if the subjects were dead, how do you know they were “seeing” at all?
Exactly, because their consciousness continued, there was no death, in fact it was life after life, we don’t die life continues.
You realize that “materialist science” cannot test your claim because you can test exactly zero of what you have said.
Yes materialist science is out of its depth, due to the fact that it is not dealing with material. But we are lucky to have some very clever new scientists who have open minds and see the need for a new paradigm shift in expanding the way science can research and investigate NDEs and consciousness.
Material science can only explain the material.
All those explanations work for particular circumstances. People have NDE’s when they are not overdosing on drugs, suffering from particular diseases nor having their brain stimulated externally. To be honest, you sound like you really really need to find anything that might support your theory and debunk NDE’s.
I think you should have a non-drug/disease/stimulus-induced NDE and then debunk. Until then you are only guessing at what you are trying to deny.
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When I had my first NDE, the first thing I was looking at was the world quickly disappearing from under me as I was zooming away like a rocket into outer space