Today Show Sybill Shepherd and NDEs

[JuliaL]

What I simply do not do is think non human things have human qualities.

Could you be more specific as to what constitutes the 'human qualities' non human things don't have?
I find the statement probably false but can't really say. I suppose it could be a tautology as only humans have human qualities; only ducks have duck qualities etc. If we're talking about similar, analogous qualities; e.g. hair and live bearing is shared with mammals, then I have a hard time thinking of any qualities that non-humans don't share at least in part.

[Brian37]

What? This isn't hard. You don't treat an orange like a diamond, one is alive the other is not. The fact both contain the atoms does not mean they function the same way. Waves by themselves do not operate at the macro level which is the collective state humans end up in.

There is a few steps between wave and particle and then more to atom to molecule. Making the mental mistake of assuming cognition in human life can exist merely as a wave would be like assuming the gas you pump out of the nozzle suddenly becomes an entire car. You cant skip steps to become the car.

Even with computers, yes you can simulate algorithms to SIMULATE sub atomic activity, but that simulation is not a real entity itself. They have computers that simulate things like hurricanes and tornados, but the program itself is not a living thing.

Otherwise you'd have me believe that there is some cosmic Bill Gates and we are 1s and 0s. It would still as an idea suffer from infinite regress. And also it would make that "programmer" even if you didn't call it a god, an immoral fuck for allowing what we live in.

In QM they do use words like "connected" and "simulated" and "communicate" and "information", but just like theists, si fi wooers jump the gun not understanding that they are twisting what the scientists are saying. Words far to often are taken as a licence to interject some cognition to explain all this. It is the same mental mistake that theists make with words like "law" they stupidly say "lawgiver".

Science is freaky enough without sticking in a cognition in as a requirement OF ANY KIND.

[Neo-Scholastic]

No measurable brain activity occurs after 20 to 30 seconds of cardiac arrest, yet a small percentage of people report seeing and hearing things that actually occurred up to 3 minutes after cardiac arrest. The fact that some people can have complex cognitive functioning when cerebral activity is absent should at least give pause to those that think electro-chemical reactions are solely responsible for consciousness.

This comes from the most recent large scale study of NDEs:

AWARE Study 2014

The article mentions nothing about afterlife or consciousness surviving death, so I'm not going to say that it implies something it doesn't say. What the article does suggest is that NDE phenomena defy all mind-brain identity theories of consciousness. They are not even remotely comparable to delusions or hallucinations in terms of their clarity, complexity, and profound life-altering after effects.

[Pizza]

No measurable brain activity occurs after 20 to 30 seconds of cardiac arrest, yet a small percentage of people report seeing and hearing things that actually occurred up to 3 minutes after cardiac arrest.

Okay, a small percentage merely claim to have had experiences when their brain didn't have measurable activity? That's not impressive.

[JuliaL]

No measurable brain activity occurs after 20 to 30 seconds of cardiac arrest, yet a small percentage of people report seeing and hearing things that actually occurred up to 3 minutes after cardiac arrest. The fact that some people can have complex cognitive functioning when cerebral activity is absent should at least give pause to those that think electro-chemical reactions are responsible for consciousness.

Mybold

Wha? 20 to 30 seconds(???)
Um, no

http://firstaid.about.com/od/cpr/f/How-L...Arrest.htm

Question: How long does brain activity last after cardiac arrest?

A reader asks: A friend told me that when you have a cardiac arrest, within 20 seconds all brain activity is lost due to lack of blood flow and it doesn't start again until the heart starts beating. Is this true?

Answer: Close, but not exactly.

The common medical understanding is that cardiac arrest victims become unconscious within 20 seconds of the loss of blood flow (heart stops). That's not quite the same thing as losing "all brain activity." It just means the brain is incapable of keeping you awake.

All brain activity is thought to be over by about 3-4 minutes from the moment the heart stops, which is one reason why we want to start CPR as quickly as possible. I

And some areas shut down earlier, some later. This leads to aberrant consciousness. Like, visual processing is very sensitive to brain blood flow leading to things like tunnel vision in G-LOC. Or, wonder of wonders, a tunnel during NDE malfunctions. And every cardiac arrest event is unique varying in speed of onset and degree of reduction of blood flow. No doubt, there follows a variety in the patterns of hypoxic injury and attendant hallucinatory experiences.

[Brian37]

No measurable brain activity occurs after 20 to 30 seconds of cardiac arrest, yet a small percentage of people report seeing and hearing things that actually occurred up to 3 minutes after cardiac arrest. The fact that some people can have complex cognitive functioning when cerebral activity is absent should at least give pause to those that think electro-chemical reactions are solely responsible for consciousness.

This comes from the most recent large scale study of NDEs:

AWARE Study 2014

The article mentions nothing about afterlife or consciousness surviving death, so I'm not going to say that it implies something it doesn't say. What the article does suggest is that NDE phenomena defy all mind-brain identity theories of consciousness. They are not even remotely comparable to delusions or hallucinations in terms of their clarity, complexity, and profound life-altering after effects.

Bad methodology. If we are separate from our brains and not simply our brains in motion, then it would not matter that our brains are physically in tact. Unless the study included 4 day old dead bodies, someone just decapitated, then there is no real control groups. In tact brains still can be damaged. And it still does not mean that no brain activity means dead, even with the brain your juice could also be flying under the radar. Clinical death can also mean merely a misdiagnosis on the doctors part, and or the equipment not picking up the vitals.

You wont get those same reports from vegetables where only the stem of the brain is functioning. They know this because they do pull that person back, simply not fully. If that were the case you could think and react only with your brain stem as well as if you had no damage at all.

Nothing "profound" about having an "oh shit" moment. Evolution drives us to continue, so when we go through that shutdown that is evolution last act of desperation, if you don't come back from that window, you stay dead. But yea, you come that close of course that kind of threat is may cause some to rethink. But like I said, I knew an atheist whose vitals could not be detected for a while after having a heart attack, they pulled him back, but he said he didn't remember a thing. I am sure some aspects of his life changed, maybe diet, spending more time with loved ones, but he still stayed an atheist.

All that is saying is people report things and change after they report those things. It still does not prove that we are separate from our brains. Doctors can fall for it too, and if some are motivated enough by greed they can get funding to concoct a fake "study" and have their samples already influenced by what their social norms were. So when they go through a heart stop or major brain event and get pulled from it, those samples already believed in it before they became subjects.

Electro chemical, no not just that, it also counts what their DNA is, and their lifetime of environmental input is including their religions and superstitions. There psychology also matters.

Ask a million Muslims if they believe in Allah, you might find different groups sure, but if someone is already pre disposed to the idea it is going to be easy for them to claim it after the fact.

Oh and that "study" talks about cardiac arrest which is the heart, not the brain. When your brain is deprived of oxygen it will suddenly dump like a file cabinet and that will cause your senses to mix and misfire, that process is what is causing those false sensations. They still are not real.

[Neo-Scholastic]

A Q & A about CPR on a first aid website doesn't compare to a peer-reviewed study with over 31 contributors.

Here is an exact quote from the paper:

While some investigators have hypothesized there may be a brief surge of electrical activity after cardiac standstill, in contrast to anesthesia typically there is no measurable brain function within seconds after cardiac standstill. This ‘flatlined’ isoelectric brain state which occurs with CA [cardiac arrest] onset usually continues throughout CPR since insufficient cerebral blood flow (CBF) is achieved to meet cerebral metabolic requirements during conventional CPR. However it was estimated our patient maintained awareness for a number of minutes into CA. While certain deep coma states may lead to a selective absence of cortical electrical activity in the presence of deeper brain activity, this seems unlikely during CA as this condition is associated with global rather than selective cortical hypoperfusion as evidenced by the loss of brain stem function. Thus, within a model that assumes a causative relationship between cortical activity and consciousness the occurrence of mental processes and the ability to accurately describe events during CA as occurred in our verified case of VA when cerebral function is ordinarily absent or at best severely impaired is perplexing. This is particularly the case as reductions in CBF typically lead to delirium followed by coma, rather than an accurate and lucid mental state.

(my bold) The results of the study do not support your uncritical acceptance of the defunct narrative about NDEs being the result of oxygen deprivation and hallucinations.

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No measurable brain activity occurs after 20 to 30 seconds of cardiac arrest, yet a small percentage of people report seeing and hearing things that actually occurred up to 3 minutes after cardiac arrest.

Okay, a small percentage merely claim to have had experiences when their brain didn't have measurable activity? That's not impressive.

It only takes one white raven to prove not all ravens are black.

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Oh and that "study" talks about cardiac arrest which is the heart, not the brain.

When presented with real hard scientific evidence, suddenly you dismiss it as if it weren't real. That makes you as blatantly anti-science as any young earth creationist. Worse actually.

[Brian37]

there is no measurable brain function within seconds after cardiac standstill.

Um no, individuals vary case by case as JuliaL said. Go back and read her post.

And you need to read your own quote "MEASURABLE" which means if the doctor misreads you, or the equipment isn't used properly you may not find those vitals. And some doctors flat out lie because they want the attention.

It still stands that once your cells are beyond repair beyond that window, you do not come back. The misdiagnosis or the window being stretched does not mean you came back from the beyond. That is why it is called "near". Just like you cant be half pregnant.

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No measurable brain activity occurs after 20 to 30 seconds of cardiac arrest, yet a small percentage of people report seeing and hearing things that actually occurred up to 3 minutes after cardiac arrest. The fact that some people can have complex cognitive functioning when cerebral activity is absent should at least give pause to those that think electro-chemical reactions are responsible for consciousness.

Mybold

Wha? 20 to 30 seconds(???)
Um, no

http://firstaid.about.com/od/cpr/f/How-L...Arrest.htm

Question: How long does brain activity last after cardiac arrest?

A reader asks: A friend told me that when you have a cardiac arrest, within 20 seconds all brain activity is lost due to lack of blood flow and it doesn't start again until the heart starts beating. Is this true?

Answer: Close, but not exactly.

The common medical understanding is that cardiac arrest victims become unconscious within 20 seconds of the loss of blood flow (heart stops). That's not quite the same thing as losing "all brain activity." It just means the brain is incapable of keeping you awake.

All brain activity is thought to be over by about 3-4 minutes from the moment the heart stops, which is one reason why we want to start CPR as quickly as possible. I

And some areas shut down earlier, some later. This leads to aberrant consciousness. Like, visual processing is very sensitive to brain blood flow leading to things like tunnel vision in G-LOC. Or, wonder of wonders, a tunnel during NDE malfunctions. And every cardiac arrest event is unique varying in speed of onset and degree of reduction of blood flow. No doubt, there follows a variety in the patterns of hypoxic injury and attendant hallucinatory experiences.

The cool thing about real science is that they are learning to slow down all body activity by cooling the brain to stretch that window. There have been cases where someone has been unconscious in cold ice lakes where the 4 min max was passed, but that is because the body functions slowed down because of the cold.

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Tell you what Chad, since you don't like my responses, I'll tell you and even those "doctors" or any of the samples in that "study" they can win money from James Randi, he is offering up prize money for proof of the paranormal. I would say surviving death beyond that window would be unnatural, not normal.

[Surgenator]

Bad methodology. If we are separate from our brains and not simply our brains in motion, then it would not matter that our brains are physically in tact. Unless the study included 4 day old dead bodies, someone just decapitated, then there is no real control groups. In tact brains still can be damaged. And it still does not mean that no brain activity means dead, even with the brain your juice could also be flying under the radar. Clinical death can also mean merely a misdiagnosis on the doctors part, and or the equipment not picking up the vitals.

The methodology used in the study was not bad. They installed cards with specific shape that can only be viewed if you had an out-of-body experience. It was unfortunate that the only two people to be able to claim such an out-of-body experience didn't have their CA in one of these rooms.

The paper is consistent with some people able to be aware of their surroundings for about 3-4 minutes after a CA. The fact they have experiences during CA should not surprise anyone. So people who want to use NDE as proof of an afterlife, souls, spirits, etc, are misinterpreting the findings.

[Pizza]

It only takes one white raven to prove not all ravens are black.

You didn't see white ravens, you read a study that said their is a small number of people out of a sample group claiming to have see white ravens. There's strong disanalogy here.