Tópico: As "Experiências Quase-Morte" seriam sonhos ?

[APODman]

Are near-death experiences a dream?

People who have near-death experiences more likely to find REM sleep intruding on reality.

Jacqueline Ruttimann   


People who have had near-death experiences are more likely to mix up dreams and reality than those who have not, researchers say.

At times of extreme danger or trauma, many people report out-of-body experiences, seeing intense lights, or a feeling of peace. "Near-death experiences are more common than people realize," says neurophysiologist Kevin Nelson of the University of Kentucky, Lexington, lead author of the study published in Neurology1.

Some studies have shown that electrical stimulation to the brain can trigger aspects of near-death experiences (see 'Electrodes trigger out-of-body experience'). Drugs can do the same: ketamine, a horse tranquilizer and illegal recreational drug, can cause many of these symptoms. But spontaneous near-death experiences remain unexplained.

Nelson began investigating the phenomenon after reading of near-death experiences in which patients' arms and legs were paralysed. He knew that some people experience similar paralysis just before sleeping or just after waking. "A light bulb went on in my head," he says.

   
Dream on

Via the Near Death Experience Research Foundation, based in Federal Way, Washington, Nelson found 55 people who reported near-death experiences after traumatic incidents such as car accidents or heart surgery. He also interviewed an equal number who had not had any such experiences.

Of those who reported near-death experiences, 60% also reported having had at least one incident where they felt sleep and wakefulness blurred together. For those without a near-death experience the figure was 24%.

Such blurred periods can include sleep paralysis. Others report visual or auditory hallucinations. Such incidents can occur when some aspects of sleep's dreaming, or rapid eye movement (REM) state, intrudes into wakefulness.

In REM sleep, muscles can lose their tone or tension, inducing a feeling of paralysis. The visual activity during this state may also explain the feeling of being surrounded by light.


REM generator

REM sleep occurs in the brainstem — the lower part of the brain that attaches to the spinal cord and controls most basic life functions. "Ironically, this most primitive part of the brain may generate experiences that for some is the definition of being human," says Nelson.


He hopes to further investigate near-death experiences by studying people who have had out-of-body experiences independent of any trauma.

Nelson doesn't rule out the possibility that other psychological or spiritual factors may also play a role. "I'm interested in how this experience is generated. That's as far as I take it," says Nelson. As to the ultimate meaning of these experiences, he will leave that question for others to answer.

fonte: http://www.nature.com/news/2006/060410/full/060410-2.html


[ ]´s

[Vito]

Mande para Vitor Moura...

[VideoMaker]

Mande para Vitor Moura...

 Fala Vitor ! esse é um texto do site do Moura .

 near-death experience (NDE)
One study found that 8 to 12 percent of 344 patients resuscitated after suffering cardiac arrest had NDEs and about 18% remembered some part of what happened when they were clinically dead (Lancet, December 15, 2001).*

The term 'near-death experience', or NDE, refers to a wide array of experiences reported by some people who have nearly died or who have thought they were going to die. There is no single shared experience reported by those who have had NDEs. Even the experiences of most interest to parapsychologists--such as the “mystical experience,” the “light at the end of the tunnel” experience, the “life review” experience, and the out-of-body experience (OBE)--rarely occur together in near-death experiences. However, the term NDE is most often used to refer to an OBE occurring while near death.

Two M.D.s who have popularized the idea that the NDE is proof of life after death are Elizabeth Kübler-Ross and Raymond Moody, who coined the expression 'near-death experience'. The former is well known for her work on death and dying. The latter has written several books on the subject of life after life, and has compiled a list of features he considers to be typical of the near-death experience. According to Moody, the typical NDE includes a buzzing or ringing noise, a sense of blissful peace, a feeling of floating out of one’s body and observing it from above, moving through a tunnel into a bright light, meeting dead people (saints, Christ, angels, and the like); seeing one’s life pass before one’s eyes; and finding it all so wonderful that one doesn’t want to return to one’s body. This composite experience is based on interpretations of testimonials and anecdotes from doctors, nurses, and patients. Characteristic of Moody’s work is the glaring omission of cases that don’t fit his hypothesis. If Moody is to be believed, no one near death has had a horrifying experience. Yet, "according to some estimates as many as 15 percent of NDEs are hellish" (Blackmore 2004: 362).

There are numerous reports of bad NDE trips involving tortures by elves, giants, demons, etc. Some parapsychologists take these good and bad NDE trips as evidence of heaven and hell. They believe that some souls actually leave their bodies and go to the other world for a time before returning to their bodies. If so, then what is one to conclude from the fact that most people near death do not experience either the heavenly or the diabolical? Is that fact good evidence that there is no afterlife or that most people end up in some sort of limbo? Such reasoning is on par with supposing that dreams in which one appears to oneself to be outside of one’s bed are to be taken as evidence of the soul or mind actually leaving the body during sleep, as some New Age Gnostics believe.

What little research there has been in this field indicates that the experiences Moody lists as typical of the NDE may be due to brain states triggered by cardiac arrest and anesthesia (Blackmore 1993). Furthermore, many people who have not been near death have had experiences that seem identical to NDEs. These mimicking experiences are often the result of psychosis (due to severe neurochemical imbalance) or drug usage, such as hashish, LSD, or DMT.

A 13-year Dutch study led by Pim van Lommel and published in Lancet found that 12 percent (or 18 percent, depending on how NDE is defined) of 344 resuscitated patients who had experienced cessation of their heart and/or breathing function reported an NDE. If the cause of the NDE were purely physiological, the researchers reasoned that all of the patients should have had one because of their similar plight. Psychological factors were also ruled out by the researchers, as were the medications taken by the patients. However, the researchers believe that

neurophysiological processes must play some part in NDE. Similar experiences can be induced through electrical stimulation of the temporal lobe (and hence of the hippocampus) during neurosurgery for epilepsy, with high carbon dioxide levels (hypercarbia), and in decreased cerebral perfusion resulting in local cerebral hypoxia as in rapid acceleration during training of fighter pilots, or as in hyperventilation followed by valsalva manoeuvre. Ketamine-induced experiences resulting from blockage of the NMDA receptor, and the role of endorphin, serotonin, and enkephalin have also been mentioned, as have near-death-like experiences after the use of LSD, psilocarpine, and mescaline. These induced experiences can consist of unconsciousness, out-of-body experiences, and perception of light or flashes of recollection from the past. These recollections, however, consist of fragmented and random memories unlike the panoramic life-review that can occur in NDE. Further, transformational processes with changing life-insight and disappearance of fear of death are rarely reported after induced experiences.

Thus, induced experiences are not identical to NDE...*

However, the Dutch researchers seem to be assuming that no significant life-insight changes occur in people who have had induced NDE-like experiences. They cite no evidence that this is so. Also, we can't assume that only those who report NDEs had an NDE. Nor can we be sure, of course, that those who report having had an NDE actually had one. Two of the participants first reported having an NDE two years after their close call with death. It is possible they constructed a false memory. It is possible that others had an NDE but don't remember it due to either different abilities in short term memory or to the timing of their experience vis-à-vis when they regain consciousness. The only significant factor between the NDEers and non-NDEers in the Dutch study, according to van Lommel and his colleagues was age: those who had NDEs tended to be younger. This is partly due to the fact that older cardiac arrest patients are more likely to die than younger ones, but it may also be partly due the fact that younger brains are more likely to have better short term memory functions than older brains.

The Dutch researchers found other significant differences between those who reported the NDE and those who didn't, but they occurred after the experience. "NDErs had become much more empathic and accepting of others since their NDE than had the non-NDErs. And NDErs had become both more appreciative of the ordinary things of life and much less afraid of death than had the non-NDErs."* They also raise the possibility that consciousness may exist outside of the brain.

Raymond Moody is sure that NDEs are evidence of consciousness existing separately from the brain. He thinks that NDEs prove the existence of life after death. Skeptics, on the other hand, believe that NDEs can be explained by neurochemistry and are the result of brain states that occur due to a dying, demented, or drugged brain. For example, neural noise and retino-cortical mapping explain the common experience of passage down a tunnel from darkness into a bright light. According to Susan Blackmore, vision researcher Dr. Tomasz S. Troscianko of the University of Bristol speculated:

If you started with very little neural noise and it gradually increased, the effect would be of a light at the centre getting larger and larger and hence closer and closer....the tunnel would appear to move as the noise levels increased and the central light got larger and larger....If the whole cortex became so noisy that all the cells were firing fast, the whole area would appear light (Blackmore 1993, 85).

Blackmore attributes the feelings of extreme peacefulness of the NDE to the release of endorphins in response to the extreme stress of the situation. The buzzing or ringing sound is attributed to cerebral anoxia and consequent effects upon the connections between brain cells (op. cit. 64).

Dr. Karl Jansen has reproduced NDEs with ketamine, a short-acting, hallucinogenic, dissociative anaesthetic.

The anaesthesia is the result of the patient being so 'dissociated' and 'removed from their body' that it is possible to carry out surgical procedures. This is wholly different from the 'unconsciousness' produced by conventional anesthetics, although ketamine is also an excellent analgesic (pain killer) by a different route (i.e. not due to dissociation). Ketamine is related to phencyclidine (PCP). Both drugs are arylcyclohexylamines - they are not opioids and are not related to LSD. In contrast to PCP, ketamine is relatively safe, is much shorter acting, is an uncontrolled drug in most countries, and remains in use as an anaesthetic for children in industrialised countries and all ages in the third world as it is cheap and easy to use. Anaesthetists prevent patients from having NDE's ('emergence phenomena') by the co-administration of sedatives which produce 'true' unconsciousness rather than dissociation.* 

According to Dr. Jansen, ketamine can reproduce all the main features of the NDE, including travel through a dark tunnel into the light, the feeling that one is dead, communing with God, hallucinations, out-of-body experiences, strange noises, etc. This does not prove that there is no life after death, but it does prove that an NDE is not proof of an afterlife.

While neural activity might explain bright lights, buzzing noises, and hallucinations, there are some aspects of some NDEs that still remain puzzling. Some people who are thought to be dead, but are actually just unconscious, recover and remember things like looking down and seeing their own bodies being worked on by doctors and nurses. They recall conversations being held while they were "dead." Of course, they weren't dead at all, but they feel as if their mind or soul had left their body and was observing it from above. Those who have had such experiences--and they are many--often find them life-altering and defining moments. They are convinced such experiences are proof of life after death by a disembodied consciousness. But are they? It is possible that a person may appear dead to our senses or our scientific equipment but still be perceiving. The visual and auditory perceptions occurring while unconscious-but-perceiving may be produced by a variety of neuronal mechanisms. It is possible that the soul leaves the body, but it is not necessary to posit a soul to explain these experiences. In any case,

we do not yet know whether NDEs take place just before the crisis, during it, just after it or even during the process of trying to describe it to someone else. If clear consciousness were really possible with a completely flat EEG, this would indeed change our view of the mind/brain relationship, but so far this has not been conclusively demonstrated (Blackmore 2004: 364).

Finally, Raymond Quigg Lawrence (Blinded by the Light) thinks that NDEs are the work of Satan. Perhaps. Or, they may be telepathic communications from doctors, nurses, or others in attendance when the subject is near death. Or, they may be mixed memories composed after waking up and hearing others talk about what was happening while one was near death. Or, they may be recollections of subconsciously recorded data overheard while in a groggy state. At this point in our knowledge, to claim that NDEs provide proof that the soul exists independently of the body seems premature.

See also astral projection, out-of-body experience, and remote viewing.


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further reading

reader comments

Maria's Near-death Experience
Darkness, Tunnels, and Light by G. M. Woerlee, Skeptical Inquirer May 2004
Near-Death Experiences: In or out of the body? by Susan Blackmore, Skeptical Inquirer 1991, 16, 34-45.
"Using Ketamine to Induce the Near-Death Experience: Mechanism of Action and Therapeutic Potential"  and The Ketamine Model of the Near Death Experience:
A Central Role for the NMDA Receptor by Dr. Karl Jansen
Does Ketamine Produce NDEs?
Have You Seen "The Light?" by Robert Baker
"Patients could suffer from careless whispers"
Near Death Experiences in Cardiac Arrest and the Mystery of Consciousness by Dr. Sam Parnia, Southampton, England
Visions of a Dying Brain
The Case Against Immortality by Keith Augustine
La vie et la mort par Pascal Lapointe [le témoignage de Laura Darlene Lansbury]
Kenneth Ring (Ring defines the "core experience" of an NDE as having 5 elements: feelings of peace, the OBE, entering darkness, seeing the light, and entering the light.)
Bruce Greyson  (Greyson developed the "near-death experience scale," consisting of 16 questions. A score of 7+ is an NDE on this scale.)
Near-Death Experiences Links
Brushes With Death - Scientists Validate Near-Death Experiences (Jan 8, 2002)
Bailey, Lee Worth  and Jenny L. Yates, Editors (1996). The Near Death Experience: A Reader. Routledge

Blackmore, Susan J., Consciousness (Oxford University Press, 2004).

Blackmore, Susan J. Dying to Live: Near-death Experiences, (Buffalo, N.Y. : Prometheus Books, 1993).

Jansen, Karl. Ketamine: Dreams and Realities (The Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies, 2001).

Kandel, Eric R. & James H. Schwartz, eds. Principles of Neural Science 4th ed. (McGraw-Hill Professional Publishing, 2000).

Roach, Mary. (2005). Spook: Science Tackles the Afterlife. W.W. Norton.

Strassman, Rick. DMT: The Spirit Molecule: A Doctor's Revolutionary Research into the Biology of Near-Death and Mystical Experiences (Inner Traditions Intl Ltd, 2001).

Woerlee, G. M. (2005).  Mortal Minds - The Biology of Near-Death Experiences. Prometheus.
 
©copyright 2005
Robert Todd Carroll
 Nazca lines
 

[Huxley]

EQM é apenas o sintoma de falta de oxigenação no cérebro.

[HSette]

Há algum tempo atrás, fiz um post a respeito do assunto.
Vou reproduzi-lo abaixo, pois considero-o bem pertinente.

A matéria é de novembro de 2004.

A Revista Ciência Hoje publicou uma matéria em que esta situação encontra uma explicação bem interessante. Vejam alguns trechos abaixo.

http://cienciahoje.uol.com.br/controlPanel/materia/view/3556

Eu me vi lá de cima
Cientistas mostram que estimulação elétrica do cérebro cria experiência extra-corporal
Os filmes já mostraram a cena várias vezes: enquanto a equipe da emergência lança mão dos últimos recursos de ressuscitação, o paciente, cujo coração já parou de bater, vê um túnel de luz, avista seu corpo lá de cima e é acolhido serenamente por um parente querido. Assim seria a passagem para o lado de lá da vida -- exceto nos casos em que, por desígnio divino, insistência dos médicos ou pura sorte mesmo, a pessoa volta para contar a estória.
Uma mulher na Suíça, no entanto, acaba de ter uma experiência parecida - sem correr o menor risco de vida. A paciente, que há 11 anos sofria de epilepsia, estava sendo avaliada para uma cirurgia de remoção do foco epiléptico. Como nenhuma lesão era visível no exame por ressonância magnética, a equipe do Dr. Olaf Blanke, do Hospital Universitário de Genebra, usou eletrodos posicionados sobre o cérebro da paciente para localizar precisamente a região do cérebro a ser removida.
Como a atividade elétrica do cérebro é anormal sobre o foco epiléptico, o simples registro pelos eletrodos é suficiente para indicar sua posição. No entanto, um procedimento adicional é de praxe: usar os eletrodos também para estimular regiões precisas do cérebro e, desse modo, identificar zonas ’vitais’, saudáveis, que não devem ser removidas.
A estimulação é feita com o paciente acordado e consciente, para que ele possa relatar as sensações provocadas.
(...)
... a estimulação em dois dos 64 pontos testados do lado direito do cérebro provocou uma sensação inusitada de deslocamento - ilusório, claro - do corpo inteiro: ao receber uma pequena corrente elétrica sobre o giro angular, a paciente sentia-se ’afundando na cama’, ou ’caindo no vazio’. A equipe, claro, não parou aí. Testaram uma corrente elétrica um pouco mais forte sobre os mesmos pontos e, como num filme sobrenatural, a sensação transformou-se em uma verdadeira experiência extra-corporal: de olhos abertos, a paciente dizia ver lá de cima, como se levitasse próxima ao teto, seu corpo deitado na cama.
(...)
A posição do giro angular é privilegiada para integrar informações relativas à posição e a sensações complexas do corpo: ele fica na borda do lobo parietal, que já havia sido implicado anteriormente na percepção do espaço corporal, ou seja, na localização de objetos em relação ao corpo. De quebra, outro vizinho próximo é o córtex vestibular, que processa informações relativas à orientação da cabeça em relação à gravidade, inclusive sensações de peso ou leveza. Com vizinhos desse calibre, o giro angular talvez seja o lugar do cérebro onde nossa ’visão’ interna do corpo é criada.
Se for assim, a dissociação do corpo que caracteriza a experiência extra-corporal poderia ter uma explicação simples: uma falha na integração sensorial e vestibular que o giro angular normalmente desempenharia, causada, por exemplo, pela estimulação elétrica. Ou, na experiência de quase-morte, pela falência metabólica do cérebro.

[VideoMaker]

EQM é apenas o sintoma de falta de oxigenação no cérebro.

 por - Marco Túlio Michalick - morcomicholick@bol.com.br

Seria a Experiência de Quase-Morte o resultado da privação momentânea de oxigênio, da tensão psicológica ou da dor? Em alguns casos, é possível que sim, entretanto, vários pacientes analisados deixaram claro que haviam experimentado um estado de lucidez acima do normal. Com base na doutrina espírita, poderíamos classificar a Experiência de Quase-Morte como uma espécie de desdobramento perispirítico involuntário.

Portanto, devemos acolher com carinho os conhecimentos adquiridos pelas pessoas que passaram pela EQM, tirando uma lição para nós como se tivéssemos passado pela mesma situação. Pensar desta forma é um incentivo à reforma íntima, ao pensamento coletivo, a saber olhar o mundo à nossa volta com mais amor e carinho. O individualismo não leva a lugar algum, pelo contrário. Como vamos dar continuidade ao nosso processo evolutivo se somos individualistas e utilitaristas?

A experiência pela qual essas pessoas passaram é maravilhosa, o sentimento que tiveram não pode ser expresso na linguagem humana. Algum motivo houve para que isto ocorresse com elas. Não podemos todos ter a mesma experiência, mas podemos tomá-la como universal, pois uma mensagem enviada ao semelhante também serve para nós. Estamos todos no mesmo caminho e o aprendizado de um deve ser passado para o outro. Quando idealizamos o bem para quem amamos, devemos estendê-lo para aqueles por quem não temos simpatia. Devemos ter a coragem de reconhecer um erro, de perdoar, de praticar a caridade, de termos fé em um Deus maravilhoso e supremo que nos .ama mesmo diante de todos os nossos defeitos. Devemos repassar esse amor para todas as pessoas, sem discriminação de cor ou raça.

As boas leituras engrandecem nosso intelecto e nosso espírito. O aprendizado se faz neste plano e no espiritual. Às vezes nos tornamos repetitivos, mas isto é proposital para o acompanhamento idealista que temos ou que tentamos colocar em prática mesmo nos momentos em que os obstáculos parecem maiores do que nossas forças. Mas apenas parecem, pois, dentro de nós, temos uma força maior do que qualquer problema, temos fé e coragem para seguirmos em nossa caminhada.

[VideoMaker]

... a estimulação em dois dos 64 pontos testados do lado direito do cérebro provocou uma sensação inusitada de deslocamento - ilusório, claro - do corpo inteiro: ao receber uma pequena corrente elétrica sobre o giro angular, a paciente sentia-se ’afundando na cama’, ou ’caindo no vazio’. A equipe, claro, não parou aí. Testaram uma corrente elétrica um pouco mais forte sobre os mesmos pontos e, como num filme sobrenatural, a sensação transformou-se em uma verdadeira experiência extra-corporal: de olhos abertos, a paciente dizia ver lá de cima, como se levitasse próxima ao teto, seu corpo deitado na cama.

 Uma dezenas de drogas podem levar a sensaçóes como estas , e ate mais interessante , ou seja isso não prova nada !
 Ou apenas prova que se pode simular sensações .
 Tenho um amigo que quando fumava um baseado , dizia estar em uma asa delta , e olha só que coisa as pessoas voam de ASA DELTA !!!
 Tentar explicar como em alguns casos , acontecimentos ocorridos em outras salas foram percebidos pela pessoa em EQM , é que seria interssante .

[Alenônimo]

Marco Túlio Michalick é um escritor de livros espíritas. Nâo é professor, pesquisador nem nada. E ele só faz afirmações, e distorce certos dados.

Por exemplo: ele diz que os relatos de EQM são tidos como “reais demais”. Ora! É claro que são tidos como reais! São estímulos a níveis cerebrais! A própria experiência com eletrodos fez com que a cobaia sentisse que estava sofrendo efeitos que não estava. EQMs são tidas apenas como “sonhos lúdicos” e que realmente ocorrem com facilidade com quem está em processo de morte cerebral.

E depois ele ainda fala “devemos acolher com carinho os conhecimentos adquiridos pelas pessoas que passaram pela EQM”. Essa não é a posição de um pesquisador científico. Essa é a posição de um apaixonado pelo fenômeno, afirmando na cara de pau que devemos aceitar Evidências Anedóticas!

VideoMaker, vai lamber sabão…