People resuscitated from the point of dying have battled with and beaten the thing we fear most – death. About 5% of people report having a near death experience. They often talk of seeing bright lights, being reunited with lost loved ones, or having an out-of-body experience. The types of near death experiences reported often follow a similar theme and many people say they found the instances comforting.
Opinions differ about what happens to people when hovering between life and death, and many believe these types of experiences may be the only real knowledge we have about life on the ‘other side’. Surely people who have ‘seen the light’ cannot be held accountable to science?
Scientific Explanations for Near-death Experiences
A team of scientists led by Dr Lakhmir Chawla, working at the George Washington Medical Centre in Washington DC, believe that near death experiences could simply be a result of a surge in electrical activity in the brain prior to death. Dr Chawla feels that this sudden spurt of energy in the brain, after activity has gradually fallen off, could cause people to have vivid feelings or hallucinations.
Dr Chawla and his team based their report on a study of seven terminally ill patients, and did not set out to prove or disprove theories about near-death experiences. They were simply monitoring brain activity in order to ensure their medications were making patients as comfortable as possible at the end of their lives. They noticed there was a ‘last gasp’ of energy in the hour before the patients died.
Skeptics Still Unconvinced Near-death Experiences are Real
This does provide us with food for thought, but unfortunately we will never know for sure since all the patients in this study died without being able to tell us about any near death experiences they might have had.
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photo credit: FantasyClay