Near death experiences: Large project to study up to 1500 cases

The "Random Samples" feature in Science Magazine (Sept. 26, 2008) highlights Sam Parnia's large-scale project to study near-death experiences.

The study of Awareness During Resuscitation, sponsored by the University of Southampton, U.K., was announced this month at a United Nations symposium on consciousness by project leader Sam Parnia, a resident at New York-Presbyterian Medical Center. Parnia has recruited 25 hospitals, mostly in the United States and the United Kingdom, to monitor as many as 1500 people during cardiac arrest who then survive to tell about it. "About 10% of such people report some kind of cognitive process" while "dead" for a few seconds to more than an hour, Parnia says.

Doctors' ability to maintain people in a state of clinical death for long periods and then revive them has produced this interesting result, which may change our understanding of the relationship between the mind and the brain.

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Reader asks: By what mechanism are near death experiences transmitted?