Doctor says near-death experiences are in the mind

updated 10:04 a.m. EDT, Fri October 16, 2009
By Saundra YoungCNN Senior Medical Producer

For a change I search CNN news and found a story I am interested in because I have been around the medical field for many years and have encountered resuscitation efforts but have not encountered any stories about the phenomenon of near death experience except maybe one person and I thought he was kind of wacky. This article was written about a near death experience of a woman who was alerted by pain in her arm and chest that she might be having a heart attack and summoned help. Help arrived shortly and she indeed suffered from a cardiac arrest with immediate initiation of CPR and automated external defibrillator. After she was brought back to life she describes what happened to her during the time that she was dead.


I think something happens to persons who are clinically dead and I equate it with the fact that if they are being resusitated they are getting some oxygenated blood driven to their head by artificial means, but it is not as adequate as the normal process while alive. It is a well know fact that persons suffer from hallucinations of sort when they have lack of blood supply to their head, sometimes it is of a pleasant sort such as those that try to have a heightened sexual experience through near asphyxiation. Others have incredible frightening delusions when not enough oxygen gets to their brain and they see bugs crawling on the walls. So if a heart stops pumping blood to the head and we try and do it artificially I can see how spurts of oxygenated blood might induce such memories of being present in the room watching the whole thing take place as an out of body experience except, since you are dead you don’t have enough brain power to let anyone know.


I have no reason to believe that this person is making her near death experience up as she describes it as "I floated right out of my body. My body was here, and I just floated away. I looked back at it once, and it was there." She even saw dead people. "It was very peaceful and light and beautiful. And I remember like, when you see someone you haven't seen in a while, you want to hug them, and I remember trying to reach out to my ex-husband, and he would not take my hand. And then they floated away." After that was "massive energy, powerful, very powerful energy." "When that was happening, there were pictures of my son and my daughter and my granddaughter, and every second, their pictures flashed in my mind, and then I came back."


I enjoyed reading this article for the information it contained about the studies that have been done in order to explain the near death experience and why these experiences sound similar in each person involved. The brain is such a fascinating place and in sleep we dream much like the person experiences in near death as expressed by some experts who have compiled studies listed in the article. Mostly it seems to leave the person changed for the rest of their natural life which is not altogether positive as one would think.