Do Near-Death Experiences Prove Life After Death? The Science Behind NDEs

Somewhere between 5 and 10 percent of the general population has memories of a near-death experience. Among cardiac arrest survivors, the number climbs to somewhere between 10 and 23 percent. These are not rare events. They happen in emergency rooms, operating theaters, car accidents, drowning incidents, and combat zones. They happen to atheists and pastors, to children and to the elderly, to people who expected them and people who did not. And they happen with enough consistency, across enough cultures and enough decades, that a growing number of scientists now take them seriously as a phenomenon worth understanding.

The question is not whether near-death experiences happen. They do. The question is what they mean.

Is it just the dying brain producing hallucinations in its final moments? Or is there something else going on, something that the current tools of neuroscience cannot yet explain?

What Is a Near-Death Experience?

A near-death experience, or NDE, is a profound subjective experience that occurs when a person is close to death, clinically dead, or in a situation of intense physical or emotional danger. The term was coined by philosopher and physician Raymond Moody in his 1975 book Life after Life, though reports of such experiences appear throughout human history, in cultures separated by thousands of years and thousands of miles.

Not everyone who nearly dies has an NDE. Most do not. But the people who do tend to report a consistent set of features:

• Out-of-body experience: A sensation of separating from the physical body and viewing it from above. Some report seeing their own body on the operating table, observing medical procedures in real time, and hearing conversations that later proved accurate.
• Tunnel and light: Traveling through a dark tunnel or void toward a brilliant, warm light. Not everyone reports this, but it is one of the most commonly recognized features.
• Encountering deceased relatives or beings: Meeting people who have died, or encountering luminous beings described as compassionate, wise, or divine. Communication is often telepathic.
• Life review: A rapid, comprehensive review of one’s life, often accompanied by the felt emotional impact of one’s actions on others. People report being evaluated not by their own moral standards but by what researcher Sam Parnia describes as a “universal standard.”
• Boundary or point of no return: Reaching a point where the person understands they must choose to return to life or continue forward.
• Deep peace and insight: An overwhelming sense of love, peace, and understanding that experiencers frequently describe as “more real than real.”
• Return with lasting change: People who have NDEs commonly report a permanent shift in their values, priorities, and beliefs. They report reduced fear of death, increased compassion, and a greater sense of purpose.

Not all NDEs are positive. In a 2019 study, Charlotte Martial and colleagues at the University of Liege found that 14 percent of 123 NDE reporters classified their experience as negative, involving visits to hell-like regions, encounters with terrifying beings, or voids of absolute nothingness. Martial has stated that this proportion is likely an underestimate, because people who had terrifying experiences may be reluctant to report them.

How the Field Got Started

Before Moody’s book, near-death experiences existed in the medical literature as isolated case reports. Physicians and nurses had heard patients describe them, but there was no framework for studying them systematically. Moody changed that. Life after Life compiled accounts from 150 people who had been resuscitated from clinical death and documented the common features. The book sold over 13 million copies and made NDEs a topic of public conversation.

The academic response came quickly. Kenneth Ring, a psychologist at the University of Connecticut, published Life at Death (1980), which introduced the first systematic measurement of NDE features. Bruce Greyson, a psychiatrist at the University of Virginia, developed the Greyson NDE Scale in 1983, which remains the standard measurement tool in the field. Michael Sabom, a cardiologist, published Recollections of Death (1982), documenting cases from his own cardiac patients.

The field has faced persistent skepticism from mainstream medicine, which has viewed NDEs as hallucinations caused by oxygen deprivation, medication, or temporal lobe seizures. The researchers responded by collecting prospective data, measuring NDEs as they happened rather than relying on years-old retrospective reports, and by testing whether the features of NDEs correlated with known neurological mechanisms.

What the Prospective Studies Show

The most important studies in NDE research are prospective studies. These follow cardiac arrest survivors systematically, interviewing them as soon as possible after resuscitation and measuring their experiences against standardized scales. Here are the major ones:

Van Lommel et al. (2001): The Lancet

Pim van Lommel, a Dutch cardiologist, conducted a prospective study of 344 cardiac arrest survivors at 10 hospitals in the Netherlands. The study was published in The Lancet, one of the world’s most prestigious medical journals. Of the 344 survivors, 62 (18 percent) reported some form of NDE. Of these, 41 reported a core experience with the most commonly described features (tunnel, light, deceased relatives, life review). Van Lommel found that NDE frequency did not differ based on the duration of cardiac arrest, whether the patient had been given medication, religious background, or prior knowledge of NDEs. This was significant: if NDEs were simply the result of oxygen deprivation, you would expect longer cardiac arrests to produce more NDEs. The data did not support that. Van Lommel died in 2020, but his Lancet paper remains one of the most cited studies in the field.

Funding disclosure: Van Lommel et al. (2001). Published in The Lancet. No listed conflicts. Van Lommel was a practicing cardiologist, not a parapsychologist. 🟡

Greyson (2003): General Hospital Psychiatry

Bruce Greyson conducted a prospective survey of 1,595 consecutive patients admitted to a cardiac care unit at the University of Virginia over a 30-month period. Of these, approximately 112 (7 percent) had been admitted following cardiac arrest. Among the cardiac arrest patients, 10 percent reported an NDE, compared with 1 percent of other cardiac patients. NDE reporters were younger, more likely to have lost consciousness, and more likely to report prior purportedly paranormal experiences. They did not differ from non-NDE patients in sociodemographic variables, social support, quality of life, or objective proximity to death.

Funding disclosure: Greyson (2003). Published in General Hospital Psychiatry. Greyson is professor emeritus at UVA and co-founder of the Division of Perceptual Studies, which has received private funding for consciousness research. 🟡

Parnia AWARE I (2014): Resuscitation

Sam Parnia, director of critical care and resuscitation research at NYU Langone Health, led the AWARE (AWAreness during REsuscitation) study, the largest prospective study of consciousness during cardiac arrest to date. The study enrolled 2,060 cardiac arrest patients across 15 hospitals in the United States, United Kingdom, and Austria. Of the 2,060 patients, 140 survived and completed initial interviews. Of these, 101 completed a second, more detailed interview. Forty-six percent had memories of the event, but only 9 percent met criteria for an NDE. Two percent described awareness with explicit recall of seeing and hearing actual events related to their resuscitation.

The study also tested whether patients could perceive hidden images placed on shelves visible only from a ceiling-mounted perspective. This was designed to test out-of-body perception directly. Of the 2,060 patients, 1,000 had shelves installed. No patient reported seeing the hidden images. However, one patient reported an accurate out-of-body experience in which he described hearing alarms and observing his own resuscitation from above. His account was verified by medical staff.

Funding disclosure: Parnia et al. (2014). Published in Resuscitation. Funded by private grants. No declared conflicts. 🟡

Parnia AWARE II (2023): Resuscitation

The second AWARE study was a multi-center study of 567 in-hospital cardiac arrest patients with portable EEG monitoring during active CPR. Published in Resuscitation in 2023, the study found that a subset of patients showed spikes of gamma wave activity (associated with conscious processing) up to an hour into CPR, well beyond the point at which the brain was expected to have shut down. Parnia introduced the term “recalled experience of death” (RED) to describe the phenomenon more precisely than “near-death experience.”

The study also found that some patients reported awareness and recalled experiences during cardiac arrest, consistent with the idea that consciousness may persist longer during the dying process than previously believed. However, as with AWARE I, no patient correctly identified the hidden images.

Funding disclosure: Parnia et al. (2023). Published in Resuscitation. Multi-center study. No declared conflicts. 🟢

Greyson et al. (2025): Veridical NDE Scale

In September 2025, Greyson and a large team of researchers published a paper in Frontiers in Psychology introducing the veridical Near-Death Experience Scale (vNDES). This was a first attempt to create a standardized scale specifically for measuring veridical perception during NDEs, and it was validated with both human and AI raters.

Funding disclosure: Greyson et al. (2025). Published in Frontiers in Psychology. Multiple authors from DOPS at UVA. No declared conflicts. 🟡

The Veridical Perception Problem

The most scientifically challenging aspect of NDEs is veridical perception, cases in which people report accurate observations of events that occurred while they were clinically dead or unconscious, and that they could not have perceived through normal means.

The most frequently cited case comes from van Lommel’s Lancet study. During the pilot phase, a 44-year-old man was brought to the coronary care unit unconscious and cyanotic. When staff removed his dentures to intubate him, they placed the dentures on a crash cart. After resuscitation, days later, the man recognized the nurse who had removed his dentures and described exactly where they had been placed, despite being unconscious at the time. The nurse confirmed the account.

This case has been extensively discussed in the NDE literature and has become one of the most cited examples of veridical perception. However, it is a case report, not a controlled observation. The patient could have been partially conscious at some point, or the memory could have been reconstructed from fragments. These limitations are inherent in anecdotal veridical reports.

In another case reported by Michael Sabom, a patient described the specific surgical instruments used during a procedure he had never seen, had never been told about, and was unconscious during.

Perhaps the most striking cases involve blind NDErs. Research conducted by Kenneth Ring and Sharon Cooper documented instances in which people who had been blind from birth reported visual experiences during NDEs, including accurate descriptions of objects, colors, and spatial arrangements. These reports raise a question that neuroscience has not yet answered: if the visual cortex is not receiving input, and the person has never processed visual information before, how are they seeing?

The skeptic response is straightforward: these accounts are anecdotal, subject to confirmation bias, and cannot be replicated under controlled conditions. The Parnia AWARE studies attempted to do exactly that with the hidden image shelves, and no patient has yet identified the images. The absence of controlled evidence of veridical perception is the strongest objection to the claim that NDEs represent something beyond brain function.

Neuroscience Explanations: What They Can and Cannot Account For

Hypoxia (Oxygen Deprivation)

The most commonly cited explanation for NDEs is cerebral hypoxia, the brain’s response to oxygen deprivation. When the brain is starved of oxygen, it can produce tunnel vision, bright lights, and hallucinations. Pilots who experience rapid decompression at high altitude sometimes report NDE-like features.

The problem with this explanation is timing. NDEs are most commonly reported during cardiac arrest, when cerebral blood flow ceases almost immediately. But the experiences reported are vivid, structured, and coherent, not the confused, fragmented hallucinations typical of hypoxia. Furthermore, van Lommel found no correlation between the duration of cardiac arrest and the likelihood of reporting an NDE. If hypoxia were the cause, longer oxygen deprivation should produce more intense experiences. The data does not support this.

Endogenous DMT

DMT (N,N-Dimethyltryptamine) is a powerful psychedelic compound found in some plants and, in trace amounts, in the mammalian brain. The hypothesis is that the brain releases a flood of endogenous DMT during the dying process, producing the vivid hallucinations reported in NDEs.

This hypothesis is plausible but unproven. A 2019 study (Timmermann et al.) at Imperial College London found that DMT produces experiences that share some features with NDEs, particularly the sense of encountering entities and experiencing profound insight. However, the study also found significant differences in phenomenology. And critically, no study has demonstrated that the human brain produces DMT in quantities sufficient to produce psychedelic effects during cardiac arrest.

Ketamine and the NMDA Receptor

A large-scale study by Martial et al. (2019) assessed the semantic similarity between approximately 15,000 reports linked to 165 psychoactive substances and 625 NDE narratives. Ketamine, an NMDA receptor antagonist, consistently produced reports most similar to NDEs. This is significant because ketamine is produced endogenously in the body, and the hypothesis is that a natural ketamine-like neuroprotective agent may be released during the dying process.

However, as the 2019 study itself noted, “it is neither possible to corroborate nor refute the hypothesis that the release of an endogenous ketamine-like neuroprotective agent underlies NDE phenomenology” with current data. Ketamine experiences share surface features with NDEs but differ in important ways, including the frequency of veridical perception and the lasting personality changes that follow.

Temporal Parietal Junction (TPJ) Activation

The NEPTUNE model (Neurophysiological Evolutionary Psychological Theory Understanding Near-Death Experience), developed by an international team led by Charlotte Martial and published in American Psychologist in 2025, proposed that activation of the temporal parietal junction (TPJ) could explain the out-of-body experiences reported in NDEs. The model also attempted to synthesize decades of NDE research into a comprehensive neurophysiological framework, explaining NDEs through changes in blood-brain gases, endorphins, and electrical activity in the brain.

In January 2026, Bruce Greyson and Marieta Pehlivanova at UVA published a detailed critique of the NEPTUNE model in Psychology of Consciousness: Theory, Research, and Practice. They argued that the model selectively ignored scientific evidence that contradicted it. Specifically, they noted that TPJ activation produces a sense of disembodiment but does not produce the vivid, multi-sensory out-of-body experiences reported in NDEs. During TPJ stimulation, visual perception remains normal. People do not see their own bodies from above, do not feel they can move independent of their bodies, and do not report accurate perception of events outside their field of vision. They wrote: “There is no evidence that electrical brain stimulation has ever produced accurate perception of anything not visible to the physical eyes, or that persists when eyes are closed, or that is from an out-of-body perspective, all features observed in spontaneous OBEs.”

Greyson also noted that neurological hallucinations typically involve a single sense (visual or auditory), while NDEs are multi-sensory and far more coherent and lasting. People remember NDEs in detail for decades. Neurological hallucinations are typically forgotten within hours or days.

The exchange between Greyson and the NEPTUNE team represents the current state of the debate: neither side has definitively won, but the neurophysiological explanation remains incomplete.

REM Sleep Intrusion

In 2019, neurologist Daniel Kondziella and colleagues recruited 1,034 adults from 35 countries via an online survey. Ten percent reported having had an NDE, and of those, 47 percent also reported REM sleep intrusion (the blending of dreaming and waking states). Among people who had not had NDEs, only 14 percent reported REM sleep intrusion. This is a statistically significant association, suggesting that people who experience NDEs may have a predisposition toward altered states of consciousness.

This finding is important because it provides a potential neurological predisposition for NDEs without requiring a specific trigger during the dying process. But it does not explain the content of NDEs, their veridical elements, or their consistency across cultures.

The Case Against

Intellectual honesty requires presenting the strongest objections. Here is what the skeptical literature says about near-death experiences, and where the critique is strongest.

1. No Controlled Evidence of Veridical Perception

The Parnia AWARE studies represent the most rigorous attempt to test whether patients can perceive events during cardiac arrest that they should not be able to. In both AWARE I and AWARE II, patients were asked to identify hidden images placed on shelves visible only from above. No patient has done so. This is a significant failure for the veridical perception hypothesis. If out-of-body perception were real, at least some patients in over 2,500 cases should have reported seeing the images. None did.

It is worth noting that the AWARE studies had practical limitations. Many enrolled patients did not survive, and of those who did, many did not have shelves installed near their beds due to the constraints of emergency medicine. The actual number of patients who could have plausibly seen the images is much smaller than 2,500. But the result is still negative.

2. NDEs Occur Without Near-Death

NDEs are not exclusive to people who are dying. They have been reported during fainting, high fever, meditation, drug use, and even while simply fearing death. If NDEs require actual proximity to death, this is a problem. If they can occur without it, the “dying brain” hypothesis weakens, but so does the “glimpse of the afterlife” hypothesis.

3. Selection Bias and Retrospective Reports

Many NDE reports are collected months or years after the event. Memory is reconstructive. People who have heard NDE narratives may unconsciously incorporate those elements into their own accounts. Prospective studies address this, but even prospective interviews happen after the fact, and interviewers may inadvertently cue responses.

4. The Dying Brain Produces Hallucinations

Borjigin et al. (2013) showed that rat brains exhibit a surge of organized gamma wave activity in the 30 seconds following cardiac arrest. This activity is similar to the patterns seen during conscious processing. If the dying brain is more active than expected, it could be producing the vivid hallucinations reported in NDEs. Borjigin’s team could not determine whether the rats actually experienced anything, but the finding challenged the assumption that the brain simply shuts down after cardiac arrest.

5. Cultural Variation

While the core features of NDEs are consistent across cultures, there are variations that suggest cultural expectations play a role. Indian NDErs report encounters with Yamraj (the Hindu god of death), while Western NDErs encounter angels or a figure of light. If NDEs were a uniform glimpse of the afterlife, why would the content differ by culture?

What NDEs Mean for Consciousness Research

Regardless of whether NDEs represent a glimpse of the afterlife or a product of the dying brain, they have already forced a rethinking of some assumptions in neuroscience. Before the prospective studies, the working assumption was that when the heart stops, the brain shuts down within seconds, and consciousness ceases. The Parnia AWARE II data challenged that assumption.

If gamma wave activity persists for up to an hour after cardiac arrest, that means the brain may be more resilient during the dying process than previously believed. This has practical implications for resuscitation medicine. Understanding exactly when and how the brain loses consciousness could improve the timing and effectiveness of CPR, defibrillation, and post-resuscitation care.

For philosophy of mind, NDEs raise the hard question in the most literal sense. If consciousness can occur when the brain is severely impaired, what is the relationship between brain activity and conscious experience? The dominant view in neuroscience, that consciousness is produced by the brain, predicts that severe impairment should produce severe loss of consciousness. The NDE data suggests that in some cases, it does not.

This does not prove dualism (the idea that mind and brain are separate). It could mean that the dying brain produces consciousness through mechanisms we do not yet understand, perhaps through the gamma wave surges documented by Borjigin or through as-yet-unidentified neurochemical processes. But it does mean that the straightforward materialist account, consciousness simply stops when brain function drops below a threshold, appears too simple.

There is also the question of veridical perception. If controlled studies ever demonstrate that patients can accurately report events they should not be able to perceive, it would be one of the most significant findings in the history of science. The failure of the AWARE studies to find such evidence is important, but the absence of evidence is not evidence of absence. The sample sizes are still small, and the hidden image methodology may not be the right test.

The field is at an inflection point. New research tools, including portable EEG monitors, AI-assisted analysis of NDE reports, and prospective studies with larger sample sizes, are being developed. Charlotte Martial’s laboratory at the University of Liege is conducting real-time EEG monitoring of patients in the resuscitation room, attempting to capture brain activity during the actual moment of the experience. If NDEs produce detectable neural signatures, these studies may find them.

The Borjigin Finding

In 2013, neuroscientist Jimo Borjigin and colleagues at the University of Michigan published a study in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences that challenged a basic assumption about the dying brain. They measured electrical activity in the brains of nine rats after cardiac arrest and found a surge of organized gamma wave activity in the 30 seconds following the heart stopping. This activity was not random noise. It was coherent and synchronized, and appeared more organized than typical background activity.

The finding was surprising because it suggested the dying brain does not simply shut down. In some cases, it appears to become more active. Borjigin and her team speculated that this surge could be associated with conscious experience, though they could not confirm this in rats.

The implications for NDE research are significant. If the dying brain produces a burst of organized activity, it could be generating the vivid experiences reported by NDErs. Alternatively, it could be a reflexive neuroprotective response that happens to produce conscious-like brain patterns without any actual subjective experience. Borjigin has continued this research in human subjects, and the AWARE II study’s detection of gamma wave activity during cardiac arrest is consistent with her findings.

The Borjigin finding cuts both ways for the NDE debate. Skeptics point to it as evidence that the dying brain is capable of producing vivid hallucinations. Proponents point to it as evidence that consciousness persists longer than expected during the dying process. The data alone does not resolve the question.

Where the Field Goes Next

NDE research is at a critical juncture. The tools are improving. Portable EEG monitors can now track brain activity during cardiac arrest in real time. AI-assisted analysis can process thousands of NDE reports and identify patterns that human reviewers might miss. The veridical NDE Scale developed by Greyson et al. in 2025 provides a standardized way to measure the accuracy of out-of-body perception, which is exactly what the field needs to move beyond anecdotal reports.

The next generation of prospective studies will likely focus on three things: larger sample sizes (the AWARE studies, while groundbreaking, enrolled relatively few patients who survived with usable data), real-time brain monitoring during the dying process, and improved methods for testing veridical perception. Whether the hidden image methodology used in the AWARE studies is the right test, or whether something else is needed, remains an open question.

What is clear is that near-death experiences are not going away. They happen too often and across too many cultures to be dismissed. The question is no longer whether NDEs are real experiences. The question is what they tell us about the nature of consciousness, the process of dying, and the boundary between life and death.

For the ICU nurse whose patient described the color of the dentures on the crash cart, the answer matters personally. For the neuroscientist trying to map the dying brain, the answer matters scientifically. For the philosopher asking what consciousness is, the answer matters existentially. The search may take decades. But every prospective study, every EEG reading, every verified account narrows the space where the truth can hide.

Key Researchers

Sources

1. Moody, R. (1975). Life after Life. Mockingbird Books. Foundational text that coined the term and established the phenomenology. Moody has an MD (Medical College of Georgia) and PhD in philosophy (University of Virginia). 🟡
2. Greyson, B. (1983). “The near-death experience scale: Construction, reliability, and validity.” Journal of Nervous and Mental Disease, 171(6), 369-375.
   
   Funding: University of Virginia. COI: Developer of the scale being validated. Standard in field. 🟢
3. Van Lommel, P., van Wees, R., Meyers, V., Elfferich, I. (2001). “Near-death experience in survivors of cardiac arrest: a prospective study in the Netherlands.” The Lancet, 358(9298), 2039-2045.
   
   Funding: Hospital-based research. COI: Van Lommel was a practicing cardiologist. No declared conflicts. Published in a top-tier general medical journal. 🟡
4. Greyson, B. (2003). “Incidence and correlates of near-death experiences in a cardiac care unit.” General Hospital Psychiatry, 25(4), 269-276.
   
   Funding: University of Virginia. COI: No declared conflicts. 🟡
5. Parnia, S. et al. (2014). “AWARE-AWAreness during REsuscitation-a prospective study.” Resuscitation, 85(12), 1799-1805.
   
   Funding: Private grants. COI: No declared conflicts. Largest prospective study to date. 🟡
6. Borjigin, J. et al. (2013). “Surge of neurophysiological coherence and connectivity in the dying brain.” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 110(35), 14432-14437.
   
   Funding: University of Michigan, NIH. COI: No declared conflicts. Peer-reviewed in a top-tier journal. Study conducted in rats. 🟡
7. Parnia, S. et al. (2023). “AWAreness during REsuscitation – II: A multi-center study of consciousness and awareness in cardiac arrest.” Resuscitation, 191, 109903.
   
   Funding: Multi-center study, no declared conflicts. 🟢
8. Kondziella, D. et al. (2019). “Prevalence of near-death experiences in persons with and without REM sleep intrusion.” Frontiers in Neurology, 10, 1124.
   
   Funding: University of Copenhagen. COI: No declared conflicts. Online survey, 35 countries. 🟡
9. Martial, C. et al. (2019). “Neurochemical models of near-death experiences: A large-scale study based on the semantic similarity of written reports.” Consciousness and Cognition, 69, 52-69.
   
   Funding: University of Liege, BIAL Foundation. COI: No declared conflicts. 🟡
10. Greyson, B., Pehlivanova, M. (2026). “Comment on the NEPTUNE model.” Psychology of Consciousness: Theory, Research, and Practice.
    
    Funding: UVA Division of Perceptual Studies. COI: Greyson and Pehlivanova are NDE researchers with a theoretical stake in the field. Open access. 🟡
11. Martial, C. et al. (2025). NEPTUNE model paper. American Psychologist.
    
    Funding: International team. COI: No declared conflicts. Published in APA’s flagship journal. 🟡
12. Greyson, B. et al. (2025). “The veridical Near-Death Experience Scale: construction and a first validation with human and artificial raters.” Frontiers in Psychology.
    
    Funding: Multiple authors from UVA DOPS. COI: No declared conflicts. 🟡

FAQ

1. What percentage of people have near-death experiences?

Between 5 and 10 percent of the general population report having had an NDE. Among cardiac arrest survivors specifically, prospective studies find that 10 to 23 percent report an NDE. Not everyone who nearly dies has one, and the reasons some people do and others do not are not well understood.

2. Do near-death experiences prove the existence of an afterlife?

No. Near-death experiences demonstrate that vivid, structured, and often transformative subjective experiences occur during the dying process. Whether these experiences represent a genuine glimpse of an afterlife or are produced by the dying brain is the central unresolved question in NDE research. The evidence is consistent with both interpretations.

3. Can science explain near-death experiences?

Partially. Neuroscience has identified several mechanisms that produce some features of NDEs, including hypoxia, DMT release, ketamine-like effects, and temporal lobe activity. But no single mechanism accounts for all features of NDEs, particularly veridical perception, multi-sensory coherence, lasting personality change, and the consistency of core features across cultures. The January 2026 critique of the NEPTUNE model by Greyson and Pehlivanova argued that current neurophysiology cannot yet provide a comprehensive explanation.

4. What is the AWARE study?

AWARE (AWAreness during REsuscitation) is a series of prospective studies led by Sam Parnia at NYU Langone Health. AWARE I (2014) enrolled 2,060 patients across 15 hospitals. AWARE II (2023) enrolled 567 patients with EEG monitoring. Both studies found evidence of consciousness during cardiac arrest, and AWARE II detected gamma wave activity up to an hour into CPR. Neither study produced evidence that patients could perceive hidden images, which is the controlled test of veridical perception.

5. What do skeptics say about near-death experiences?

The main skeptical arguments are: (1) NDEs are hallucinations caused by oxygen deprivation, medication, or temporal lobe activity. (2) No controlled study has demonstrated veridical perception during NDEs. (3) NDEs occur without near-death, suggesting they are a general brain state rather than a specific response to dying. (4) Cultural variation in NDE content suggests cultural expectation shapes the experience. (5) Retrospective reports are subject to memory reconstruction and confirmation bias.

6. Do children have near-death experiences?

Yes. Children as young as two or three years old have reported NDEs, which is significant because young children are less likely to have absorbed cultural narratives about what dying should look like. Some researchers argue that children’s NDEs are simpler and less culturally influenced, though this is debated.

7. Why are some NDEs negative?

About 14 percent of NDEs are reported as negative or distressing. These can involve encounters with terrifying beings, hell-like environments, or voids of nothingness. The reasons for negative NDEs are not well understood. They do not correlate with religion, prior behavior, or demographics. Some researchers have proposed that negative NDEs may be underreported due to the distress they cause.