> (Personally, I'm interested to see if anyone reports any kind of dream-like experience while undergoing the procedure. I know, I know, it's impossible. Still fun to imagine our scientific understanding of the mind being turned upside down.)
There is a famous case from 1991 [0] in which a patient's brain was drained entirely of blood in order to operate on an aneurysm near the brain stem. Her eyes were taped over and ear plugs emitting loud clicks (> 80 db) were inserted into her ears and also taped over. These were used to determine when brain activity ceased. During the period in which there was none, she reported having a near death experience which also featured an out-of-body experience. She later accurately reported conversations in the OR, named the songs that were playing on the radio, and described the saw used to open her skull, a tool which was not wheeled into the room until after her brain death had been induced.
My abridged retelling of this most dramatic account comes from my memory of the book Irreducible Mind [1], which presents a vast corpus of evidence that the mind does not originate in the brain. The authors propose a different theory, the Filter or Transmission Theory of Consciousness originally proposed in the 19th century, but their main drive is really to provoke the further study of exhaustively documented empirical evidence that are at this time reflexively tossed aside as paranormal and unscientific. The evidence they present is compelling in its breadth, consistency, and in the reputability of its creators--most of the evidence they discuss is that reported by doctors, and as often as not skeptical ones who dutifully wrote down what they witnessed despite being unable to come up with a satisfactory explanation for it.
If you're interested in seeing our understanding of the mind being turned upside down, there is no need to wait for new reports to roll in, though I hope that with procedures like this becoming more commonplace they will do so. All that's needed is to take a critical yet unbiased look at the empirical evidence already compiled by serious researchers. One or two of the authors have a bit of a chip on their shoulders concerning the dismissal of evidence by mainstream science which made me wary when I encountered it. However their discussion of problems with current theories of mind and the evidence that uncovers them is rigorously scientific, clearly explained, and makes a pretty solid case that, if nothing else, our current theories are sorely lacking the power to explain real events.
I recommend this book to anyone interested in the science of mind. Even if you are thoroughly and inalterably convinced that NDEs, OBEs and the like are rubbish, this is the perfect book to read in order to argue against it because it will challenge you to defend those positions in a way that dreamy-eyed spiritualists won't.
There is a famous case from 1991 [0] in which a patient's brain was drained entirely of blood in order to operate on an aneurysm near the brain stem. Her eyes were taped over and ear plugs emitting loud clicks (> 80 db) were inserted into her ears and also taped over. These were used to determine when brain activity ceased. During the period in which there was none, she reported having a near death experience which also featured an out-of-body experience. She later accurately reported conversations in the OR, named the songs that were playing on the radio, and described the saw used to open her skull, a tool which was not wheeled into the room until after her brain death had been induced.
My abridged retelling of this most dramatic account comes from my memory of the book Irreducible Mind [1], which presents a vast corpus of evidence that the mind does not originate in the brain. The authors propose a different theory, the Filter or Transmission Theory of Consciousness originally proposed in the 19th century, but their main drive is really to provoke the further study of exhaustively documented empirical evidence that are at this time reflexively tossed aside as paranormal and unscientific. The evidence they present is compelling in its breadth, consistency, and in the reputability of its creators--most of the evidence they discuss is that reported by doctors, and as often as not skeptical ones who dutifully wrote down what they witnessed despite being unable to come up with a satisfactory explanation for it.
If you're interested in seeing our understanding of the mind being turned upside down, there is no need to wait for new reports to roll in, though I hope that with procedures like this becoming more commonplace they will do so. All that's needed is to take a critical yet unbiased look at the empirical evidence already compiled by serious researchers. One or two of the authors have a bit of a chip on their shoulders concerning the dismissal of evidence by mainstream science which made me wary when I encountered it. However their discussion of problems with current theories of mind and the evidence that uncovers them is rigorously scientific, clearly explained, and makes a pretty solid case that, if nothing else, our current theories are sorely lacking the power to explain real events.
I recommend this book to anyone interested in the science of mind. Even if you are thoroughly and inalterably convinced that NDEs, OBEs and the like are rubbish, this is the perfect book to read in order to argue against it because it will challenge you to defend those positions in a way that dreamy-eyed spiritualists won't.
[0] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pam_Reynolds_case [1] http://www.amazon.com/Irreducible-Mind-Toward-Psychology-Cen...