Major NDE Study

At 18 hospital emergency rooms here and in the UK, researchers have put pictures on the ceilings to test whether patients who are brought back to life after cardiac arrest can remember seeing the them during an NDE–an out-of-body experience. (NOTE: Subscribers can still listen to this show). In the Wall Street Journal, Melinda Beck quotes critical care physician Sam Parnia as saying, "We’ve added these images as objective markers." People who experience NDEs remember leaving their bodies and watching themselves from above. According to a 1997 survey, 15 million American adults say they have had an NDE, and the number is probably much high now, due to better resuscitation techniques. Parnia hopes to eventually question 1,500 resuscitated patients in his study. Beck quotes Parnia as saying, "The self, the soul, the psyche–throughout history, we’ve never managed to figure out what it is and how it relates to the body. This is a very important for science and fascinating for humankind."