Commentary on Report of EEG in a Dying Human Brain
- Details
- Last Updated: Monday, 13 June 2022 09:07
NDE researchers Drs. Bruce Greyson, Pim van Lommel, and Peter Fenwick have published a commentary to appear in the Journal of Near-Death Studies on the recent report from Vicente et al. (2022) on the electroencephalographic (EEG) recording in an 87-year-old patient who unexpectedly suffered a cardiac arrest. Vincente et al. speculated that the unusual gamma frequency activity that was observed could support a last ‘recall of life’ that may take place in the near-death state. Subsequent mainstream media reports went far beyond this speculation and "proclaimed that this single case proved that near-death experiences (NDEs) were explained entirely by brain electrical activity persisting for several minutes after cardiac arrest."
In their analysis of the case, Greyson, van Lommel, and Fenwick concluded that, for many reasons, "the recent paper by Vicente et al. (2022) is, as the authors wrote, intriguing enough to stimulate speculation, but not evidential enough to suggest a neurological basis for NDEs."
References:
- Greyson, B., van Lommel, P., & Fenwick, P. (2022). Recent report of electroencephalogram of a dying human brain. Journal of Near-Death Studies, 40(1). Preprint.
- Vicente, R., Rizzuto, M., Sarica, C., Yamamoto, K., Sadr, M., Khajuria, T., ... & Zemmar, A. (2022). Enhanced interplay of neuronal coherence and coupling in the dying human brain. Frontiers in Aging Neuroscience, 14, article 813531.
