what science can (and can’t) clarify | EUROtoday

Comment Explain the expertise of imminent loss of life? This query fascinates. At the guts of this thriller, Doctor Steven Laureys, neurologist and internationally famend researcher, has established himself as one of many world specialists in conscience.

Director of analysis on the FNRS (Scientific Research Fund) and professor on the Cervo Research Center in Canada, he has been devoting his work to discover the bounds of the human thoughts for over 25 years. He tells in his e book Imminent loss of life expertise (Odile Jacob) The conclusions of his analysis.

A “personal and unique” phenomenon

What is an imminent loss of life expertise (EMI)? For Steven Laureys, it’s a “subjective, personal and unique” phenomenon, skilled by individuals who have approached loss of life, however who haven’t crossed the brink. “We estimated in our hospital in Liège that around 15 % of people who survive intensive care after cardiac arrest, a head trauma or cerebral hemorrhage will live this experience,” he explains.

The testimonies collected tells a really intense emotional state, typically a well-being tough to explain, the imaginative and prescient of a lightweight, typically of a tunnel, and the sensation of decorporation, to be from the surface, observing your personal physique. These tales, Steven Laureys heard them a whole bunch of occasions, and he additionally rubbed shoulders with them in his circle of relatives story: throughout his delivery, her mom lived an EMI, whom she dared to say till a lot later, for concern of being tried. “It is important that there is no taboo around this subject,” insists the researcher.

It is obscure what’s going on within the mind throughout an EMI. “When you make an accident, a cardiac arrest, there are other priorities than to spend a scanner,” recollects Steven Laureys. To get round this problem, his workforce carried out laboratory experiences, inflicting transient hypoxia, a scarcity of oxygen in volunteers, whereas measuring mind exercise with 256 electrodes.

Guinea pig of his personal analysis

Result: sure deep buildings of the mind, concerned in feelings, present an irregular exercise correlated with the depth of the EMI. The researcher himself participated on this analysis, going as far as to experiment with modified states of consciousness within the laboratory.

But science doesn’t determine the query of life after loss of life. If some see within the EMI the proof of a cosmic consciousness, Steven Laureys recollects that no managed expertise has made it attainable to validate this speculation. Attempts to confirm “out of the body” perceptions have by no means resulted in convincing outcomes.

Read too “There is no zero moment of death” For instance, the researcher carried out experiences by hiding objects in resuscitation rooms after which asking sufferers what they’d seen. “For the moment, there is no evidence to say that there can be a thought, a perception, an emotion completely independent of brain activity,” he concludes.

To uncover



The kangaroo of the day

Answer

For Steven Laureys, the EMI stays an interesting, complicated phenomenon, which deserves to be studied with out prejudice. He appeals to testimonies: “We want you, your tales, to raised perceive this neurophysiological actuality which is of all time and all cultures. »»