Spirituality and the Brain (Identity)

by David Turell , Tuesday, June 01, 2010, 01:51 (5288 days ago) @ dhw

An article in today's Sunday Times has the headline: That's not the afterlife ... it's a brainstorm. The subheading, under Science, is: > 
> Near-death experiences may be caused by a cascade of electrical activity in the dying brain, reports Jonathan Leake.A believer (David will correct me if I'm wrong) would surely argue that the spirit leaves the body after the electrical surge ... and this would tie in with the claim made by some NDE-ers that they had died but were "sent back". -I got the article thru the internet and am not impressed. Parnia (the seven-hundred patient study in Britain)had the most appropriate comment:
"In Britain, such research has prompted the launch of the Awareness During Resuscitation study, known as Aware, led by Sam Parnia, an intensive care physician at Cornell Medical Center in New York, who is also a researcher at Southampton University's school of medicine. -Parnia believes Chawla's research is interesting, but treats its conclusions with caution, pointing out that there is no proof that the electrical surge observed by Chawla is linked to a near-death experience. -"Since the patients all died, we cannot tell what they were experiencing," he said."-With all the studies that have been reported with flat EEG waves, I would think the surge would have been noted before, but it was not. Perhaps Chawla's patients are a different group, as he knows of 57 who died and none 'came back'.