Jeremy Renner and the science of extraordinary experiences with death

A little over two years ago, actor Jeremy Renner was transported by a seven -person snow plow. In a recent memory, he wrote this, lying close to death, experienced something extraordinary.

He saw his whole life at once and felt a “cheerful peace” and a relationship with the world. He also saw his family and friends before him, telling him not to let him go.

“I felt that Energy, constantly connected, attractive and fantastic energy,” wrote Renner. “There was no time, place or space and you can see nothing, except for an electricity, two -way vision made of this untruthful energy, such as the whipping of the rear lights of cars photographed by the time -lamp camera.”

Described Mr. Renner, “Classic for experience with a loved one”, a term using researchers for such events, said Dr. Jeffrey Long, founder of the close experience research foundation.

The Dr. Long Foundation has collected over 4,000 accounts similar to Mr. Renner. Some people who approached death told a sense of energy, peace and lack of time, as Mr. Renner did. Some also described watching their body from above, moving through the tunnel towards lightweight, and even meeting God.

The audience may know these events thanks to the species of memories that present experiences about close death as evidence of Christian afterlife. But they were reported in various countries, demographics and religions, as well as by atheists, and have been the subject of scientific research for decades.

There is no scientific consensus as to what causes death experience. But regardless of the fact that they can change the lives of people. Some lose their fear of death; Others change their career or leave relationships. Reactions to death experience seem to outweigh what scientists have seen in people who almost die but have no such experience.

For these people “usually yes, you almost died, so you appreciate life more,” said Marieta Pehlivanova, an assistant to psychiatry and teachings of Neurobehaviral at the University of Virginia School of Medicine Division of Perceptual Studies, which studies experience near death.

But Dr. Pehlivanova said: “The changes we see in those people who almost died, but did not have NDE, are much more subtle and do not last for such a long time.”

Why do these experiences happen?

Experiences about close death are tough to examine, because catastrophic injuries and diseases that may lead to them are not suitable for controlled experiments. But the neuronauts proposed a number of theories, which causes them, and many believe that experience result from the intricate cascade of neurological and physiological processes.

In paper Posted in MarchSeven researchers proposed an explanation that combined experiences of a close death with the outbreak of cerebral chemicals called neurotransmitters, and the activation of specific receptors in the brain that produce a sense of composed and live images. The article also assumes that experiences of close death may occur when people partly undergoing aspects of quick sleep, i.e. when the most solid and intricate dreams happen.

The theories of other scientists include the same nerve receptors that facilitate the effects of ketamine.

Another suggests that NDE aspects may result from dysfunction in the area of ​​the brain responsible for combining monuments, sounds, movement and innate sense, where we are in one sensory experience.

This can explain one of the most intriguing parts of experience about close death: that some people later say that they watched their body from above and are able to describe the details of what was happening around them, that they seem to be able to know.

Dr. Kevin Nelson, a professor of neurology at the University of Kentucky, who was the author of the March study, noticed that people could hear, even when they apparently do not react, and that patients’ eyelids were often open during resuscitation efforts.

So they can escalate and sound in real time, but because their brain is disturbed by a lack of blood flow, remember that it comes from a perspective over their body.

Processing of life -changing experience

Some researchers-a enormous number of people who had experience of close death-they believe that none of the proposed scientific explanations can explain all elements and that these experiences are real meetings with afterlife.

This idea is a curse for many neuronauramers, for which the basic commandment is that consciousness arises from the brain.

“Faith and science are often confused on this subject, partly because he has such a deep emotional Valencia,” said Dr. Nelson. He added, however: “There is no scientific evidence that we can have human experience outside the brain.”

But Dr. Long, whose medical training and practice concerns radiation oncology, believes that awareness of people leaves his bodies during experience with death in a way that neuronauk cannot take into account. He is particularly convinced that science cannot explain the accuracy and details of what patients remind to see and hear from outside their body.

Dr. Pehlivanova and her colleagues from the University of Virginia Institute also believe that experience may be associated with true separation between consciousness and the brain, although they did not reject the possibility of neurological or physiological explanations.

Dr. Bruce Greyson, a retired professor of psychiatry and teachings of Neurobehaviral at this institute, has been studying experience with death for 50 years. Nowadays, he focuses mainly on the causes, but how doctors could best assist people who undergo these experiences, processing what they experienced.

Doctors and nurses are the first people to whom patients describe their experiences, hoping that they will “get a certain look at it,” said Dr. Greyson. Sometimes these specialists answer dismissively.

“For almost all experiences from close death, they consider this to be one of the most critical things, if not the most critical thing, it ever happened in their lives,” he said. “And although this may seem irrelevant to a health care worker, it is not for experience at all.”