"Your brain knows if you die" Topic

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"There may be something in the brain we haven't discovered that accounts for consciousness, or it may be that consciousness is a separate entity from the brain."

"It could be that, like electromagnetism, the human psyche and consciousness are a very subtle type of force that interacts with the brain, but are not necessarily produced by the brain. The jury is still out."

"Some people have tried to conclude that what we observe indicates that cells produce thought: here's a picture of depression, here's a picture of happiness. But this is simply an association, not a causation. If you accept that theory, there should be no reports of people hearing or seeing things after activity in their brain has stopped. If people can have consciousness, maybe that raises the possibility that our theories are premature."

"I'm studying how consciousness can be present in people who've gone beyond the threshold of death. All we can say now is that the data suggests that consciousness is not annihilated."

I seem to remember hearing this all before…

When I was in college in the 70s, I attended a lecture by a doctor who wrote a book about 'life after death' experiences. Later, I read his book and its sequel. Wish I could remember the title or author…

Bill, was it possibly _Life After Life_, written by
Raymond Moody, M.D. and published in 1975 ?

I believe the sequel was _The Light Beyond_, published
in the 1980's (not sure of year, etc.)

Yes, the assertions of NDEs are old, go back a long ways. But now the studies have shown enough verified cases to say that consciousness continues after death. Nothing more has been shown; nothing to point to a spirit or "self" as the cause of consciousness after death; and certainly nothing to indicate that something as yet unknown about the brain is the cause of retaining consciousness.

The argument has shifted, though, from putting believers in life eternal on the defensive, to pulling the naysayers into the realm of "we don't know". Before, they would act as though they possessed some kind of high ground of rationality, almost a claim of "knowing" that there is no such thing as life after death because there is no evidence (much less proof) of it. Now there is evidence that life continues beyond death.

As Parnia says, "It takes a lot of imagination to think there's somehow a hidden area of your brain that comes into action when everything else isn't working." Now the naysayers are the ones using imagination to come up with hypotheses as to why there is no such thing as a separate consciousness from the brain. They will look even harder for some physiological cause of "consciousness", denying an outside "force" or metaphysical cause.

I remember a horror movie where one of the characters was arguing that after the French did some head chopping, sometimes the guest of honor
would still be aware and looking around. Of course later in the movie he lost his head. Close up of the head and you could just see him thinking ‘see, I told you so'.