How could the brain retain memories of a near death experience, if the body, including the brain, is dead?

Question

If during near death experiences, a person's soul leaves the body and brain, how can the person use their brain to remember the experience?

Answer 1

Near-death experiences occur most frequently with cardiac arrest, resulting in blood loss to the brain, which begins to undergo dysfunction if deprived of blood supply for more than ten seconds. Higher consciousness is affected first, followed progressively by lower and lower levels of brain function. Like the orderly shutdown of a computer, more complex things go first, followed by more basic things later. This commonly occurs when fighter pilots "grey out" during periods of high acceleration, and many pilots have reported effects similar to near-death experiences.

It is the continuation of basic brain functions that allow people to remember their near-death experience, as well as continue to hear the voices of doctors and relatives during that time, as hearing is one of the last brain functions to fail. Many other specifics of near-death experiences have explanations relating to changes in brain chemistry caused by lack of oxygen, including the "out of body" experience described by many. In short, many of the events common to near-death experiences have a biological origin, and are not glimpses of eternity at all.

Answer 2

Short answer is that it can't.

Synapses fire trememdously while in stressful situations. Many people remember death experiences but it hasn't been determined that they are memories from the other side.

A great way to look at these experiences is to look at them in a similar way to dreams. There are times when dreams are very vivid and I experience things that I have never done, like being in a war, or flying or being chased by an angry mob. The dreams are very real, and initially when you wake up you feel as if you just got back from an actual event.

Just because the brain tells you that something is very lifelike, doesn't mean it really is. (or in this case, deathlike.)

Answer 3

A near death experience is simply the body's reaction to loss of blood to and the shutting down of the brain. It's got nothing to do with a soul passing into another realm of existence.

Pilots who go through high g-force training often pass out due to lack of oxygen to the brain and they report symptoms that are unmistakably close to those reported by people who claim to have had a near death experience. (Tunnel vision, the feeling of being separated from your body and floating above, etc)

One person's interpretation of such experiences are hardly proof that there is an afterlife. Especially when there are an overwhelming number of people who experience the same thing when they are not even close to death and they are not associated or obsessed with some religious fantasy. They are merely suffering from a lack of oxygen to the brain.

Answer 4

There is no soul to leave the body.

The brain is not dead. Your brain can survive up to several minutes without blood flow. As oxygen levels go down in the brain activity in it reduces to a point where an EEG may not be able to pick up much, but that does not mean that there is zero activity. EEGs are not very sensitive in terms of individual neurons. If you do not get blood flow back to your brain soon enough part of it die and you have brain damage. If your cognitive sections die then you are brain dead.

If NDEs are due to people approaching death, why is it that they have exactly the same symptoms as oxygen deprivation experienced by pilots undergoing altitude testing?

Answer 5

You are not supposed to ask that question!
They are ignoring your real question and don't want to admit that the soul and spirit that leaves the body, retains all of the memories and can still see and hear and thing about what is going on..
People see themselves when their physical eyes are closed.. ect... The video totally ignored the fact that many people knew things that were happening in the operating room and saw them while their brain was shut down..
Ignoring and denying the spiritual world only works up to a point and then the evidence is overwhelming
Because man is a spiritual being also.

Answer 6

The problem is that even the most highly trained and experienced specialists aren't 100 percent sure what constitutes "death."

They're much more accurate than ever (consider in the 19th century that many people were terrified of being buried alive since coma was sometimes interpreted as death) but there are instances where a person who has been termed "brain-dead" actually revives.

Answer 7

clinical death is the cessation of circulation and breathing, not cessation of brain activity. You loose conciousness quickly, but that doesn't mean your brain stops working.
Your brain will survive that for about up to 5 mins (depending on conditions, esp. with lower body temp for longer).
If you brain dies as well, you will be legally dead, not before.
So if you experience near-death, you are clinically dead, not brain dead.

Answer 8

NEAR death experience.

Answer 9

They can't. That's why it's called a NEAR-death experience.

Quite an interesting experience to be sure. In mine, I came face to face with Fenrirulfr, Fenris Wolf of Norse mythology. Granted, I'm an atheist, but there ya' go. The wolf's always been a primary symbol in my life, hence why I'd see Fenrirulfr while experiencing such an abnormal neurological condition that my brain was trying to to organize and to process as sensory data.

Answer 10

First you have to define "dead". If a persons heart stops are they dead? They brain remains to be chemically active for some time after. If your just going by heart movement you "die" between 60-100 times every minute.