revolve around death all human cultures and social organizations. Thus his conception of death as an end or as a transit, its belief in life after death on Judgement Day ... act as constraints to the performance of individuals in one way or another. The idea of \u200b\u200bimmortality and the belief in the Hereafter appear in one form or another in virtually all societies and historical moments. However, to date no conclusive evidence for the afterlife.Scientific explanations of death are appealing to the properties of matter and the physical-chemical and biological properties of living tissues. The body's inability to maintain homeostasis or internal dynamic balance of all system parameters that would produce the physical effect we call death. But more interesting than death itself, or just interesting but fascinating (at least for me) are the psychological aspects associated with death in animals with higher cognitive functions, consciousness and culture animal: humans.
The second question to emerge from human death and perhaps the most interesting is: What happens to humans after death? Actually, what wonder is what happens to the mental faculties of the person who has died. Some believe it is preserved by the spirit that impelled her mind, raising your consciousness even higher realities, others believe in the migration of the soul of a human being after his death to a level unattainable physically. The Christian religion considers death as the end of the physical permanence of the human being in its flesh, the spirit leaves the physical body deteriorates and is unable to stand under the laws of this finite universe, and immediately turns to God ( Ecclesiastes 12:7).
As we saw the other day , Raymond Moody was the first to want to address the issue in a rigorous and systematic, with the difficulties inherent in this type of issues. He listed the visions and sensations that patients reported who suffered near death experiences and recorded his observations in the book Life After Life . The scientific or natural explanations Moody offers in her book are not very enlightening to say, whether the author's partisanship or weakness of science in those years. Then you will find the theories that drive the modern neuroscience regard.
Fallacies in Psychology , the skeptic and controversial Rolf Degen provides an overview of the main features of NDEs reported by Moody offering alternative explanations. First, these experiences are described accompanied by feelings of peace and happiness, with visits from angels and other beings of light, but Moody does not seem to be aware that historically, and in the medieval period in particular, have reported such experiences very different:
As noted by the historian Professor Peter Dinzelbacher, University of Stuttgart, in Greek antiquity Individual accounts should be raised (anabioseis) as well as decreases in the inner world (katabaseis), but has not reached us neither. From the Middle Ages, by contrast, form their own genre, starting with the apocalyptic writings and visions of martyrs. This vision literature contains descriptions of visits to the Beyond the dead not communicated to people you trust. In the anthologies, ie, collections of lives of saints and other clerical writings of the sort, are also referred to such presences that appear to him dying in the last extremity.But we must also take into account other cultures, where the stories are narrated have nothing to do with Christian culture:
Sometimes it is visited by emissaries of the mythological realm of Christianity, perhaps Jesus himself, Mary, a saint or an angel. But there was more frequent terrible vision of hell and other powers of darkness. For example, account of Bishop Martin of Tours that his last words before dying were: "What I want here, bloodthirsty beast?" .
Nor can hide in the medieval view, most often, the dying man looks led to Hell, understood as the region of eternal punishment. The figures that come their way in these places are not bright, but dark, and then return to life is taken as warnings of what might have happened in the absence of repentance necessary. However, it is almost exclusively involved the medieval stories where those images of doom. Which, according Dinzelbacher reflects the fact that today we have another image of divinity, which is the good God, rather than the vengeful and avenging God of dies irae. Today the psychological interpretation of the passions to play down the ideas of guilt and just punishment, and especially the New Age movement prefers to imagine a utopian era of harmony and spiritual progress. So dominant for the modern man's belief in a happy transit.
The Swiss climbers, for example, whose experiences of near-death in 1891 published the geologist Albert Heim in the yearbook Jahrbuch des Schweizer Alpenclubs not crossed the Underworld and in the Middle Ages, and passed through no tunnel, but fell into a mountain landscape "with a beautifully blue sky dotted with pink puffs." The Hopi Indians when they die the prairie road crosses the eternal hunting grounds and India go to heaven mounted on a cow.Personally, I think, without denying the universality of death as a physical phenomenon, at least part of the experience associated with it can easily be due to purely cultural. Other issues, however, may be more physiological, if we consider that can be reproduced artificially by the use of drugs. According to the psychiatrist Karl Jensen, "intravenous injection of 70 to 150 ml of ketamine can reproduce all aspects of the NDE" . Indeed, the effects of this substance are rather unpleasant, so doctors often administer anesthesia mixed with other substances. In addition, "there is not a single feature of the experience that has not been obtained also by surgical stimulation of the parietal lobes, or by weak electromagnetic fields or other artificial stimuli, "summarizes the psychologist Persinger.
A theoretical explanatory model that links the ECM issues like the light at the end of the tunnel, the sensation of being dragged through it and the retrospect of life, which includes Rolf Degen alluding to his colleague, psychologist Susan Blackmore, and part of the idea of \u200b\u200bcerebral hypoxia:
The hidden depths of the brain is an organ particularly sensitive to lack of oxygen, the hippocampus, which is the central switching memory. Is the filter that determines which memories to consciousness will and why others do not. In situations of greatest danger to life, nervous inhibition disappears, as demonstrated by the experiments with rats. In the emerging consciousness of memory images without hindrance, and the brain, which always tries to make sense of the information it receives, making chaos in retrospect, just the "movie of life."Recent studies also indicate a possible relationship between these phenomena and a high level of carbon dioxide in the blood. For the feeling
If oxygen deprivation persists, Blackmore continues the theoretical model, it causes a general disinhibition nervous. This model has been possible to simulate by computer the vision of light at the end of a tunnel. This view is probably linked to the primary structure of the optical cortex, the meeting place of the sensations in the brain lighting. "They are much more numerous nerve cells under the center of the visual field and peripheral exceedingly scarce change" . But as they disconnecting inhibitory neurons (because they consume more energy and oxygen than the other), and largely uncontrolled discharges nerve, the brain interprets the signals save neurons from optical and a glow. "And in the center of vision is more nerve cells active, you get the feeling that the light at the end of a tunnel" . As downloads increase, expands the visual field invaded by the glare, and this is what produces the illusory sense of traveling at light speed.
The Rudolf Virchow University Clinic of the University of Berlin has shown that lack of oxygen which causes the visual manifestations of matter. Doctors cause a loss in 42 adolescents by the method of giving up to 22 seconds of hyperventilation, followed by a sudden pressure on the rib cage. This is how the experimenters produce acute cerebral hypoxia. Subsequently, subjects counted visions and representations very similar to those of the NDE.
bypass, called a out-of-body-trip , one of the most legendary and prolific figures in all literature pseudoscientific, Degen again referring to his colleague Blackmore offering a possible explanation in terms of psychology Cognitive
A symptom that often occurs during the attacks is that patients believe they are outside or feel as duplicates. The contemplation of the scene in front of bird cognitive psychologists explain it by saying that our brain constructs at all times three-dimensional image that surrounds us. The sum of these three-dimensional images of a bird's eye view. "Close your eyes and try to imagine a bird's eye view where you are now. You'll be amazed how easy it is ".Another characteristic pointed out by Moody is the fact that people returning from the ECM undergo a profound change in his personality, his attitude towards life and his understanding of death. Even many embrace religion. I think the change in attitude and religious motivation are easy to do with one's own psychological interpretation that the patient is from trauma, which also could influence their personality. However, Degen reports that the psychologist Persinguer goes a step further:
Persinguer psychologist has been raised even if the changes triggered by the NDE does not really reflect brain injury. "Most of the incentives mentioned in connection with the ECM can certainly be compared with an insidious destruction of brain cells' . That loss would affect in particular hippocampal neurons. But this center, when deaths occur cellular neuroplastic modification presented below. That is, the remaining neurons form new dendrites and synapses. Outwardly, these adaptation processes could take the appearance of a personality change. MoodyECM recognizes that artificially induced experiences recounted similar in some respects, but thinks there are more differences than similarities. However, remember once again that Moody's position may be compromised. Anyway, neuroscientific explanations do not cover all aspects of ECM. For example, does not explain why some experiences are happy and some rather unpleasant, and possible cultural differences or exactly how they influence the neurobiological level experience suffered. Currently research is ongoing large-scale study called AWARE Human Consciousness Project, involving 16 hospitals in the UK and U.S. 9, coordinated by a team from the University of Southampton. Studies culminate in March 2011. It is less.
Related Entries:
death Pseudosciences
Life After Life
