Top neurosurgeon 'spent six days in heaven' during a coma

Originally posted by zeeon

Originally posted by kurthall
reply to post by zeeon

 

I don't care how smart the guy is....A dream Is a dream! 5 min of dreaming can seem like forever!

Except the part of the brain that provides "Dreams" (The cortex) was completely inactive.
How do you explain that?

After his coma and before he completely woke up, his brain was working more normally. It is that time that the brain could have constructed a dream.

Or maybe that part of his brain was "completely inactive" only in the sense that our science can understand/detect.

Originally posted by Egyptia
reply to post by CaptainBeno

 

While this is an incredible story to be sure, all I can say is that this neurosurgeon is not lacking for money so why is he making the information unavailable unless you buy the book? Seems rather greedy from someone who should just make this available to all because of the message therein and the people he would want to reach. He can still sell the book but he should also make it available to all. Not everyone is priviledged like he is which leads me to think that this experience should if anything render in him the knowledge to know this.

He should feel compelled to spread that message far and wide without the thought of reaping a profit.

That in itself makes my radar flash brightly.

edit on 9-10-2012 by Egyptia because: (no reason given)

You are a brilliant member ! Malpractice suit. ?

Dreams mainly occur during REM - which is a state where the brain is very active - and are apprently easier to remember if you wake up during them.

Seems to me that he probably went through such stages after his coma and that is the simplest answer to "What actually happenedhere?"

Originally posted by openyourmind1262
My take. He's a neurosurgeon. he fell into a coma, he woke up from said coma and described somthing extrordinary to say the lest. Nerosurgeon + coma+ extrordinary story about he's been to heaven+ wrote a book about it all === A whole lot of money from book sales. Not to mention the speaking circuit and the book tour, means big dollars and all the while he's making that money, he sure is'nt putting that malpractice insurance to use.

When i come to ATS and someone is making a out of this world claim seems 9 times out of 10 there is a book involved when someone experiences a UFO or a ghost or in this case a NDE. They have to write a book. Because when something unexplained happens people are transformed in to an author or writer died came back to help humanity ...must write a book... must make money

Now i am leaning toward huckster, go figure

Originally posted by Cuervo

You don't have to believe that we would be plagued with disembodied spirits and flying ghosts in order to entertain the idea that our consciousness is not housed in a particular place.

The only reason you have the perspective you do and see things "out there" instead of in your head is because our brains have an amazing ability to translate Fourier mathematical equations. Without that ability, we would actually be experiencing (viewing) life from an actual location but we don't. We are FPSing it and that's very strange when you think about it.

No, there is zero evidence that our consciousness is housed within our brain. Saying that it is because nothing comes out when you die sort of solidifies my point.

Well, I never said the consciousness is housed in the brain. I would argue, or at least infer that consciousness involves the entire body ie. the nervous system, circulation, bacteria, temperature, the senses etc. as these processes allow us to be conscious in the first place. One cannot remove the body from any equation regarding consciousness. Doing so removes all context and connection to all experience.

People who have been blind since birth don't dream in forms. If the neuroscientist in this case has been blind since birth, it would be safe to predict that his 'heaven' wouldn't possess clouds or beings. It would be a different experience all together. In other words, the body isn't only necessary for sustaining the mind, but also for providing it with any imagery.

reply to post by DarthFazer

there is a book involved

And it's not even funny how unfair that is to struggling aspiring talented authors. some will never make it. But damned if anyone ever said life is a fair deal. Not in this screwed up mess of a world. and if something is ever found out like that about Doc ? Well what can you say ? What can you do / So it can only go one way with people like that. They can't lose. only win or break even.

Originally posted by NiNjABackflip
reply to post by _R4t_

 

Should we assume that the cortex was shut down until the very moment he opened his eyes and was awake? Or is it possible he dreamt while the cortex was regaining function?

"But as far as I know, no one before me has ever traveled to this dimension (a) while their cortex was completely shut down, and (b) while their body was under minute medical observation, as mine was for the full seven days of my coma."

Assumption maybe not, reading perhaps hehe

cheers

Another thing to consider is he's not a low wage John Smith looking for a 15 minutes of fame, we're talking about a Harvard professor... This has the potential to kill his credibility which is pretty much your career in the scientific community...

With the blood, sweat and years this guy put to get there I find it difficult to believe one would want to try to bet all of his chips on a book for a 15 minutes of fame I mean...

Fame wise "I'm one of america's top neuro-scientist" sounds a lot better than "I think I went to heaven when my brain was shutdown but I can't ultimately prove it"

I used to watch a show on the Biography Channel called I Survived: Beyond and Back and it was quite interesting. I started looking at some websites and came across the following which I found very interesting, considering he was an avowed atheist that became a reverand after his experience. His name is Howard Storm.

www.near-death.com...

Originally posted by _R4t_

Originally posted by NiNjABackflip
reply to post by _R4t_

 

Should we assume that the cortex was shut down until the very moment he opened his eyes and was awake? Or is it possible he dreamt while the cortex was regaining function?

"But as far as I know, no one before me has ever traveled to this dimension (a) while their cortex was completely shut down, and (b) while their body was under minute medical observation, as mine was for the full seven days of my coma."

Assumption maybe not, reading perhaps

hehe

cheers

Another thing to consider is he's not a low wage John Smith looking for a 15 minutes of fame, we're talking about a Harvard professor... This has the potential to kill his credibility which is pretty much your career in the scientific community...

With the blood, sweat and years this guy put to get there I find it difficult to believe one would want to try to bet all of his chips on a book for a 15 minutes of fame I mean...

Fame wise "I'm one of america's top neuro-scientist" sounds a lot better than "I think I went to heaven when my brain was shutdown but I can't ultimately prove it"

edit on 9-10-2012 by _R4t_ because: (no reason given)

Yeah I read it. So he awoke as if someone flicked a light switch, and all functions of his body fired right back up and he popped out of bed and remembered the experience? There was no confusion at all in that time? After being in a coma for 7 days?

If so, the man's a medical marvel, as that's never happened before in the history of medicine.

If we're arriving at such conclusions, we should consider this at least:

People may emerge from a coma with a combination of physical, intellectual and psychological difficulties that need special attention. Recovery usually occurs gradually—patients acquire more and more ability to respond. Some patients never progress beyond very basic responses, but many recover full awareness.[13] Regaining consciousness is not instant: in the first days, patients are only awake for a few minutes, and duration of time awake gradually increases. This is unlike the situation in many movies where people who awake from comas are instantly able to continue their normal lives. In reality, the coma patient awakes sometimes in a profound state of confusion, not knowing how they got there and sometimes suffering from dysarthria, the inability to articulate any speech, and with many other disabilities.

en.wikipedia.org...

I'm a long-time lurker on this site, and this is my first comment. I just watched the entire Bioethics Forum video here: www.btci.org...

I found it the entire interview fascinating. I am not religious, but I've seen a lot of "unexplainable" things in my time, and I have witnessed first-hand the "singing" he talks about, as well as the notion that time is just an illusion--that it doesn't really exist. I have no reason to believe that he has some financial agenda, or that he desires power, or has some religious purpose in talking about this. His message resonates with a lot of what I have personally seen and witnessed in little snippets, although I have not had a near death experience. And he seems at peace; he seems to have a calm about him, a sense of knowing and groundedness, that I trust. Could he be a total scam artist? Sure. I've been fooled before. But something about the way he speaks in this interview just strikes me as real.

reply to post by CaptainBeno


It's funny how some people automatically assume that he is just trying to make money when they haven't even met the man, let alone the fact that they haven't read the book and that he already makes a ton of money. Whethor or not he actually went to heaven, of all the many many possibilities that are out there, trillions and trillions and trillions of possibilities and the little knowledge that we have, means we cannot even really have an opinion on the subject, all we can do is be open to the possibilites. To actually say that it's not possible, you can say that, but you'd actually have to know the end from the beginning which I doubt anyone does.

Why not open to the possibility?

This story is very touching, how he saw his baby sister and recognized her after the fact. Very heartwarming.

Originally posted by NiNjABackflip

Originally posted by _R4t_

Originally posted by NiNjABackflip
reply to post by _R4t_

 

Should we assume that the cortex was shut down until the very moment he opened his eyes and was awake? Or is it possible he dreamt while the cortex was regaining function?

"But as far as I know, no one before me has ever traveled to this dimension (a) while their cortex was completely shut down, and (b) while their body was under minute medical observation, as mine was for the full seven days of my coma."

Assumption maybe not, reading perhaps

hehe

cheers

Another thing to consider is he's not a low wage John Smith looking for a 15 minutes of fame, we're talking about a Harvard professor... This has the potential to kill his credibility which is pretty much your career in the scientific community...

With the blood, sweat and years this guy put to get there I find it difficult to believe one would want to try to bet all of his chips on a book for a 15 minutes of fame I mean...

Fame wise "I'm one of america's top neuro-scientist" sounds a lot better than "I think I went to heaven when my brain was shutdown but I can't ultimately prove it"

edit on 9-10-2012 by _R4t_ because: (no reason given)

Yeah I read it. So he awoke as if someone flicked a light switch, and all functions of his body fired right back up and he popped out of bed and remembered the experience? There was no confusion at all in that time? After being in a coma for 7 days?

If so, the man's a medical marvel, as that's never happened before in the history of medicine.

If we're arriving at such conclusions, we should consider this at least:

People may emerge from a coma with a combination of physical, intellectual and psychological difficulties that need special attention. Recovery usually occurs gradually—patients acquire more and more ability to respond. Some patients never progress beyond very basic responses, but many recover full awareness.[13] Regaining consciousness is not instant: in the first days, patients are only awake for a few minutes, and duration of time awake gradually increases. This is unlike the situation in many movies where people who awake from comas are instantly able to continue their normal lives. In reality, the coma patient awakes sometimes in a profound state of confusion, not knowing how they got there and sometimes suffering from dysarthria, the inability to articulate any speech, and with many other disabilities.

en.wikipedia.org...

edit on 9-10-2012 by NiNjABackflip because: (no reason given)

I'm no neuro surgeons but I guess this is where its safe to assume that's why they use terms such as "may" and "typically" another thing to consider is the great majority of people that end up in coma is due to massive trauma such as accident or direct hit in the head and so on, his was caused by meningitis so I guess it might be possible the switch just got flipped back on and he woke up... in either case we'll know more when the data is analyzed which is safe to assume its the first thing he's going to do when he can put a toe on the floor...

He did say in the interview: ' we are all going to the same place' , which imo is an holistic and unsubstantiated view according to the Biblical Word of God. Christ preached more about the dangers of Hell than the joys of Heaven.
y

In any cases there's evidence out there to be taken on consideration, there's a woman whom was clinically dead for 5 minutes if I recall right and when she came back she argued with the doctors she was on the top of the hospital and saw a red shoe on top of there and the doctor thinking to put a end to it went to check and came back with a shoe...

Another good one is actually the ONLY clinically dead person recorded in medical history to have had a NDE experience while be completely hooked up to dozens of machine this was due to the fact she was under going a experimental very dangerous brain surgery.

They had to technically stop her heart and all brain functions, cool her body down to a certain temperature and to make sure there was no brain function still working they put hearbuds in your ears with loud white noise and monitor the brain activity to ensure its not picking up the whitenoise from the hearing function...

The woman after she came back explained she saw them perform the operation, gave detailed informations of the tools used which are always covered before the patient is put down to sleep for sanitary purpose and furthermore told word for word stuff to the doctors that were said in the middle of the operation when she was clinically dead and had hearbuds blasting white noise in her hears...

I think the scientific community has this egoistic thing where when they know they cannot explain something they just brush it off... but this particular case alone should of made first pages everywhere but it didn't really...

Originally posted by alienreality
Guess you failed to actually read the full linked content..

Because he was being constantly monitored during the coma and there was zero brain activity.. His cortex was completely shut down..
His mind was doing absolutely nothing..

It has been tested in an artificial neural network and able to produce results indicating that the experience of a NDE can be attributed to the neuron death. I even seem to recall that they did a test on a 'dying' neural network that tried to recall music as as less of the network functioned, the stranger the music became.

Modeling of NDEs using artificial neural networks has shown that some aspects of the core near-death experience can be achieved through simulated neuron death.In the course of such simulations, the essential features of the NDE, life review, novel scenarios (i.e., heaven or hell), and OBE are observed through the generation of confabulations or false memories, as discussed in Confabulation (neural networks). The key feature contributing to the generation of such confabulatory states are a neural network's inability to differentiate dead from silent neurons. Memories, whether related to direct experience, or not, can be seeded upon arrays of such inactive brain cells.

To me this says that firstly it is entirely plausible that the brain simple re-writes the memories people have as the cells cease to function. When the person recovers, an entire new set of memories may be there, confusing, elating, bewildering, ... heavenly...

As to the amount of activity in the brain, this leaves me with a seemingly unanswerable question.

1: If there is no brain activity at all, where do the memories come from? How can he recall this? He is activating part of his brain to recall an event, but this event has never been stored in memory. ??

Or are some people now saying the soul has memory, and we can access this if we somehow touch the dimension it exists in?

Near death isn't death. Therefore, no one has died and came back to tell about it.
Whatever is happening to people during NDEs is not proof of an afterlife, in my opinion.

Originally posted by moniesisfun
I would posit that his bias has blinded him to the possibility that the equipment which is used to determine this inactivity isn't actually sensitive enough to make such a distinction for every individual. Everyone has different brain activity for the same stimuli under normal conditions.

Precisely. It is all theoretical and it is assumed that there is no brain activity....just because our equipment does not detect it...or is not built to detect it.

Still creepy though. Interesting indeed.

i spent 6 days at disney world once, i think i saw hell.

Originally posted by hellbjorn012

Originally posted by LondonerBLV

Maybe he did have an experience but im a bit cautious when he is trying to earn something out of this.

If he wrote a book on neuroscience with facts and experiences would you not believe that as well if he sold it?

Thats a bit different. Neuroscience is not proving heaven exists.

reply to post by _R4t_


I have heard of cases such as this. Amazing really considering the amount of machines hooked up etc etc and still people don't believe.

To be honest, I'm not sure what to believe happens after death, but one thing I am begining to notice is that "something" happens. God or no God, something happens.