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World's Largest-ever Study Of Near-Death Experiences ScienceDaily (Sep. 10, 2008) — The University of Southampton is launching the world's largest-ever study of near-death experiences this week. The AWARE (AWAreness during REsuscitation) study is to be launched by the Human Consciousness Project of the University of Southampton - an international collaboration of scientists and physicians who have joined forces to study the human brain, consciousness and clinical death. The study is led by Dr Sam Parnia, an expert in the field of consciousness during clinical death, together with Dr Peter Fenwick and Professors Stephen Holgate and Robert Peveler of the University...

One night while diving for lobster on the island of Mauritius, an Australian named Ian McCormick was stung on his forearm by what local Creole fishermen call "invisibles": extraordinarily poisonous but hard to see "five-box" jellyfish, in the nomenclature of the trade. Medics were called -- urgently. It was an emergency if ever there is an emergency. "Found in the waters off northern Australia, the box jellyfish Chironex fleckeri is not the only marine invertebrate to use venom, but it is the possessor of arguably the most lethal venom in the world," notes one expert. "In the past half...

Friday, February 04, 2005 Hallucinatory Neurophysics Everyone knows what it's like to experience the hallucinations that accompany certain kinds of drug use (among other mind-altering contexts) -- if not from direct experience, at least from depictions in movies and literature. We've seen the colorful, swirling patterns, or the illusory tunnels stretching before us. It turns out that hallucinations are by no means random; there are certain recurrent patterns reported by people who experience them. These patterns were studied by Heinrich Kluever in the 1920's and 30's, and classified into four different structures: spirals, spokes, honeycombs, and cobwebs. Subsequent work has...

Seattle Doctor Specializes In Near-Death Experiences The NBC 10 Investigators tracked down a doctor in Seattle whose research may come closer to anyone else to answering the question, is there life after death? Dr. Melvin Morse is a pediatrician who used to think that people who were interested in near-death experiences just wanted to be on television talk shows. But something happened to one of his patients that changed his opinion. Now he believes the evidence points to something after life. Most scientists will explain that near-death experiences are caused by the lack of oxygen in the brain in the...

Book details 2 encounters in near-death experiencesTwice President Reagan faced life-threatening experiences and twice he had encounters with angelic beings who comforted him and helped pull him through his medical crises, says a new book, "Hand of Providence: The Strong and Quiet Faith of Ronald Reagan," by Mary Beth Brown. As Reagan was fighting for his life after being shot by John Hinckley March 30, 1981, he was having trouble breathing. His skin had turned so pale, Nancy Reagan remembers, "He was the color of paper – just as white as a sheet, with dried blood around his mouth." Reagan...

January 14 could have been a bad day for George Bush. As the president was preparing to announce America's return to the moon in a speech at the headquarters of Nasa, he was almost asked to deliver a very different message: that the Earth could suffer a devastating asteroid strike within 24 hours. Astronomers have revealed that during a "nine-hour crisis" the night before Mr Bush's speech they believed there was a one in four chance an asteroid would hit the planet in 36 hours. Had it not been for a break in the clouds that allowed an amateur astronomer...

As more and more people come forward with accounts of near-death experiences, new research is about to examine the out of body experience to see whether mind and body really do separate at the point of death. It is only 30 years ago that the term near-death experience was coined. An American researcher, Raymond Moody, used it to describe the reports of a large number of people who, whilst apparently dead, had seen deceased relatives, tunnels of light, life reviews and felt an overwhelming sense of peace, before being resuscitated. Recent studies have shown that one in 10 people who...

Beyond brain death Beyond brain death Pam Reynolds' near-death experience Michael Sabom is a cardiologist whose latest book, Light and Death, includes a detailed medical and scientific analysis of an amazing near-death experience of a patient named Pam Reynolds who underwent a highly unusual operation in which the patient is "flatlined" in order to perform a particular operation - in this case, brain surgery. A portion of this case is summarized below. Thirty-five year old Pam Reynolds was being operated on for a giant basilar artery aneurysm. A weakness in the wall of the large artery at the base of...