Possible reasons behind near-death experiences

All those who have had a close call with death tell the same stories- dark tunnels with blinding light at the end, conversations with close relatives who have now passed, the sensation of the soul leaving the body and being able to see their ‘dead’ body from a third person’s perspective.

Near-death experiences (NDEs) are rare, but they are almost always identical. But strangely enough, a new research has suggested that NDEs are more common than we think and they all have universal themes.

Based on a survey conducted on 1,034 people from 35 different countries, the team of researchers from Norway, Denmark, and Germany found that 10 per cent of people reported to have had an NDE. These experiences have ranged from dramatic struggles to having experienced total peace.

These accounts of people, submitted online, were reviewed by a team of scientists led by Daniel Kondziella, Ph.D., a neurologist at the University of Copenhagen in Denmark. His research showed that these accounts have a common pattern between them.

What are near-death experiences like?

Here are few of the accounts of NDEs that were reviews by Kondiziella’s team, reported Inverse:

 Male, 28: As I was fighting, my life started flashing before me in my head. […] I felt like my soul was being pulled out of my body. I was floating and was [lifted in the air]. After a few moments I felt like I was in an enormous tunnel of darkness, and at its end there was the brightest white light I have ever seen. I remember that my dead relatives were at the gate, including my maternal grandmother.

Female, 57: I was very young when I almost drowned. I saw angels, and they were singing the most beautiful music I have ever heard.

Male, 46: I encountered a truly out-of-body experience where my eyesight and visual became incredibly abstract. For around an hour I had no sense of self or my surroundings.

Of all the recorded experiences, 87 per cent said that the felt time was either being sped up or slowed down. 65 per cent felt that thoughts were racing rapidly. More than half the people said their senses felt more heightened and almost all of the experiences were positive.

Why do some people have near-death experiences?

As the reason is not concretely known, there are no solid explanations. One controversial explanation for these experiences was that the brain naturally produces the psychedelic compound DMT as people who have taken DMT as a psychedelic drug have reported to have similar experiences.

Konziella’s work highlights the possibility of the association of NDEs with the intrusion of REM 9rapid eye movement) sleep. REM sleep is the stage of sleep in which people tend to dream; as they sleep, their eyes dart back and forth rapidly beneath their eyelids and their body enters a form of paralysis called “muscle atonia.” Sometimes, these dreams can spill over into reality and could induce hallucinations and feelings of paralysis.

To supplement his theory Kondziella’s study also showed that people who had reported symptoms of REM disruption also 2.8 times more likely to have reported an NDE. The correlation between REM sleep and NDE has also been explored in a study in 2006.

Kondziella feels that there is merit in further researching the relation between REM sleep intrusion and NDEs. “Our central finding is that we confirmed the association of near-death experiences with REM sleep intrusion,” he said. “Although association is not causality, identifying the physiological mechanisms behind REM sleep intrusion into wakefulness might advance our understanding of near-death experiences.”