Wednesday, September 9, 2009

Rebuttal To Skeptic's Magazine Jason Braithwaite View That Pim Lommel's NDE Study Doesn't Support The Survival Hypothesis

So what is the problem with his view?. I will explain, first he mentions that quite recently doctors have found some deep level brain activity in persistent vegetative patients and in deep coma's. This is no surprise and it's likely their probably is high level brain activity in the non cortical processes of the brain. However those non cortical processes with high brain activity don't bring about thoughts, memories etc. It usually is assumed to be the cortical regions of the brain which have been shown by a flat EEG to have very little activity there. There no doubt there is a little bit of activity in the cortex but that would no where near account for high complex thought processes, and memories that occur in near death experiences. So for Jason's Braithwaite view to work, their would have to be evidence showing that stimulating deep level non cortical processes of the brain take over high level functions of the brain,and explain high level thought processes. But here is the catch, according to neuropsychology that is very improbable. This is why Pim Van Lommel concluded that his study supports the survival hypothesis because of the observations that it didn't fit into a brain based model.

Jason Braithwaite says and i quote

"He cites evidence that inter-ictal discharges in the hippocampus or amygdala alone are more than sufficient to produce complex meaningful hallucinations - no involvement from the cortex is necessary.

My Response: But here is the catch, those patients report distortion in their bodies legs becoming shorter, not seeing their body down below etc. This is the opposite of what patients with out of body experiences report.

I challenge all skeptics that are skeptical that near death experiences and out of body experiences provide supporting evidence for life after death. For them to show any problems with my reasoning above.

1 comment:

Wendy C said...

The major problem with this rebuttal is that you haven't actually provided any references to the research which supports your claims. Could you add these in?

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