This Brain-Zapping Bungled Mess Sheds No Light on Out-of-Body Experiences

One of the oldest tricks used by people who don't understand something is to claim that they are "starting to understand" the thing. Very often someone making such a claim has no understanding at all of the topic. For example, there might occur a conversation like this on a blind date:

Sally: I'm looking for a very smart person, like someone smart enough to understand quantum mechanics.

Willy: Yes, I've done some reading on that. I'm starting to understand it. 

The odds here are ten to one that Willy has no understanding of quantum mechanics. 

We see such language sometimes used by scientists and science journalists. There will be a mention of some phenomenon that is not at all explicable under the assumptions of today's scientists.  But we will be reassured with a claim that "scientists are starting to understand" the phenomenon. Typically the justification for the claim is entirely groundless.  

An example is a recent Discover magazine article with a subtitle groundlessly claiming that "Now, scientists are starting to understand what causes out-of-body experiences." Out-of-body experiences are experiences in which report floating out of their bodies, often seeing their bodies from a position high above their bodies.  Out-of-body experiences can occur during near-death experiences, or when there is no danger of death. Some people report them occurring spontaneously, and a small number of people claim to be able to produce them at will through methods such as relaxation techniques. 

In the Discover article we read about this doubly-ridiculous methodology:

"Parvizi and his team worked with nine epilepsy patients who had electrodes inserted into their brains as part of their treatment for severe seizures. With their consent, the researchers stimulated regions of the patients' brains with electrical pulses and asked whether the patients experienced self-dissociation, or out-of-body experiences, as a result."

In the scientific paper described above, a paper entitled "Causal evidence for the processing of bodily self in the anterior precuneus." we hear quotes from the brain-zapped people, and we get some carefully selected fragments trying to make it sound like one or two of them had something a bit like an out-of-body experience. But  a review of the full spreadsheet showing the questions scientists asked and the answers patients gave provides no support for the claim that anything like an out-of-body experience occurred. The doctors interviewing the patients again and again asked "leading questions" as if they were trying to encourage reports that would sound something like out-of-body experiences or near-death experiences. There are several things objectionable about this methodology:

(1) The overwhelming majority of out-of-body experiences (more than 95%) occur to people who do not have the fairly rare disease of epilepsy and are not suffering seizures. Also, all of the more severe seizures result in unconsciousness rather than experiences that people remember.  A person having a "grand mal" tonic-clonic seizure will not remember the experience at all. So the idea of trying to explain out-of-body experiences by artificial brain zapping is fundamentally misguided. 

(2) The people who report having out-of-body experiences were not people having their brains stimulated by electrodes. It makes no sense to zap some part of a brain with electricity and offer that as an explanation for out-of-body experiences that do not occur under such stimulation. Doing that is as silly as twisting someone's arm, asking them whether this makes them feel sad, and then offering arm twisting as an explanation for depression. 

(3) The doctors asking questions of the patients repeatedly used "leading questions" as if they were trying to elicit responses from patients that sounded like something you would hear in an account of a near-death experience or out-of-body experience. 

Hiding their "dirty linen" in a place where almost no one would tend to find it, the authors of the paper have placed their list of questions and answers outside of the main paper, in a spreadsheet attachment within their supplemental information document. You can only get this list of questions and answers if you are diligent enough to (1) click on the Supplemental Information link in the pdf file of their main paper, and (2) then also click on the Supplemental Information link on the left of the URL that arises, and (3) then click on the "Download .xlsx" link allowing you to download a spreadsheet. You will then get a spreadsheet in which you can see how "leading questions" were used to try to get spooky-sounding answers from the poor brain-zapped subjects (but only if you have software allowing you to read spreadsheets). 

Below are some examples of how "leading questions" were used, after some part of the brains of these very sick people was needlessly electrically zapped. I will put into boldface examples of "leading question" improperly pulling the respondents in some particular direction. The duration of these zaps varied between 1 second and 10 seconds. 

Rows 194-202:

Patient: Yeah I feel it

Doctor: What happened?

Patient: I feel I don't know how to say it but my body lift up for a minute, just for a second

Doctor: Ah, is that right, I see. You were inside your body or did your body leave you?

Patient: My body leave me

Doctor: Your body left you. Where did you end up being if your body left you?

Patient: In the bed

Doctor: Ok, but where did your body leave

Patient: Up  

We have here some glaring examples of "leading questions." After being brain zapped, a patient reports his body lifting up for just a second, which sounds like a reflexive jolt response you might get from being zapped. The doctor then asks the extremely suggestive question "did your body leave you," thereby planting in the patient's mind the suggestion of an out-of-body experience. The patient is then asked where his body ended up, and is given an answer of "in the bed." Not accepting this answer, an answer suggesting no actual out-of-body experience, the doctor then speaks like he is refusing to accept the answer, and asks the additional "leading question" of  "where did you body leave?" Any answers received from such leading questions are worthless, and merely show the power of suggestion. 

Rows 230-247

Doctor: What happened?

Patient: Swing

Doctor: Do you feel like you're floating like on a boat up and down or side to side?

Patient: Side to side. I just feel like I'm swinging

Doctor: Is the entire world swinging or only you?

Patient: Only me because I feel like I'm outside and I would sit down

Doctor: If you were outside and this happened you would sit down?

Patient: Yeah

After a 5-second brain zap resulting in a "No change" report, the next statements (after additional brain zaps) are these:

Patient: Right now, yeah

Doctor: What is happening? Is it you or is it the world?

Patient: It's me. I feel inside like something

Doctor: Keep yes closed please. Was the feeling of floating the same or different?

Patient: The same.

Doctor: Is this feeling something you would want more or less of?

Patient: Less of, I feel like it's unsafe

Doctor: Unsafe, but do you feel like you're free like you're relieved like a bird?

Patient: No, I feel more confused

We have here some more glaring examples of "leading questions." After being brain zapped, a patient merely uses the word "swing" to describe how it felt. Without any provocation, the doctor then asks "do you feel like you're floating," just as if he was trying to plant in the subject's mind some idea of something like an out-of-body experience.  Later "out of nowhere" without anything to justify such  a question, the doctor asks "was the feeling of floating the same or different," even though the patient's previous response was not anything having to do with floating, but a vague report of "feel inside like something." Then the doctor speaks like he is trying to plant some idea of flying into the patient's mind, by asking if he felt like a bird. Any responses given to such "leading questions" are worthless, merely showing the power of suggestion. 

Rows 253-255:

Patient: Yes, yes, I'm feeling it - the swing. Like a cold feeling. I can feel something come up - it's cold in my mind.

Doctor: Are you feeling the floating?

Patient: Yeah.

Again, we have a glaring examples of a "leading question." Utilizing the power of suggestion, the doctor asks, "are you feeling the floating?" to a patient just after he reported no such thing, but a mere cold or swinging feeling.  The "yeah" answer is worthless as evidence, and merely shows the power of suggestion.  

Row 309: 

Again "out of nowhere" the doctor tells the patient "last time you mentioned were floating," even though the patient never independently or spontaneously said anything about floating, but merely responded (like someone under the influence of suggestion) to "leading questions" asked by the doctor, questions that introduced the word "floating."

Row 408-415

Doctor: What happened?

Patient: The same thing as before like I couldn't really focus.

Doctor: Same thing as before you can't focus on anything. Okay. Did you mind become absent?

Patient: Kind of

Doctor: Kind of? Did the position where you were lying, did it change?

Patient: *shakes head*

Doctor: Not at all?

Patient: *shakes head*

The doctor here is clearly asking more "leading questions." He sounds like he is trying to get out of the patient some report that the patient has floated out of his body, but the patient does not agree with the suggested idea. 

Row 416 - 433

We have more attempts by a doctor to get answers that might suggest floating out of the body or a change in body vertical position, but the patient says nothing in agreement with such suggestions. 

Rows 483-488

Doctor: What happened?

Patient: I don't really feel my body

Doctor: You don't feel your body? Okay. Did you lift up at all this time?

Patient: Kind of.

Doctor: Kind of? Right now or before?

Patient: Right now.

The doctor here is clearly asking another "leading question." Without any provocation, he asks about whether a "lifting up" occurred, as if he was hoping to get some report of a mind floating out a body. The "kind of" response is worthless as evidence, being probably the mere result of suggestion. 

Rows 591-595

Patient: That was much stronger.

Doctor: Got it. Do you think you can explain more? What would cause this feeling if you're up and going, and running, and walking?

Patient: I don't know.

Doctor: Have you seen the movies of astronauts of space? Have you seen them floating?

Patient: Not that last one, no. That was not painful, but my heart was beating really fast, and my hands were sweating. 

The doctor here is clearly asking another "leading question." Without any provocation, he reminds the patient of movies of astronauts floating in zero gravity, as if he was trying to get the patient to say he experienced something like that.  This time the patient does not fall for such a suggestion. 

Lines 621- 636

Doctor: What happened?

Patient: [inaudible] lightheaded.

Doctor: lightheaded?  

Patient: Yeah. That's the only way I can describe it.

Doctor: Tell me a little bit more about this lightheadedness.

Patient: Not like you're gonna pass out of anything, it just makes my head feel like compressed.

Doctor: What's happening?

Patient: Yeah, it's just kinda like got like thrown up on the clouds.

Doctor:  Thrown up on the clouds.

Patient: Yeah, like higher up floating.

Doctor: Floating in the clouds?

Patient: Yeah.

Doctor: Was that you, the whole you or part of you?

Patient: No, just my head. Just this portion [gestures to face head area]

We have here no actual report of an out-of-body experience. The brain zapping has merely produced some dizziness or a "lightheaded" feeling. Continuing to press for descriptions rather than just sticking with the original description, the doctor has got from the patient a statement that "it's just kinda like got like thrown up on the clouds." There is no reason to think that this weak "just kinda like" claim is anything more than a lyrical or poetic simile. When asked whether this involved the whole body or just part of him, the patient says "just my head." This does not match what is reported in out-of-body experiences, which are very vivid experiences no one describes using "just kinda like" language. 

Lines 659 -- 660

Doctor: You were out there floating?

Patient: Yeah, kind of.  

Here the doctor "out of the blue" without any provocation asks the patient whether he was floating. The patient had previously reported no such thing in response to the latest brain zap, merely previously reporting (in response to "leading questions") some euphoria and dizziness. The "kind of" response to a leading question has no evidence value. 

Lines 728- 731

Doctor: Did you feel any floating?

Patient: No.

Doctor: Any change in your perception of time?

Patient: No.

Another "leading question" asked without any provocation. 

Lines 752 - 765

Doctor: What happened?

Patient: Uh just a pronounced increase in that lightheaded feeling.

Doctor: Tell me more about that lightheaded feeling.

Patient: It almost feels like low blood sugar but not bad right. It's sort of like floating.

Doctor: Tell me more.

Patient: It's kind of like floating but with a heightened sense of clarity, I guess.

Doctor: Can you elaborate on that? I'm purposely not looking at your face when you're reporting. Cause we don't want to nod or to say anything to lead you. We don't want to bias you.

Patient: Just like a heightened sense of clarity in terms of like when I was like looking at the clock it just made the clock and the pictures around it seem more robust, I guess. Like an awareness of a kind. Seemed more coherent or clear.

Doctor: Was it a positive feeling or negative feeling?

Patient: Oh positive.

Doctor: Did your vision change now?

Patient: No.

Doctor: Did we cause blurriness this time?

Patient: No.

The doctor's statement "we don't want to nod or to say anything to lead you" and that "we don't want to bias you" is at this point extremely laughable, because we have seen in the quotes (from line 650 to line 731) that this patient had been repeatedly asked "leading questions" trying to get him or her to report feelings of floating.  By now we can assume that the patient had been trained to learn that the questioning doctor or doctors are very interested in hearing about anything that might be a little like floating. So his or her claim at this point to have experienced (after brain zapping) something "sort of like floating" and "kind of like floating" is no evidence of an out-of-body experiences, in which people do not use such "kind of like" qualifiers.  

Lines 766-786

Patient: Oh that was like in my body.

Doctor: Tell me more.

Patient: Like that floating feeling in your body.

Doctor: Tell me more.

Patient: Like a positive feeling in terms of ... I wouldn't necessarily call it floating but like I feel lighter than I did before.  

Doctor: Tell me more.

Patient: Kind of made my chest feel lighter.

Doctor: Chest feel lighter

Patient: Yeah

Doctor: Did your position in space change? Did you kind of move in space?

Patient: Yeah.

Doctor: Which way did you go?

Patient: Forward.

Doctor: Did you go up?

Patient: Yeah

Doctor: Were you up like almost out of bed or no?

Patient: No.  

Doctor: But did you feel floatiness?

Patient: Yes.

Doctor: Did you feel kind of lightweight?

Patient: Yes.

Here we have a classic example of a doctor asking a "leading question" as if he were trying to move the patient's testimony away from what was originally reported. The patient does not report floating out of his body, but merely "that floating feeling in your body," which he then walks back by saying " I wouldn't necessarily call it floating." The doctor tries hard to push the patient towards saying that he floated out of his body, but it's a failure. After getting a few "yes" answers (probably involving the mere power of suggestion) the doctor asks whether the patient was out of his bed, and the answer is "no." So there's no out-of-body experience here. 

Lines 810 to 823:

Doctor: Okay. What exactly happened?

Patient: Like my head.. uhh.. just kinda like you're floating on clouds almost just like.. I mean I'm still here obviously but kind of like you're floating a little bit more than normal.

Doctor: Was this a positive feeling or a negative feeling?

Patient: Positive.

Doctor: You were saying a little bit on the ketamine study. How does this relate?

Patient: Just like that uhh floating. Ketamine gave me that out-of-body experience. Like it started that feeling of getting out of body but not that full-on out-of-body experience.

Doctor: Got it. Would you say that it was similar?

Patient: Yeah.

Doctor: Less intense?

Patient: For sure less intense. 

The patient makes a weak claim to have felt something "just kinda like you're floating on clouds... kind of like you're floating a little bit more than normal." Seeming to engage in more attempts to stretch the patient's account into something like an out-of-body experience, the doctor asks the patient to compare this brain zapping to his experience with a hallucinogenic drug. The patient first says that ketamine "gave me that out-of-body experience" but then seems to walk back that statement, apparently saying that ketamine merely "started that feeling of getting out of body but not that full-on out-of-body experience." No matter how you interpret the language, there is no report here of an out-of-body experience during brain zapping. 

I carefully read the entire spreadsheet listing all of the patient responses. None of the patients reported anything that can be accurately described as an out-of-body experience. Like very many neuroscience papers these days, the scientific paper described above ( entitled "Causal evidence for the processing of bodily self in the anterior precuneus") contains some inaccurate statements about its results. Specifically:

• The paper incorrectly states, "Three of the nine participants reported a sense of self-dissociation after the stimulation of the right aPCu." Excluding one statement with a question mark and the word "maybe," none of the patients reported such a thing, judging from the statements contained in the spreadsheet listing their statements. One of the patients reported that it "kind of feels like slipping, but it's not my whole body," which is not a report of self-dissociation.  (In Table 2 the paper includes quotes from a patient S09 that do not match anything in the question-and-answer spreadsheet, so we don't know whether those statements occurred from brain zapping, and don't know whether they are responses to "leading questions." We read, "When the subject was asked if he was floating in space, the patient replied: 'No. I was floating more in myself.' ")  
• The paper incorrectly states, "Participant S01 reported feelings of floating up in the clouds and losing focus associated with an analogy of ‘frontal lobe getting dumber.’" The responses of Participant S01 are recorded in rows 3 to 36 of the spreadsheet. Participant S01 did not report anything like "feelings of floating up in the clouds" nor any feeling at all of floating. His statement about the frontal part of the brain was "My frontal cortex got almost dumber?" which is a question, not an assertion.
• The science paper incorrectly states, " Participant S08 also reported a state of being thrown up on the clouds and out-of-body." Judging from the spreadsheet statements attributed to this patient, that claim is untrue.  The patient never claimed to be out of his body, and merely made (among many of his statements reporting dizziness or lightheadedness in a variety of ways) the very weak poetical-sounding statement that "it's just kinda like got like thrown up on the clouds."  No statement having the qualifier of "just kinda" (i.e. "just kind of") should be regarded seriously as evidence.  
• The paper misleadingly states, "Both S08 and S01 reported that their experience reminded them of their previous dissociative feelings on psychedelics." The statement by S01 was weak and only occurred in response to a "leading question" by a doctor, asking "how does this compare to what you felt yesterday on ketamine," to which the patient answered "probably pretty similar" because it made him feel "just like a sedated monkey," which is not a report of a brain zap producing a feeling of dissociation.  Patient S08 also mentioned psychedelics only after being pushed towards such a comparison by a doctor. We read this on rows to 801 to 804, in which patient S08 is questioned about a brain zap just given:

Doctor: So you feel like this feeling can be related to ketamine?

Patient: No, that was just a feeling reference point I had so [inaudible] words

Doctor: I understand. Just to be clear, how does feeling resemble or not what you felt during ketamine?

Patient: Just the way the body feels in terms of like that lightweight feeling and perception of space and time. 

Good heavens, it's rather hard to imagine a more flagrant use of  "leading questions" to try to push someone to answer in a particular way.  First the doctor tries to get from the patient a ketamine comparison that the patient did not naturally make. Then, after being told "no," the doctor persists, as if he was trying to signal to the patient that he wasn't satisfied with the patient's "no" answer, and was hoping for a "yes" answer. This is "leading questions" at its worst. 

The statement in the paper's "highlights" section that "stimulation of aPCu caused distortions in core body schema and self-dissociation" is untrue. No reliable reports of self-dissociation by such stimulation have occurred, except for weak, hesitant statements occurring after "plant an idea in their minds" interrogative prodding trying to elicit reports sounding like reports of self-dissociation.  The study has provided no insight at all about out-of-body experiences, and none of the statements by the patients is an account of an out-of-body experience. The claim by Discover magazine that the study shows that scientists are "starting to understand what causes out-of-body experiences" is entirely untrue. 

The paper has also provided no basis for any claim that some part of the brain helps to produce your sense of self. The title of the paper is "Causal evidence for the processing of bodily self in the anterior precuneus."  No such evidence was provided.  None of the spreadsheet statements by any of the patients after brain zapping describe any alteration in the state of the self. None of the brain zap patients said anything like "now I'm not my self" or "now I don't feel like a person" or "now I don't feel like a self" or "now I feel like only half my self" or "now my self is outside of my body." The transcript of the patient provides no justification for any claim that the brain zapping sheds any light on a brain cause of the self. Search for the word "self" in the spreadsheet of patient responses, and you will find no such justification. 

What kind of care would be taken if a study like this followed proper methods? For one thing, there would be no "leading questions" planting ideas in people's minds.  A person might be questioned only with entirely neutral questions like this after a brain zap was given:

Doctor: So how did that feel?

Patient:  Well, I felt a little strange on my left side. 

Doctor: Can you give me more details?

Patient: Well, there was a weird kind of tingling in my left hand. 

Doctor: Can you give me any more details?

Patient: I almost felt like my left hand was going to fall off. 

This would be the correct way to ask interview questions in a study like this. Every single one of the responses and ideas is coming entirely from the patient, without the patient being led in a particular direction, and without any "leading questions" that plant some particular idea in a patient's mind.  Instead of such an approach, the spreadsheet of the paper reveals an appalling methodology in which doctors keep trying to gin up particular answers from the patients. 

If you used a technique avoiding any "leading questions," could you then rely on the results if patients reported something sounding a little like an out-of-body experience? Probably not, unless the patients were "blind" about what the study was looking for. If you sign people up for a brain zapping study, telling them scientists are looking to see whether zapping a particular part of the brain produces something like an out-of-body experience, that itself through the power of suggestion will make it more likely for people to report something like what they think the scientists are hoping to find. The famous Milgram Experiment showed that people will do things they would never normally do to try to please authority figures in white coats. 

Since this post has got quite long, I will say little about my ethical concerns about this study, which are very grave concerns. The subjects here were all people with severe epilepsy, all very sick people. Zapping the brains of very sick people in a trial and error fashion and asking what the results were raises many grave ethical concerns that I won't fully discuss here. A paper tracking complications in people given deep-brain stimulation (DBS) ("Surgical complications in 502 DBS patients operated over 20 years") reports  "stimulation induced hypophonia (0.7%), blepharospasm (9%), psychic disorders (8.3%), and one suicide (0.3%)." Such a paper makes me worry about people needlessly suffering risks during experiments like the one I have described. A paper says, "The complications that require revision surgery after DBS exhaust patients physically, mentally, and economically." Another paper says that "comparatively little information is available on the complications of neurostimulation in patients with epilepsy," making it sound like the procedure may be hazardous. It is particularly objectionable when very sick people are subjected to unnecessary risks for the sake of shoddy science studies that don't follow proper methods and produce results that are not accurately described in their papers. 

Overall, the results of this study are quite consistent with the claim that the brain is not the source of the human mind, and not the storage place of human memories. A group of subjects have been brain-zapped in different areas of the brain. None of the subjects reported any recall of memory produced by such zapping, nor have they reported any serious change in their mental state. All of the reported effects sound trivial, and almost all of the descriptions of the effects are loaded with weak qualifiers such as "kind of," "sort of," "a little" or "a wee bit." No clear mental effect has been produced by any of this brain zapping.  Take away the answers that are responses to "leading questions" and may be mere results of suggestion, and you have nothing in the study that supports claims that brains make minds. 

Contrary to the claim of Discover magazine, scientists are not at all "starting to understand what causes out-of-body experiences." To the contrary, out-of-body experiences are a phenomenon that completely contradicts the dogma of neuroscientists that your brain makes your mind. What typically happens in an out-of-body experience is that a person reports viewing his body from above the body, separated by a distance of two meters or more. Such reports are utterly inexplicable under the assumption that the brain produces the mind, and are one of the strongest types of evidence against such a claim.  If your brain makes your mind, no one should ever report observing his body from two meters away or more.  But if your mind is your soul or part of your soul, then we might expect such reports to occur.   

The high prevalence of out-of-body experiences is one of the reasons they are such powerful evidence against claims that the mind is produced by the brain. Below is a graph from page 185 of a paper on this topic, the paper "Out-of-Body Experiences" by Carlos S. Alvarado. 

Most people don't have out-of-body experiences. But all of us throughout our lives have a very strong sense of a unified self. The simple fact of ordinary self-hood is one of the strongest pieces of evidence against claims that the brain makes the mind.  The brain consists of billions of neurons, located in two different hemispheres.  It is illogical to think that the action of so many tiny little things would ever add up to a lifelong sense of a unified self.  And when the connection between the left hemisphere and the right hemisphere of the brain is severed, a single unified self persists, rather than two separate selves you would expect if the brain makes the mind.  The lies told about this topic are some of the worst of the many misstatements materialists have made about the brain.  Two selves have never resulted from an operation splitting the fibers connecting the hemispheres of the brain. The famous savant Kim Peek was born without any of the corpus callosum that connects the hemisphere of the brain. He had a single unified self, and also extraordinary powers of memory recall. 

Critics of panpsychism (usually materialists) often refer to what they call the "combination problem." This is the problem that if individual atoms were conscious, there is no reason why a vast number of tiny "experiences of being an atom" would ever add up to be the experience of being a human.  What such materialists fail to recognize is that exactly the same "combination problem" exists for anyone claiming that the brain produces the mind. There is no reason why a huge number of tiny little neuron effects could ever add up to be the effect of being a single unified human person. You have always been a single unified human person because you have always been a soul or spirit. 

Attempts to naturally explain out-of-body experiences and near-death experiences have very often been guilty of inaccurate statements, as I discuss in the post here.  The study I have discussed gives more examples of such a thing. 

The Two Biggest Brain Projects Have Failed to Bolster the Main Dogmas About Brains

In recent years the two largest brain research projects have been a big US project launched in 2013 called the BRAIN Initiative, and a big European Union project launched in 2013 called the Human Brain Project. In July 2018 I wrote a post describing how the BRAIN Initiative had failed to substantiate claims that the human brain is a storage place for memories and that the human brain is the source of our thinking, consciousness and imagination.  Looking at an article on the BRAIN Initiative's web site recapping what the big project did in 2019, I see no reason for thinking that the situation has changed very much. 

It's rather a bad sign when this "2019 Highlights" article starts off by mentioning some silly experiment in which signs of activity were looked for in the brains of dead pigs a few hours after they died.  After some discussion of some research that merely classified cell types and mapped brain circuits,  there is mention of a study indicating that the human mind can perform well when one half of the brain is removed. But that isn't a discovery of the BRAIN Initiative, and was proven by hemispherectomy operations that occurred long before the BRAIN Initiative started.  Moreover, the finding that he human mind can perform well when one half of the brain is removed is one that is diametrically opposed to the dogmas that the BRAIN Initiative has been trying to prove, claims that the brain is the source of your mind and the storage place of your memories.

Next in the "2019 Highlights" article we have a huge visual of a Science  cover talking about the neurobiology of singing mice, along with a claim that some scientist "measured brain activity in musical mice while they sang duets."  This is not something that should inspire our confidence, since mice can't really sing.  There is no further discussion in the "2019 Highlights" article of anything that  backs up the main dogmatic claims that neuroscientists keep making about brains.  Judging from the article, the BRAIN Initiative is not making very dramatic progress. 

I looked at a News page of the BRAIN Initiative site, to see signs of any recent progress it may have made in trying to prove the things it is trying to prove. I get some links to unimpressive research papers such as this one, "The Anterior Cingulate Cortex Predicts Future States to Mediate Model-Based Action Selection." The paper does not actually provide any good evidence that some brain region is predicting anything, because the study suffered from the usual methodological defects of neuroscience experimental studies.  One of the study groups consisted of only 4 animals, another study group consisted of only 2 animals, and three other study groups consisted of only 8 animals. The chance of a false alarm is too high with such tiny study groups. We should ignore most experimental studies that fail to use at least 15 animals for each study group. Moreover, the study makes no mention of any blinding protocol, something important to have for a reliable experimental study; and the study was also was not a pre-registered study that committed itself to testing a particular hypothesis with a particular methodology.  With so many shortcomings in the study, the BRAIN Initiative should not have had a headline of "Brain Region Implicated in Predicting the Consequences of Actions" to describe this study, since the study did not provide robust evidence of such a thing.

Looking back through all the articles listed on the News page, and going back all the way to July 2019, I can find no sign of any research that substantiates in any robust way any of the dogmas that the BRAIN Initiative has been trying to prove, such as the very dubious claim that the "brain records, processes, uses, stores, and retrieves vast quantities of information." While we know that humans can acquire memories and retrieve memories, and we know that brain cells (like all cells) store genetic information, there is no robust evidence that the brain stores or retrieves memory information, and no credible detailed theory of how any neural storage or instant retrieval of human episodic memory information could occur. The proteins in synapses and brain tissue are so short-lived (having an average lifetime of less than two weeks) that the brain cannot be a place where memories could be stored for 50 years or more. 

On one page of the BRAIN Initiative site, we have a long discussion of some year 2020 symposium featuring speakers funded by the BRAIN Initiative, something called the 6th Annual BRAIN Initiative Investigators Meeting.  There is lots of talk about neuroscience research, but nothing substantially supporting claims that brains produce thinking and store memories. I find no use of the words "thought," "thinking," "consciousness", "imagination," "cognition," "reasoning" or "mind." Here are the only references to memory in the long symposium recap:

"Dr. Nanthia Suthana explained how stimulating and recording deep brain activity could help us understand the neurophysiology of hypervigilance and emotional memory in patients with post-traumatic stress disorder....Dr. Kareem Zhangloul explained the relationship between cortical spiking sequences and memory retrieval in humans."

There's no link to any work by these two, and no one has actually established any relationship between brain spiking sequences and memory retrieval. Searching for a paper by Kareem Zhangloul I find a paper that makes these not very exciting claims:

"Bursts of spikes organized into sequences during memory formation. These sequences were replayed during successful memory retrieval. The extent of sequence replay during correct recall was related to the extent to which cortical spiking activity was coupled with ripples in the medial temporal lobe."

Given the fact that the brain is a constant source of electrical activity, with most of its billions of neurons firing more than once per second, we should expect to be able to find by chance some sequences of spikes that occurred both during memory formation and memory retrieval, regardless of whether memories are stored in brains.  So such research does not qualify as evidence that memories are retrieved from brains. The type of pareidolia going on in such analysis is rather like what would be going on if you had random fluctuation seismograph readings from hundreds of worldwide sites, and found (upon diligent searching) similar patterns during several different Sunday games when the Pittsburgh Steelers played football. 

The BRAIN Initiative page here is entitled "Key Moments in Brain Research." The subtitle is "Explore major milestones in the history of the field, including those stemming from BRAIN-related research programs."  But while there's lots of discussion of about administrative milestones and funding milestones, there's no mention of any research accomplishments of the BRAIN Initiative other than a mention of a classification of brain cell types. There is a mention of a Nobel prize, but that was for research done before the BRAIN Initiative started.   

Like the BRAIN Initiative, the EU's Human Brain Project has announced goals of proving conventional dogmas about the brain. At the page here we read that "the HBP is conducting a coordinated series of experiments to identify the neuronal mechanisms behind episodic memory, and validate them by computational models and robotic systems."  This is an assertion of the unproven dogma that episodic memory can be explained by brain processes; and it is a strange statement, given how silly it is to think that such a dogma could be validated by doing computer models or research into robots.  One of the main tabs of the Human Brain Project has the silly title of "Silicon Brains." No such things exist; brains are brains, and computers are computers. The brain bears no resemblance to a digital computer, and has none of the seven things that a computer uses to store and retrieve information.  Another page of the Human Brain Project has a title of "Understanding Cognition," but makes no mention of any study or experiment backing up the claim that cognition is produced by brains. 

The page here on the Human Brain Project site is entitled "Highlights and Achievements."  But while the page refers to many different scientific studies between 2017 and 2020, it provides no good evidence that the Human Brain Project has done anything to substantiate claims that the brain stores memories or that the brain produces consciousness, selfhood, thinking, creativity or imagination.  Below are some of the studies mentioned.

• There is a link to a page entitled "Dendrite Activity May Boost Brain Processing Power." But the page confesses, "Neurologically speaking, the physiology that makes the human brain so particularly special and capable remains poorly understood," which makes it sound as if neuroscientists have no factual claims backing up their dogmas about the brain. 
• There is a link to a page entitled "The Way of Making Memories." But the page does not discuss any substantial progress in understanding memory, but merely mentions some hardly-worth-mentioning paper entitled, "Regulation of adenylyl cyclase 5 in striatal neurons confers the ability to detect coincident neuromodulatory signals." 
• There is a link to a page entitled "Brains of smarter people have bigger and faster neurons." The page merely refers to a scientific study that fails to establish such a claim. The study only provided data on brain characteristics and IQ for about 25 subjects, and merely found weak correlations such as r= .37 and r= .46 and r = .51.  The site here says, "The relationship between two variables is generally considered strong when their r value is larger than 0.7." Having such a small study group and such not-very-strong correlations, the study does not justify the claim that brains of smarter people have bigger and faster neurons. It is very easy to get by chance a not-very-strong correlation such as .5 between two unrelated things such as hair length and intelligence, from a check of only a small number of subjects (the likelihood of getting a correlation between unrelated things decreases as the number of subjects rises). The study was not a pre-registered study, so we have no idea whether the authors were checking 50 different things, and reporting on a few cases where a not-very-strong correlation was found by chance variation.  To have confidence in a study like this (which could so easily go wrong through subjective analysis), the study would have to have a detailed discussion  of how a full-fledged blinding protocol was followed. Instead there is merely a one sentence mention of some half measures to produce a blinding effect. The study lists six patients who scored above 100 in IQ tests just before surgery for brain tumors, which in not what we would expect if brains were producing human intelligence. 
• There is a link to a page entitled "How brain cells work together to remember and imagine places." But the page does not discuss any evidence for a brain storage of memories or a brain explanation for imagination. It merely discusses a "computational model."
• There is a link to a page entitled, "Individual Brain Charting: A high-resolution brain map of cognitive functions." But the title is misleading, because it merely discusses some brain scans taken when 12 people were doing particular things.  The page has the typical misleading language about such scans, saying, "The images obtained make it possible to specify which regions of the brain are activated during a given task." All regions of the brain are active at all times, and brain scans merely show tiny variations such as half of one percent from one region to another, which could easily be chance fluctuations. It is misleading to say that a region showing less than 1% greater activity are "activated during a different task." 
• There is a link to a page entitled, "A First Principles Approach to Memory Recall." But we get no evidence that neuroscientists understand memory recall, something that has never been credibly explained as a brain process. On the page a neuroscientist states this:

“In Neuroscience, there is nothing you can really predict. We do not know how things really work, and the brain is so complex. Both these things mean you cannot make quantitative predictions."

This creates no impression at all that neuroscientists have facts that prove the dogmas they keep spouting about the brain. 

We should not be impressed by occasional studies that may create some superficial impression that the main assumptions of neuroscientists are correct. Given a huge army of experimental neuroscientists funded each year with so many millions of dollars, it is inevitable that now and then a few weak signals might come forth suggesting some reality behind their assumptions, no matter how wrong they are. Similarly, if you recruit some huge army of people who believe that some clouds are the ghosts of dead animals, and you fund such people with many millions of research money each year, you might occasionally get photos of clouds that might make you think, "Wow, that really looks like the ghost of a dead animal."

The Human Brain Project and the BRAIN Initiative continue to get very many millions of dollars of funding every year. But the web site of the BRAIN Initiative and the web site of the Human Brain Project very much suggest that these lavishly funded projects are failing to substantiate the dogmatic claims about the brain that they are attempting to prove.  Such a failure should surprise no one, because these dogmatic claims (such as the claim that brains store memories and the claims that brains produce minds) are implausible, and are contradicted by many neuroscience facts that have already been established, such as:

• the very short lifetime of brain proteins, only a thousandth of the longest length of time that humans can reliably remember things (60 years);
• the lack of any indexing system or position notation system in a brain that might make possible instant memory recall;
• the failure to discover any proteins or brain mechanisms capable of translating human learned knowledge or episodic memories into synapse states or neuron states;
•  the ability of minds to function and remember very well when half of brains are removed;
• the ability of minds to function very well during near-death experiences occuring during cardiac arrest when brains are shut down;
• the very high levels of noise (and very low levels of synaptic signal transmission reliability) in brains, which should preclude a brain from being able to achieve accurate recall of any detailed memory information; 
• the lack of any mechanism in the brain for reading or writing memories, and the lack of anything analagous to the read/write head of a computer hard disk;
• the slow speed at which brain signals travel across dendrites and synapses, which should prevent any instant recall of memories;
• the failure to find any permanent encoded information in brains other than the genetic DNA information in all cells.

The physical reality of your brain

The paper here discusses some big Chinese multi-year brain project. There is no mention of any research strategy that offers any real hope of backing up standard dogmas about the brain.  In a section entitled "Neural Circuit Mechansims of Cognition," which tries to sell the groundless idea that cognition might be understood through the study of neural circuits, the author states, "Optimists among us may expect within the next two decades the completion of mesoscopic mapping of neural circuits and their activity patterns, and perhaps even the underlying logic and mechanisms, of cognitive processes in animal models such as Drosophila, zebrafish, and rodents."  Clearly our neuroscientists have no understanding of how neural circuits can explain human cognition. Such scientists merely have the hope that two decades of additional study of neural circuits might throw some light on cognition in animals like rats.  There is no reason to suspect that studying the exact way electricity moves around in the brain (the study of neural circuits) will ever explain human mental phenomena such as thought, memory, insight, self-hood and imagination. 

Panpsychism Involves Simplistic Shrinkage

The book Galileo's Error: Foundations for a New Science of Consciousness by philosopher Philip Goff is a book with quite a few misfires. The biggest one is an extremely common one among today's philosophers. The error is to use the way-too-small term “problem of consciousness” in discussing current shortfalls in explaining the human mind.

What we actually have is an extremely large “problem of explaining human mental capabilities and human mental experiences” that is vastly larger than merely explaining consciousness. The problem includes all the following difficulties and many others:

1. the problem of explaining how humans are able to have abstract ideas;
2. the problem of explaining how humans are able to store learned information, despite the lack of any detailed theory as to how learned knowledge could ever be translated into neural states or synapse states;
3. the problem of explaining how humans are able to reliably remember things for more than 50 years, despite extremely rapid protein turnover in synapses, which should prevent brain-based storage of memories for any period of time longer than a few weeks;
4. the problem of how humans are able to instantly retrieve little accessed information, despite the lack of anything like an addressing system or an indexing system in the brain;
5. the problem of how humans are able to produce great works of creativity and imagination;
6. the problem of how humans are able to be conscious at all;
7. the problem of why humans have such a large variety of paranormal psychic experiences and capabilities such as ESP capabilities that have been well-established by laboratory tests, and near-death experiences that are very common, often occurring when brain activity has shut down;
8. the problem of how humans have such diverse skills and experiences as mathematical reasoning, moral insight, philosophical reasoning, and refined emotional and spiritual experiences;
9. the problem of self-hood and personal identity, why it is that we always continue to have the experience of being the same person, rather than just experiencing a bundle of miscellaneous sensations;
10. the problem of intention and will, how is it that a mind can will particular physical outcomes.

It is therefore a ridiculous oversimplification for philosophers to be raising a mere "problem of consciousness” that refers to only one of these problems, and to be speaking as if such a “problem of consciousness” is the only difficulty that needs to be tackled by a philosophy of mind. But that is exactly what Philip Goff does in his book. We have an indication of his failure to pay attention to the problems he should be addressing by the fact that (according to his index) he refers to memory on only two pages of his book, both of which say nothing of substance about human memory or the problems of explaining it. His index also contains no mention of insight, imagination, ideas, will, volition or abstract ideas. The book's sole mention of the problem of self-hood or the self is (according to the index) a single page referring to “self, as illusion.” The book's sole reference to paranormal phenomena is a non-substantive reference on a single page. Ignoring the vast evidence for psi abilities, near-death experiences and other paranormal phenomena (supremely relevant to the philosophy of mind) is one of the greatest errors of academic philosophers of the past fifty years.

Imagine a baseball manager who has a “philosophy of winning baseball games” that is simply “make contact with the ball.” If you had such a philosophy, you would be paying attention to only a very small fraction of what you need to be paying attention to in order to win baseball games. And any philosopher hoping to advance a credible philosophy of mind has to pay attention to problems vastly more varied than a mere “problem of consciousness” or problem of why some beings are aware.

Goff's philosophical approach is to try and sell the old idea of panpsychism. Around for a very long time, panpsychism is the idea that consciousness is in everything or that consciousness is an intrinsic property of matter. A panpsychist may argue that just as mass is an intrinsic property of matter, consciousness is an intrinsic property of matter.  

As shown by psychology textbooks that may run to 500 pages, the human mind (including memory) is an incredibly diverse and complicated thing, consisting of a huge number of capabilities and aspects. It has always been quite an error when people try to describe so complicated a thing as something simple and one-dimensional.  This is what panpsychists have always done when they try to reduce the mind to the word "consciousness," which they then describe as a "property." A property is a simple aspect of something that can be described by a single number (for example, weight is a property of matter, and length is a property of matter, both of which can be stated as a single number).  A mind is something vastly more complicated than a property.  

Goff commits this same simplistic error by trying to shrink the human mind to the word "consciousness" throughout his book, and then telling us on page 23 that consciousness is a "feature of the physical world," and telling us on page 113 that "consciousness is a fundamental and ubiquitous feature of physical reality." When I look up "feature," I find that it is defined to mean the same thing as "property": "a distinctive attribue or aspect of something."  Human minds are vastly more complicated than any mere "feature" or "property" or "aspect" or "attribute."  We are being fed simplistic pablum when we are told that our minds are some "feature" or "aspect" or "property." If you've started out with the vast diversity and extremely multifaceted richness of the human mind, and somehow ended with up a one-dimensional word such as "feature" or "aspect" or "property,"  you've gone seriously wrong somewhere. Call it a shrinkage snafu. 

So many professors act like masters of concealment by acting in so many ways to misrepresent the gigantic mental and biological complexity of human beings, as if they were so interested in covering up our complexities.   And so we always have utterly misleading cell diagrams included in our biology textbooks, which make it look like there are only a few organelles per cell (the paper here tells us that there are typically hundreds or thousands of organelles per cell). And so we have "cell types" diagrams, which make it look as if there are only a few types of cells (the human body actually has hundreds of types of cells). And so we have the false myth that DNA is a blueprint or a recipe for making humans,  false not only because of the lack of any such human specification in DNA, but also because of the naive error of speaking as if you could ever build an ever-changing supremely dynamic organism like a human (as internally dynamic as a very busy factory) through some mere recipe or mere blueprint like you would use to construct a static house or a static piece of food.  And so we have the complexity-concealing claim that the vastly organized systemic arrangements of the human body can be explained by the "stuff piles up" idea of the accumulation of mutations (as if something as complex as a city could be explained by something like what we use to explain snow drifts). And so we have the frequent reality-denying assertions that mentally humans are "just another primate" or that other mammals are "just like us." And so you have the great complexity concealment of speaking as if a human mind was mere awareness or consciousness that could be described as a "property" or "feature." 

Panpsychism creates the problem that we have to then end up believing that all kinds of inanimate things are conscious to some degree. If consciousness were to be some intrinsic property of matter, it would seem to follow that the more matter, the greater the consciousness. So we would have to believe that the large rocks in Central Park of New York City are far more conscious than we are. And we would also have to believe that the Moon is vastly more conscious than we are. But if such inanimate things are far more conscious than we are, why do they not give us the slightest indication that they are conscious? There is no sign of any intelligent motion in the comets or asteroids that travel through space. Instead they seem to operate according to purely physical principles, just exactly as if they had no consciousness whatsoever. That's why astronomers can predict very exactly how closely an asteroid will pass by our planet, and the exact day that it will pass by our planet. So it seems that Goff's claim on page 116 that panpsychism is “entirely consistent with the facts of empirical science” is not actually true. To the contrary, we see zero signs of any consciousness or will in any non-biological thing, no matter how great its size, contrary to what we would expect under the theory of panpsychism.

No sign of any Mind here (credit:NASA)

On page 113 Goff suggests that maybe it is just certain arrangements of matter that might be conscious.  Goff isn't being terribly clear when he tells us on page on page 113, "Most panpsychists will deny that your socks are conscious, while asserting that they are ultimately composed of things that are conscious." So what does that mean, that the threads of your socks are conscious? If a panpsychist tries to defend his beliefs by denying that all material things are conscious, this actually pulls the legs from out under the table of panpsychism, depriving it of any small explanatory value it might have.  Once you go from "all matter is conscious" to "only certain arrangements of matter," you still have the same problem in materialism, that there is no reason anyone can see why consciousness would appear from some particular arrangement of matter. 

It would seem that the panpsychist has a kind of dilemma: either maintain that consciousness is an intrinisc property of matter (leaving you perhaps with some very small explanatory power, but many absurd consequences such as large rocks being more conscious than humans), or maintain that only special arrangements of matter are conscious (which would seem to remove any explanatory reason for believing in panpsychism in the first place). 

On page 150 to 153 Goff shows himself to be an uncritical consumer of one of the biggest legends of neuroscience, that split-brain patients have a dual consciousness. They have no such thing, as we can discover by watching Youtube interviews with split-brain patients who clearly have a single self. A scientific study published in 2017 set the record straight on split-brain patients. The research was done at the University of Amsterdam by Yair Pinto. A press release entitled “Split Brain Does Not Lead to Split Consciousness” stated, “The researchers behind the study, led by UvA psychologist Yair Pinto, have found strong evidence showing that despite being characterised by little to no communication between the right and left brain hemispheres, split brain does not cause two independent conscious perceivers in one brain.” The actual facts about split-brain surgery are related here by a surgeon who has performed such an operation. He states this about split-brain patients:

"After the surgery they are unaffected in everyday life, except for the diminished seizures. They are one person after the surgery, as they were before."

Panpsychism does very little to help with the explanatory problems in the philosophy of mind. The main reason is that it does not help with more than one of the ten problems listed at the beginning of this post. For example, panpsychism is worthless in explaining how humans are able to instantly retrieve memories, or why humans are able to form abstract ideas.

In the last paragraph of the book, Goff makes a pitch that kind of follows that classic salesman's advice to “sell the sizzle not the steak.” He states the following (imagine some violins playing as you read this passage):

“Panpsychism offers a way of 're-enchanting the universe.' On the panpsychist view, the universe is like us; we belong in it. We need not live exclusively in the human realm, ever more diluted by globalization and consumerist capitalism. We can live in nature, in the universe. We can let go of nation and tribe, happy in the knowledge that there is a universe that welcomes us.”

But I fail to see any reason why a belief in panpsychism would produce any good change in human behavior. I can also imagine it having a bad effect. If you believe that all matter is conscious, you might have no particular guilt about killing someone. You might think to yourself: “He will still be conscious, even if I kill him, because all matter is conscious.” Similarly, if you believe that all matter is conscious, you might think it would be no great tragedy if all humanity were to become extinct, on the grounds that this would produce only a slight reduction in the total consciousness that exists in the universe (humanity having less than .0000000000000000000000000000000000001 of the universe's matter).

When panpsychists use simplistic shrinkage to describe mind as a mere "property" or "feature," it is like someone telling you that New York City is just a geographical coordinate, or like someone telling you that Brazil is just a pair of sounds someone can make with his mouth. 

Postscript: After writing this post, I found that Scientific American has an interview with Goff about his book. In the interview I didn't find anything to change my opinion about his ideas. Goff states the following;

"The basic commitment is that the fundamental constituents of reality—perhaps electrons and quarks—have incredibly simple forms of experience. And the very complex experience of the human or animal brain is somehow derived from the experience of the brain’s most basic parts."

We can try to imagine such a whimsical possibility. A quark might have an experience of a dull, static existence stuck inside an atomic nucleus. An electron might have an experience of constantly whizzing around a nucleus at incredible speeds, like some person stuck on an amusement park ride. Or a neuron might have an experience of just sitting there motionless inside a brain.  If there were billions or trillions or quadrillions of such tiny micro-experiences, they would never add up to anything like the experience of being a mobile thinking human free to walk around anywhere he wishes.

In a later article Goff makes an attempt to sell panpsychism as an "interpretation of physics." No, panpsychism is a position in the philosophy of mind. In listing alternative positions in the philosophy of mind, he fails to list one of the main positions (idealism, that only minds exist), and also fails to list another of the main positions (materialism, that all that exists is matter). He incorrectly describes dualism as the belief that "Physical reality is pure mathematical structure, but there is also non-physical consciousness." Dualism does not involve any claim that physical reality is a pure mathematical structure. 

Goff then defines panpsychism as if it were idealism, claiming that panpsychism is the position that "there are only conscious entities, and some of them realise the mathematical structures identified by physical science." This is not how panpsychism is typically defined when you look for a definition of it. The position that there are only conscious entities is idealism, not panpsychism. Wikipedia.org defines panpsychism as "the view that mind or a mindlike aspect is a fundamental and ubiquitous feature of reality."

An idealist believes that rocks only exist as things perceived within the experience of minds such as humans or God, but a panpsychist has typically been described as someone who thinks that a rock has a little bit of mind by itself. Is Goff trying to sell us idealism under the name of panpsychism? 

Using "according to panpsychism" where he should be using "according to me," Goff makes the statement below:

"According to panpsychism, an electron doesn’t have two kinds of property: physical and non-physical. Rather, it’s [sic] physical properties (mass, spin, charge) are forms of consciousness." 

I can only describe such a statement as the most nonsensical gibberish. Forms of consciousness include states such as (1) dreaming, (2) the half-dreaming state sometime occurring just after waking; (3) normal relaxed awareness; (4) the intense concentration of a test taker; (5) the trance state of mediums or clairvoyants or the hypnotized; (6) the altered mind state of some drug users; (7) the altered mind state of someone undergoing a near-death experience. Each such state varies between one person and another. Every electron has exactly the same mass, and every electron has exactly the same charge. Such things are no more "forms of consciousness" than my breakfast is a plan for obtaining world peace. 

Near-Death Experiences Suggest the “Brain as Mainly a Valve” Idea

A near-death experience is when someone reports astonishing and mysterious hard-to-explain events occurring at a moment of physical danger, typically one in which he or she came close to death. A recent study on near-death experiences indicates that such experiences occur to a significant fraction of the population. The study by Kondziella, Dreier and Olsen used an online “crowdsourcing” platform called Prolific Academy. People from all over the world register with this online site, and are paid small sums to participate in research studies. Using the platform, Kondziella, Dreier and Olsen were able to question 1034 random subjects from 35 countries.

Previous studies had indicated that between 4% to 8% of the population have had near-death experiences. But the Kondziella, Dreier and Olsen study found that 289 out of 1034 subjects claimed to have had something like a near-death experience. The scientists applied something called the Greyson scale to quantify the strength of the reported experiences. 106 of the participants reported experiences that were scored 7 or higher on the Greyson scale, which is generally regarded as the cutoff level for a “full-blown” or “classic” near-death experience. So about 10% of the subjects reported a “full-blown” or “classic” near-death experience, and some 28% reported some type of near-death experience.

This is an astonishingly high number when we consider that the great majority of people never have any close brushes with death. A reasonable guess about what percentage of people have had a close brush with death would be something like 10% or 15%. So if you get 10% of about 1000 subjects reporting a full-blown near-death experience, that may suggest that most people who have close brushes with death have a full-blown near-death experience.

Making a questionable use of the word “symptoms,” the authors report the following: “The most often reported symptoms were abnormal time perception (faster or slower than normal; reported by 252 participants; 87%); exceptional speed of thoughts (n=189; 65%); exceptional vivid senses (n=182; 63%); and feeling separated from one’s body, including out-of-body experiences (n =152; 53%).” These are extraordinarily high numbers, involving about 20% of the random sample of 1034 subjects. These numbers suggest that the actual level of near-death experiences may be as high as about 20% of the population. There seems to be no obvious reason why we should not say that anyone who reports either “exceptional speed of thoughts” or “exceptional vivid senses” or “feeling separated from one's body” (during a health emergency or close brush with death) as a person who has had a near-death experience.

We should ponder the extraordinary significance of such numbers. Our neuroscientists dogmatically maintain that the brain is the sole source of our thoughts and mind. Yet judging from the numbers above, a full 15% of the population have had experiences in which their mind was separated from their body. Such a result is entirely incompatible with the “brain makes your mind” dogma, and strongly suggest that your mind and consciousness do not at all come from your brain, and can exist apart from your brain. When we get into the specific accounts given by near-death experiences, we often find those who have such experiences claim to have observed their bodies from above their bodies, just as if their soul was floating above their bodies. Why do our neuroscientists ignore such massively occurring observational reports, which argue so strongly that the dogmas neuroscientists are teaching are dead wrong?

An interesting idea is that your mind is something that comes from some external metaphysical reality beyond the human body, and that far from being the source of your mind, the brain is mainly a kind of valve that restricts your mind. It may be that each of us has a mind that is something far beyond what we experience in day-to-day living, and that the only reason we seem to have minds so limited is that our brains limit our minds. We can imagine a reason why there might need to be such a valve effect or limiting effect. So we can concentrate on all the measly little challenges of day-to-living (such as staying warm, getting enough food, and avoiding various types of physical harm), it might be necessary for consciousness to be reduced and restricted, so that we can focus our thoughts on the crummy little details of the here and now, rather than being absorbed in the grand thoughts of a philosopher.

A possible relation of the brain and mind

Under such a theory, what would we expect if a mind or soul somehow moves temporarily beyond the body, such as in the out-of-body experiences often reported during near-death experiences? We might expect that the mind or thinking might be enhanced, for in such a case the “valve” effect of the brain might no longer be limiting our minds. It is just such a thing that is often reported during near-death experiences. The study by Kondziella, Dreier and Olsen found that 65% of 252 people reporting near-death experiences reported “exceptional speed of thoughts.” There is no way to account for such a thing under a “brain makes the mind” theory. But if the brain is like a valve that restricts and limits the human mind, we might expect that people might report much faster thinking when their brains shut down because of a close brush with death.

What we know about the brain is consistent with the idea of a brain mainly being a kind of valve. No one has ever discovered any effect by which neurons can produce a thought or an idea or an understanding of something, and no one has any coherent explanation of how such things can be produced by neurons. But we do know of a variety of signal-slowing factors in the brain (things such as synaptic delay, neural noise, synaptic fatigue and what is called tortuosity) which should have a very strong cumulative signal slowing effect. 

The study by Kondziella, Dreier and Olsen was trying to establish some kind of association between near-death experiences and  something called “REM intrusion,” but it failed to convincingly find any causal link between the two. “REM intrusion” is a kind of “dream a bit while you're awake” effect that people can experience either when they're on the verge of falling asleep, or have just woken up but are sleepy. The study asked five questions designed to search for signs of “REM intrusion” in people. The questions were worded in such as to get the maximum number of people who could be claimed as people who experienced “REM intrusion.” People were asked “have you ever” questions such as “Just before falling asleep or just after awakening, have you ever seen things, objects or people that others cannot see?” or “Just before falling asleep or just after awakening, have you ever heard sounds, music or voices that other people cannot hear?” Asking such “have you ever” questions is not a reliable way to judge whether people experience “REM intrusion” to a significant degree, just as asking, “Have you ever felt an unexplained pain in your stomach?” is not a reliable to test for whether people have a stomach disease. A sound way to judge the degree of “REM intrusion” experienced by people would be to have a question like the following:

Just before falling asleep or just after awakening, how often have you seen things, objects or people that others cannot see?

Choice 1: Never.

Choice 2: Once or twice in my life

Choice 3: Three to ten times in my life

Choice 4: Between ten and twenty times in my life

Choice 5: More than twenty times in my life

Of the people who claimed to have a near-death experience, 34% answered “yes” to three of more of the five questions related to “REM intrusion.” Of the people who did not claim to have had a near-death experience, 14% answered “yes” to three of more of the five questions related to “REM intrusion.” There's a reason why such a difference does not actually establish that those reporting near-death experiences more often experience such “REM intrusion.” The reason is that those who reported a near-death experience may simply have a higher degree of candor and openness about reporting out-of-the-ordinary experiences. Once someone has reported one type of out-of-the-ordinary experience, there may be a kind of “breaking the ice” effect that may make him 20% or 30% or 40% more likely to report a second out-of-the-ordinary experience that he might have otherwise never discussed. Such a thing can easily account for the difference in the percentage of people who answered “yes” to three or more of the questions about “REM intrusion.” Since people don't report things like near-death experiences when they are on the boundary of normal sleep, "REM intrusion" makes no sense as an explanation for near-death experiences. 

A second crowdsourced study was done by Kondziella, Dreier, Lemale and Olsen, using the same online survey platform of Prolific Academy, but using a different group of subjects. The results were almost the same as in the first survey. The differences are shown below:

	Survey 1	Survey 2
Number of subjects	1034	1037
Number claiming a near-death experience	289	286
Number with a “full-blown” near-death experience (Greyson score >= 7)	106	81
Number reporting time moving slower or faster than normal	252	257
Number reporting extraordinary speed of thought	189	169
Number reporting exceptional vivid senses	182	165
Number reporting feeling separated from one's body, including out-of-body experiences	152	113

The second of these studies tries to draw a link between near-death experiences and “migraine aura” headaches, based on the claim that “Forty-eight (6.1%) of 783 subjects without migraine aura and 33 (13.0%) of 254 subjects with migraine aura had experienced” a near-death experience. Here the attempt at an explanation is even less convincing than in the previous survey, for we have a mere 13% of those reporting these “migraine aura” headaches reporting near-death experiences. X is not likely to be the cause of Y if only 13% of the people reporting Y also report X. Moreover, there has never been a tendency for people to report head pain during near-death experiences, making migraine headaches a particularly unlikely explanation. And people don't report they have near-death experiences after they merely had a bad headache.

The important takeaways from these two studies are:

1. A significant fraction of people report near-death experiences, with about 25% of people reporting such experiences, and about 8% or 10% of people reporting “full blown” near-death experiences with 7 or more of the classic characteristics of near-death experiences.
2. Most of those reporting near-death experiences report their mind operated exceptionally fast, with some 16% to 18% of the total population reporting such an effect. 
3. Most of those reporting near-death experiences report having had extraordinary experiences in which they were separated from their body, with some 10% to 15% of the total population reporting such an effect. 

So what we have is a massive empirical reality that is very much inconsistent with prevailing dogmas about the brain and mind, that the brain is the source of the mind. But such an empirical reality is consistent with the idea that your mind is not the product of your brain or body, and that your brain is like a valve that serves mainly to limit your mind, rather than something that gives rise to your mind.

Postscript:  At the link here we have a survey of survivors of the 1976 Tangshan earthquake which killed some 240,000 people.  81 survivors were interviewed, by talking to patients at a convalescent hospital, patients who had been admitted because of injuries suffered in the earthquake. 40 out of 81 reported "full blown" near-death experiences (7 or greater on the Greyson scale).  51% (41 out of 81) reported "thinking unusually fast," 28% (23 out of 81) reported "sudden understanding," 43% (35 out of 81) reported "an out-of-body experience," and 65% (53 out of 81) reported "unusually vivid thoughts."