Notes - article two / partly because

       Mid-morning. Two days ago you read the May issue of Discover and the “Mind over Matter” column, “A Brush with Death” by Amy Paturel, beginning on page 24. According to the article five percent of Americans feel they have had a NDE, a near death experience. Some NDE are an internal event (neurotransmitter imbalances, etc.) not an external one. This article focuses on Amy Paturel’s father “a hard core mathematician” who had an NDE and “forever after began studying religion and philosophy, even writing poetry.” Amy’s question is what (scientifically) caused her father’s “. . .newfound tenderness and appreciation for life. How did his NDE leave such an indelible imprint?” - Amorella

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From Discover:

. . . NDE researcher and neurologist Kevin Nelson of the University of Kentucky tells me fading blood flow, even for a few seconds, signals a crisis to the brain. That emergency launches a cascade of survival reflexes, not unlike fight-or-flight, that lead to the thoughts, feelings and sensations of an NDE. “It’s this physical and emotional crisis that translates to especially vivid recall of NDEs, but also to a shift in how survivors lead their lives following the experience,” he says.

When we’re staring death in the face, Nelson says, there’s strong evolutionary pressure to remember every detail. Survival demands an alert and attentive brain to meet the threat head on and be prepared to combat it again in the future.

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. . . My dad’s brain recorded every vision, every feeling, every sound, in such detail that the memories seem to color everything in his life.

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. . . Laureys admits researchers still don’t know “how an abnormally functioning brain can record an experience that’s so emotional, so vivid and so real.” But they have enough evidence to consider NDEs a physiological reality linked to brain activity. In a 2013 PLOS One study, Laureys and his Liège colleagues compared NDEs with other memories of intense real-life events, such as marriages and births, as well as with memories of dreams and imaginary thoughts. To their surprise, NDE memories among a group of 21 coma survivors were much richer than any imagined or real event. “Even when the NDE happened decades before, patients’ memory of the experience was as vivid as if it occurred yesterday,” Laureys says.

It makes sense if you look at electroencephalography (EEG) measurements of activity in the brain when recalling an NDE. A 2014 EEG study published in Frontiers in Human Neuroscience found that NDE memories are stored as episodic memories — recollections of events that you yourself participated in, like recalling where you were when the 9/11 attacks happened, rather than simply remembering the fact that the attacks happened. Scientists from that same study also concluded that the seemingly otherworldly memories from an NDE give off electrical patterns that are similar to real memories and significantly different from imagined events. The researchers noted that those who had NDEs describe the experience as “realer than real.” All of the participants in the study said their NDE was the most powerful, intense and important experience of their lives.

For my dad, the NDE provided overwhelming peace. While he was suspended between this world and the unknown, he says a force told him, “You’re not going to die today.” And he says he wasn’t ready to go — he had newfound motivations to explore.

“People tend to come back from NDEs happier and no longer fearing death,” Laureys says. “The experience becomes a cornerstone of their lives.”

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. . . According to a 2013 study published in the International Journal of Behavioral Medicine, people who had NDEs became more tolerant of others, gained a greater appreciation of nature and understood themselves better compared with those who didn’t experience an NDE.

Science can’t explain why a father who drove like a NASCAR star now writes treatises on safe and courteous driving. And it can’t explain how someone who lived by numbers now prefers penning philosophical missives. But research does give us some clues about how NDEs change people’s personalities. They become sweeter, softer and more reflective . . ..

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FROM THE MAY 2016 ISSUE of DISCOVER - Life After Almost-Death - How a glimpse of the other side changes those who make it back. -  By Amy Paturel|Friday, April 15, 2016

http://discovermagazineDOTcom/2016/may/9-a-brush-with-death  

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         Later, orndorff. Post. - Amorella

       You are sitting in the car for Carol who is talking to Jill, our house cleaner and also waiting on a load to come out of the clothes dryer. – Amorella

       1035 hours. Jill is already working in the audio/visual room; Carol has been working on laundry and other stuff since seven-thirty. I have done four of my days of exercise this week and I have one tomorrow. This is my favorite routine – taking off Thursday and Saturday. Once because we were at K and P’s I had Friday and Saturday off then Sunday off too out of the next week; it was quite uncomfortable not exercising that many days in a row. Who would have thought I would ever think that. The whole concept (obsessive/compulsive) does me in with certain foods, peanut butter for example, the computer, I feel I am not constructive if I am not thinking and writing about something each day. And, now the Fitbit – once I had reasonable stats – heart rate, etc. sleeping rate, then I have something I can measure. Of course when I lost 120 pounds in 2004 that was measurable but 272 was as low as I could go, ridged diet or no. Now it is 285 and pretty steady—up a pound or two and sometimes down. Most men would be working on another hundred but I’m still alive and kicking (rather more slowly) but I have most of my usual senses. No complaints here. (1048) – rho

       You have been at Barnes and Noble off Fields-Ertel Road for a while. Carol is looking for a book,  and you have checked your email. The weather has been rainy off and on. The outside of the Honda is full of yellow pollen dusting – the rain only makes the green car look worse.

       Lunch at Panera/Chipotle and now you are at the west side of Rose Hill Cemetery. Carol is reading the morning paper after buying a new Harlan Corbin mystery this morning.

       2246 hours. We rested this afternoon and watched three DVRed shows and I watched an old “X File”. We had more rain. I think after re-reading both articles Amorella that I don’t really know much of anything on both subjects. I am in over my head partly because I do not see its relevance to myself.

       Post anyway. Amorella