Spiritual Doorway in the Brain Chapter 5 Part 1: The Brain at Death’s Portal

Nelson’s finally pinpointed when the NDE occurs! We’ve determined what its neurophysiologic cause is. The symptoms of a NDE generally crop up due to a lack of blood to the brain. Even a reduction in blood flow can cause a NDE.

Nelson has noticed a correlation between the amount of blood flow to the brain and the experiences that follow. The “tunnel” phenomenon actually occurs because of lack of blood flow to the eyes (an extension of the optic nerve of the brain). The retina is particularly sensitive to blood availability. When blood is in low supply peripheral vision suffers first, therefore the patient with limited blood flow feels as though they are looking through a tunnel. They are only able to see a small circle of their usual field (right in the middle where the concentration of rods and cones are higher).

As it turns out, when blood deprivation occurs, the first function to fail is the visual system (peripheral vision being the absolute first). This explains why people blackout before a NDE and remain semiconscious before losing consciousness completely.

This phenomenon was discovered through the work of Dr. Lambert using a machine simulating G-force for research participants and specialized goggles that would allow blood flow to the eyes for a longer period of time than without them.

When exposed to 2Gs of gravitational force (without afore mentioned goggles) the eyes lose blood and the subject is temporarily blind. When that force is increased or lasts too long (just a few seconds) the person loses consciousness/faints.

During experiments the specialized goggles allowed the subjects to keep their vision, that is, until they passed out (then it didn’t matter whether they had blood flow to the eyes because the brain couldn’t process visual information anyway).

People regularly have NDEs during a faint (this cause was at the top of the list for Nelson’s fifty-five subjects during his research experiments, making it possibly the most common cause for NDEs).

20% of the blood that the heart pumps goes to and feeds/oxygenates the brain. If a third of this blood is reduced the brain stays active for about ten to twenty seconds before it loses consciousness.

Unfortunately, if the brain’s blood flow is reduced by 90% for 30 minutes or more there will be permanent damage. If no blood reaches the brain for a minute or two, the patient will fall into a coma that may last longer than a few hours. If no blood goes to the brain for 4 minutes or longer the temporary brain problems become permanent damage.

The portions of the brain that are most sensitive in this scenario are memory structures (limbic system/hippocampus). This (product of selection during evolution) is another way the body is able to keep itself alive under dire circumstances.

The brain structures that keep the body operational will be the absolute last thing to go.

Let’s revisit fainting.

Our own Dr. Nelson involved himself in a game where he and his friends decided to make themselves safely (theoretically) pass out and see what happened. Nelson was successful and had an experience in which he pictured his father calling him home. This turned out to be somewhat of a premonition because Dr. Nelson was supposed to be home for a family outing he’d forgotten about. However, he realized (later in life) that something triggered his memory about the plans his family made while he was under his intentional unconsciousness.

Experiments for NDEs involve subjects safely fainting in laboratories and recording what happens on a high speed video camera. Then the subjects are asked about their experiences. The research team then compared their descriptions to what Raymond Moody (the first person to record his patient’s near-death experiences in the 1970s) described as the near-death experience. The team “found no real difference between the two types of experiences.” Nelson determined that this would be a great system for his research strategy; making people faint would give the same results as any experience that resulted from lack of blood flow but would be much safer for the subjects when done correctly.

Have you ever had a NDE while unconscious or having fainted?

Personally, I’ve had an experience in which I fainted and felt as though I was surrounded by people when there was really only one person around. I saw a white concentrated light right at the center of the beings I envisioned. It seemed to last much longer than the faint actually occurred (I know this now).

I encourage anyone who reads this blog to remember any such experience and try to compare and contrast the details of it with what we’ve learned because of Dr. Nelson’s research.

To be continued…

Wait for my next post for the rest of the story. I hate to make you wait too long so I’ve decided to do each chapter in parts. It should also make it more pleasant to read as well!

See you next time!

Spiritual Doorway in the Brain Chapter 4: The Varieties of Near-Death Experience

What are the criteria for a spiritual experience or near-death experience? How do you know you’ve had one? What is the most common feature of a near-death experience? Does having a spiritual or near-death experience prove that God exists?

Nelson reiterates in this chapter his reasoning behind choosing the brain stem as his area of the brain to focus on for the near-death experience.

“The part of our brain responsible for these stories extends backward to our primal origins, thousands of millennia before our brains developed language and we could tell the stories. My research unites our brain’s survival reflexes with other ancient regions where we can reasonably say our ‘god impulse’ resides; an area responsible for dreaming and emotions.”

He offers that the idea of deities or a (many) creator(s) dates back to the time when language was made. This is a very important evolutionary time stamp; because it allowed us to talk about religion (we haven’t taken a break yet!). But Nelson thinks we had the idea of a deity before we gained language because the two came about simultaneously, giving us the mega phone (so to speak) for our ideas (God/afterlife).

Nelson discusses NDEs which have been recounted by some unlikely characters, skeptics. “It’s probably safe to say that millions of Americans consider these experiences as proof that an afterlife exists and that our consciousness or souls can separate from our bodies. Skeptics, on the other hand, maintain that the spiritual dimensions of NDEs are drug-induced or illusory, the product of a blood-starved brain, wishful thinking, or both.”

Many different cultures ascribe their own set of beliefs about death and the process that it entails. Americans see the typical white light, encounter dead relatives and spiritual beings; they have a life review, approach a boarder or have and out-of-body experience. Any grouping of those is very typical for those of the American culture or western culture. However, the Japanese view the boundary as a brook or river. Few tunnels in Japan and their religious views lend their NDEs to be different in detail.

In India, if a person’s name is not called off of a roster then the person returns to “life”. They were not meant to move onto the afterlife. Nelson uses this analogy: “All people feel and satisfy hunger. Yet comparing the means by which different societies obtain, prepare, and consume food tells us little about what nutrients are necessary for the body or the biochemistry of how the gut extracts those nutrients during digestion. So with near-death experiences our common biology produces shared features, but each culture imparts it own distinct flavors.”

18 million Americans may have had a NDE including Sharon Stone during a brain hemorrhage and Gary Busey after a motorcycle accident. Some people who have had NDEs wish to go back to that comforting place and beg to do so like William James’ friend; Symonds.

A young man in Dr. Nelson’s care described a NDE in which he floated to high above the gurney he was physically on, he was afraid that the light in the hospital room would burn him. Nelson found this interesting because he was suggesting that he was levitating and was afraid he’d burn this physical body. He’s noticed this exact scenario in his patients who suffer from vertigo. This is a semi-common inner ear problem. The issue makes a person feel like their spinning like after you’ve left a rotating merry-go-round. This phenomenon, his patient experienced, was an illusion of the brain which is similar to the illusion of the brain creating an extra limb.

Nelson references the work of Dr. Bruce Greyson who studied the psychological effects of a NDE. Sixty-seven cases were studied and he used eighty characteristics of these typical experiences to make up sixteen questions that fell into four categories: Cognitive (thoughts), Affective (feelings), Paranormal, and Transcendental. Each question had a value between zero and two. A total score of seven was minimal to be considered a NDE.

Nelson used this scaling procedure (the Greyson scale) as reference for his own experiments. Out of the fifty-five research subjects, no one scored a perfect, max score, of thirty-two and the average score of his subjects was sixteen. Nelson admits that this system is not fail proof either. Nelson’s research group found it interesting how little of the paranormal they found during their experiments.

A renowned neurologist, Oliver Sacks referred a woman named Margaret to Dr. Nelson. During a procedure in which most patients are anesthetized, but Margaret couldn’t be for medical reasons, she experienced herself going down a silky pink tunnel that was warm and the farther down she went the redder the tunnel became. She heard the sounds of people talking and music playing down in the tunnel and likened it to a brothel. People told her they assumed she was going to hell when she died because of society’s association of hell with red and being hot etc. she didn’t seem to mind at all. Nelson discovered that Margaret has trouble being able to tell if she’s awake or asleep.

Sir Alfred Ayer, well-known atheist, recalls a NDE he had when he nearly choked to death at age seventy-seven. He went into a coma and correctly determined that his brain remained active although his heart had stopped. As a very well learned man he was able to add insight on his experience which was very uniquely his own.

He mentioned and reflected on the fact that “nearly all of our cells (except neurons) are replaced every seven years. And even the molecules are exchanged that make up all the cells that remain with us throughout our lives. He also pointed out an excruciatingly common fallacy: “that every near-death experience including his own, seems to spawn: life after death proves that God exists. He argued that since this life is not proof of God, why should the next be different? There might be evidence of God in the next life, but, he reasoned, ‘we have no right to presume on such evidence when we have not had the relevant experiences’.” He remained an atheist and maintained that his experience did not prove that God exists.

Nelson believes that the moment when a NDE occurs is essential to his studies. We’ll talk more about this later. Jung, the ground-breaking psychologist, also had a NDE which occurred during a bout of pneumonia. This NDE consisted mostly of past experiences and memories. Like Ayer, Jung’s NDE weaved his autobiographical memory into a narrative.

Children have also reported NDEs. Theirs are quite different from those of adult, possibly due to their lack of life experiences to recall during their NDE. Kids don’t experience the life review that an adult might. Their ideas of the afterlife generally involve things like castles, rainbows, wizards, past pets, and guardian angels.

Sometimes kids will see relatives and religious figures too. A big question is: why do children have NDEs anyway? They have little to no understanding of death. Many of the core features of NDEs mentioned earlier in the book are present in child NDEs as well. Seeing relatives that may be dead or may not be dead, feeling peace or joy and consciously deciding to return to “life”. These children reacted in much the same way an adult would, by comforting their friends who were in the hospital and their parents. They like adults usually come to some peace and understanding about their own mortality. Other differences are that there is no feeling of unity with the universe, nor the alteration of time during their NDEs. Nelson has discovered that at the root of every NDE is a narrative with a beginning, middle and end.

Eyewitness testimony has proven faulty in the past and continues to do so. Some people have been wrongly convicted, as brought to light by current DNA evidence, by eyewitness accounts used as actual evidence. Usually, these are mistakes anyone can make not a plot or intentional lie to incarcerate someone.

“Most of us regard ourselves as expert witnesses to our own experiences, and spiritual experiences are no exception, especially because they’re often so vivid and compelling… it is stunning how often our perception can be distorted without giving us the slightest hint that this has happened… we have to distinguish when we’re operating in an area of faith or speculation rather than empirical evidence or proof.”

Nelson states that most NDEs occur because of lack of blood flow to the brain. Memory structures are the first in the brain to be injured (due to survival techniques of the body, cleaver right?). Damage to memory structures means that memories coming from visual experiences start with a falsehood. As an example of how your mind distorts things: there have been accounts of the blind being able to see what is going on around them during a near-death experience. Could this be due to some kind of miracle? Is there a neurobiological reason for this? Nelson believes that some of the aspects of a near-death experience may come from “eyes half open or conversations overheard while medical personnel and others are preoccupied.”

Dr. Nelson makes it very clear in this chapter that he sees little of the supernatural in spiritual experiences. He admits that it is significant to the person having the experience. However, the accounts of these experiences can be distorted due to the common human error that is ingrained in our very being. We only actually see the light waves that reflect off of objects.

Our eyes and brain individually process this input and any error (incredibly common) or slight difference (as in color blindness, astigmatism and the like) can cause exponential alterations in perception. Actually, our brain actually does so much filtering and changing during the data processing system for any sensation it is unrealistic to think that while a person is in any situation that may alter their brain’s usual functioning they are fully aware of what is happening in reality. “…but with eyes wide open to the ways our brain distorts through subtly filtering, shaping, and interpreting the raw data of our experiences.”

The Self: The Spiritual Doorway in the Brain Chapter 3

When you talk about yourself do you really know what you mean? Some people say, “That’s just who I am!” but do they actually understand themselves? These are very important questions and oddly answerable for a neuroscientist.

The self is not a large whole but rather, fragments (or memories) of our past experiences. The self is the most deeply ingrained knowledge we have, which is shown in Alzheimer’s patients. Often they will forget where they are and forget autobiographical information but continue to answer at the call of their names.

Dr. Nelson concedes that there is no good definition for the self in terms of what we know now within neuroscience. He wants to draw a very clear line between the self and consciousness. They are related but they are not the same and therefore we cannot use these terms interchangeably. However, we can use “me” or “I” to refer to the self because these are the terms we use referring to our selves. Studies have shown that other animals besides humans have a sense of self. This group includes primates (obviously), elephants and dolphins. The greatest difference between the human sense of self and other intelligent animals’ is the way we express our selves.

Humans have developed a very specific language to communicate with one another about ideas and experiences. Other animals use communication for different things like warnings, finding another’s location, etc. Foolishly humans think other animals understand our language so we talk to them as if they know our intentions. Humans are by far the most arrogant of the animal world. Other animals also use body language way more than humans do because of the specific language we have. We have made body language almost unnecessary. The animal world revolves around survival. Humans are far beyond that in everyday life (usually) and have been for thousands of years. The focus turned from survival to metaphysical subjects (beyond and outside of ourselves). I like to call this the evolution of mind.

Something that can really shake a person’s sense of self is if they suddenly don’t recognize a part of their body as their own. Wouldn’t that be weird? Some people actually develop this problem!

Suddenly (after a stroke in the right parietal lobe of the brain which is dominant for identifying one’s self in the world) their arm is unrecognizable to them, although they accept that it is there. They understand how crazy it sounds that they don’t know this particular limb, but their brains are unable to accept it as a part of themselves. Past memories of this arm seem to be gone but it is actually the retrieval of these memories that has been shut off (due to the parietal lobe stroke).

Dr. Nelson refers to an interesting phenomenon called the phantom limb syndrome. When someone loses a limb sometimes the patient feels as though the limb is still there and functions just as it normally would. Sometimes, the limb is stuck in an uncomfortable position or it causes pain to its owner.

Why would someone think that their limb is there when they can look down and see that it is clearly not there? The answer is: the part of their brain that controlled that limb or offered sensation and perception to its owner is still there. It doesn’t leave with the limb so sometimes activation of nerves close by will cause feeling to the owner. This phenomenon can be very confusing, although it doesn’t last forever. Eventually, the brain will allocate some other function along the same general lines to the part of the brain that previously controlled the limb (because the brain is freaking cool like that!). Dr. Nelson relates a case study in which a few neuroscientists felt as though they should help to relieve the situation for one particular patient.

A group of neuroscientists were collaborating on one patient’s problem (as they often do because multiple minds are better than one) with a phantom arm that was in an uncomfortable position and was causing him much distress. The neuroscientists developed a contraption that showed a rubber arm where his arm would have been. By having him observe the arm being stimulated over and over again with a feather for a few weeks, he was forever relieved of his phantom limb. His brain registered the stimulation of the arm so that he literally (specifically his brain) felt the sensation in his phantom arm. The contraption quickly aided his brain in pruning (neuro term I always liked) back those neuro-connections that had still been there. This shows that the brain is able to rearrange the self rather fluidly.

Some people believe they have sprouted another invisible or “spare” limb. This is due to a stroke in the brainstem. The spare limb in the case study Dr. Nelson refers to was hostile toward its owner and would try to strangle her. Sometimes this patient would sprout another leg. It is not completely understood how the brain makes this happen but these sensations didn’t last forever. They went away as she recovered from her stroke. The question these examples bring up is: “are the revelatory changes in one’s sense of self during spiritual experiences just kindred illusions?” Dr. Nelson’s opinion is clear on the matter because he states, “If the self could be thought of as a figment of our imaginations, could the same be said of spiritual truth?”(Dr. Nelson).

Another important point in our search is that the frontal lobes of our brains house our personalities. Changes to the prefrontal lobes (whether injury or disease) can cause changes in an individual’s personality. The most famous case of this was a railroad man who was shot through the frontal lobes with a metal rod in a work-related accident. He was known, previously, as a kind, generous and generally happy person but after the accident he became rude and tactless.

The brain is so fascinating because two halves (or hemispheres) form its whole and the mirror images communicate through a dense band of nerve fibers (corpus callosum) near the brain’s center. If the fibers are severed (generally this is done to relieve grand mal seizures) the two hemispheres can still communicate to a degree. However, there is a very clear dispute between the two sides. Interestingly, case studies have shown that often either arm of the subject will do the opposite of the one on task. For example, one patient was observed pulling his pants up with one arm and pulling them down with the other. Dr. Nelson suggests perhaps there may be more than one conscious self with a single brain and begs the religious yet scientifically charged question “Might one side of the brain feel itself blessed while the other thought it was damned?” You could say that’s true.

Sometimes severing the corpus callosum would not relieve a patient of seizures (depending on the location and severity) but removing a portion of the brain would. What happens in this situation is a neuropsychologist investigates what part of the brain to remove. This is done by anesthetizing portions of the brain previous to surgery (totally painless due to the lack of pain sensing neurons [yes, they’re different and for more info, just ask ;-)] directly on the brain’s surface). Then the neuropsychologist asks the patient questions to determine what parts are awake. Often, the patient will exhibit drastically different personality traits as well as when the prefrontal cortex of the brain is injured.

Dr. Nelson states, “It (each hemisphere) may also have its own ideas and experiences of spiritual insight or truth, different thoughts and feelings about the holy and the divine.”

Dr. Nelson deems it important to point out that evolution led to the development of two hemispheres within the vertebrate brain (that’s us). Nature would not separate the brain hemispheres if it weren’t meant for each side to do something a little different than the other (or specialize). We all call ourselves “left brain” or “right brain” people due to what we are naturally proficient in doing. The left hemisphere is good at organization and problem solving with the right focuses on tasks and experiences. The right brain is interested in accuracy of an event and the raw data while the left is interested in making connections or a story about the occurrences.

Dr. Nelson makes a surprising statement in my opinion when he asserts, “It is tempting to speculate that as primates develop their interpretive, language-rich left hemisphere, they began interpreting their observations of nature in a supernatural context. It could be that the left brain first brought us our gods; it certainly allowed us to talk about them.”

How does a person think without language? People can be born without hearing, and before today’s advances, would never hear their whole lives. Some of these people are also born blind like Helen Keller. People couldn’t believe that people like her (before she came along) were people at all because they had no way of communicating (until Anne Sullivan came along). How surprised was everyone when she became an author after discovering the English language? “Does language make the self or does language only make the self detectable? Considerable evidence tells us that the right hemisphere can, on its own, be a human self without language.” The answer: The same way you think with language. Language gives us a common understanding of what we think.

Cotard’s syndrome is named after the doctor who uncovered the first well known case study. The result is that the patient thinks they are dead, although they are perfectly fine and completely rational (besides the obvious). They will often think they are decomposing or walking around in the afterlife. It is very difficult to study something that occurs so infrequently so there is little known about the part of the brain that would cause this malfunction. Dr. Nelson says that when it is found it will be the part that affirms our existence. He states, “The power our brain has over our most important assumptions is awesome. We need to keep this firmly in mind as we examine spiritual experiences such as the mystical and near-death.”

Join me for the next section and chapter four, “The Varieties of Near-Death Experience”.

Consciousness: Chapter 2 "The Spiritual Doorway in the Brain"

Have you ever wondered how you’re able to multi task so easily? Do you ever find it really cool that you can sense many things at one time? Do you know what consciousness is? One of the really interesting things about the brain is consciousness which is the state of being able to voluntarily respond to your surroundings. Imagine what we are aware of on a daily basis and what we are not. In this post I’ll be continuing my summary of Dr. Nelson’s The Spiritual Doorway in the Brain.

Think about your left leg. Before I mentioned your left leg you probably weren’t “aware” of where it was or what position it was in but now you’re thinking about how it itches or something of the like. Your mind was always aware of your foot but it was not at the fore front of your mind. According to Dr. Nelson, the brainstem functions as an on and off switch for the brain. There are three states of consciousness that the brain stem awakens: wakefulness, Rapid Eye Movement (REM) sleep, and non-REM sleep.

Dr. Nelson (the author of The Spiritual Doorway to the Brain) stated that a person has a spiritual experience when they become stuck between two of the states of consciousness mentioned above. He refers to this merging of conscious states as borderlands. A patient Nelson calls Jan found herself in the borderlands between dreaming and wakefulness when she was aware, but paralyzed by a drug during surgery.

Jan can recall exactly what happened during her surgery and exactly how badly it hurt for the surgeons to cut through her flesh (gross, I know). She went into a different state she labeled a spiritual experience (as so many of us do), during which she felt a sense of peace and the presence of her mother telling her that she was not going to die. During her surgery Jan had lost most of the blood flow to her brain. This lack of oxygen coupled with intense pain caused her to slowly lose consciousness and fall into Dr. Nelson’s ‘borderlands’.

Jan’s case, although gruesome, had the clear features of a spiritual experience: It gave her an inner peace, it lasted a short period of time, she had trouble articulating how it felt, her mother gave her a message that she would not die from this experience and it affected her life thereafter. Her experience can be explained by what we know about neuroscience as a simple physiologically induced state of mind.

What does this mean about what we should take away from these experiences? To more completely understand consciousness we have to delve into some science here. Bear with me, I promise to try to make it fun.

First, the neuron is a unique cell which communicates both chemically and electrically, and is composed of a body (soma), dendrites (usually accepts information from axons) and axons (usually sends information to dendrites). But there are also spinal nerves which project from the spinal cord to a place in your body like your left knee, this neuron works both ways. Another neuron projects from the spinal cord neuron to separate muscles which all work in tandem to move an appendage. This is actually how our reflexes work: The brain gets information about what is happening (a one way stream of information) but the task of a knee jerk reflex is handled completely by the spinal cord and not the brain.

Conversely, consciousness is the result of communication between multiple areas of the brain. A single neuron or even twenty cannot have consciousness. We’re talking about columns of cells in the cortex (outer bumpy region of the brain that we see) that can be hundreds to thousands of cells thick. The different sensations we receive, are perceived (or become aware to us) through certain areas within the brain, which are then called “active”. The activity of these brain areas are processed via the thalamus which is located above the brain stem (little lump between the brain and the spinal cord). After the thalamus processes this information, it sends it back to different areas of the cortex (the area for decision making and analysis) and then we “consciously” process the information we’ve been processing all along and didn’t really know it.

Whew! That wasn’t so bad was it?

Nelson calls the brainstem the switch for the three types of consciousness and when this switch gets stuck (something abnormal happens) the patient enters the borderland state. The brain stem is the area that Nelson really investigates during his research, which makes him different than other neuroscientists researching the same topic (it’s usually the thalamus).

Clearly, reflexes are very different from consciousness and should never be confused for one another as they seemed to be in the case of Theresa Schiavo. You may remember the woman who was in a coma years ago. There was controversy over whether or not she was actually in a permanent vegetative state. Her family wanted to believe (understandably) that she would return to normal and in their grief they misinterpreted her reflexes for consciousness.

Although her brainstem was still activating/arousing her mind, she was going to be stuck in a borderland cycling between wakefulness and REM sleep because of the part of her brain that was injured. There must be a clear line between minimal consciousness and the vegetative state, but it is hard to distinguish by just observing a patient. This is why it is necessary to use tools like PET scans and MRIs to more thoroughly understand the physiology of these patient’s brains.

The next question Nelson attempts to tackle is: Is a spiritual experience another state of consciousness? Nelson asks, “Maybe spiritual experience erupts in the borderlands between consciousnesses, unconsciousness, and dreaming—when our consciousness states are not a whole but fragmented and blended: a hybrid.” The self has everything to do with a spiritual experience given the nature of the experience. So we must tack down exactly what is this thing we call the self.

Join me next chapter: The Fragmented Self!!!