The Guardian's Misleading Story on Near-Death Experiences

The British paper the Guardian recently gave us a junk story on the topic of near-death experiences. It pushed a groundless narrative that a neuroscientist named Jimo Borjigin has done something to help explain such experiences, which is not at all correct.  Borjigin's work on this topic started out with her 2013 paper with the misleading title "Surge of neurophysiological coherence and connectivity in the dying brain." The paper makes a misleading use of the technical EEG terms "coherence" and "connectivity."

An EEG is a device for measuring brain waves, one requiring the attachment of multiple electrodes on the head. In the technical jargon of EEG analysts, "coherence" means some length of time in which you are getting the same type of brain waves from two different regions of the brain. The paper here states, "Coherence is one mathematical method that can be used to determine if two or more sensors, or brain regions, have similar neuronal oscillatory activity with each other."  There are different ways in which the term "connectivity" is used by neuroscientists. One of these ways is "structural connectivity" meaning the number of connections between brain cells. But, according to that paper, there's another way in which "connectivity" is used: "Functional connectivity identifies activity brain regions that have similar frequency, phase and/or amplitude of correlated activity." 

So given such speech customs, a neuroscientist analyzing the ups and downs of brain waves can claim "coherence" or "connectivity" as long as he sees any type of similarity between different regions of a brain giving the same kind of EEG readings. This is what the authors of the 2013 paper (including  Borjigin) did.  What they observed was simply the brain waves of rats quickly dying off to become a flat line. But because the brain waves from each regions quickly trailed off and died off in the same way, the authors have called this behavior "coherence" and "connectivity." 

While this may not be a very clear case of an outright lie (given the speech habits of EEG analysts), the title of the paper is misleading, because it creates a very false impression in the minds of 95% of the people who read it. 95% of the people reading a title of "Surge of neurophysiological coherence and connectivity in the dying brain" will think that some indication was found of increased cognitive activity in dying brains. The paper found no such thing.  The "coherence" and "connectivity" supposedly found was not a surge but merely a blip, and it did not involve anything like some surge of mental activity. Nothing whatsoever was found that can help to give a neural explanation for near-death experiences. In fact, there is every reason to think that at the time when this little blip of claimed "coherence" and "connectivity" occurred, all of the rats were unconscious. 

Figure 1 of the paper is shown below. We see EEG brain wave signals from rats who were injected with a chemical causing the heart to stop. 

Nothing impressive is seen. It's just what you would expect: brain signals trailing off and dying out very quickly after the heart stops. This data offers no justification for a title of "Surge of neurophysiological coherence and connectivity in the dying brain." An honest title of the paper would have been:  "Brain waves very quickly trail off and die out after hearts stop in rats." 

After this paper with a misleading title was published, we had innumerable misleading citations of it in the articles of materialist or mainstream writers, claiming or insinuating that the paper showed or suggested something it did not either show or suggest. An example was a National Geographic article with the misleading title "In Dying Brains, Signs of Heightened Consciousness." The 2013 "Surge of neurophysiological coherence and connectivity in the dying brain" paper had not anything whatsoever to show "signs of heightened consciousness" in the dying rats it studied. Similarly, a 2017 Big Think article linked to the 2013 paper and claimed, "One 2013 study, which examined electrical signals inside the heads of rats, found that the rodents entered a hyper-alert state just before death." This claim is totally false, and the paper suggested nothing of the sort.  

The new Guardian story has a mention of this research, and gives us the untrue claim that Borjigin "discovered that rats undergo a dramatic storm of many neurotransmitters, including serotonin and dopamine, after their hearts stop and their brains lose oxygen." No such thing was discovered, and the paper made no mention of either serotonin or dopamine.  The Guardian story then refers to another paper Borjigin co-authored, referring to a Patient One mentioned in that paper.  The 2023 paper discussed brain readings of coma patients in Michigan, USA who had their life-support systems turned off. 

I previously described this paper like this:

• "Surge of neurophysiological coupling and connectivity of gamma oscillations in the dying human brain." Here we have another misleading use of the word "surge" in a science paper headline, a paper co-authored by one of the researchers who authored the equally mistitled rat study "Surge of neurophysiological coherence and connectivity in the dying brain."  The paper merely describes a little brain activity in two people after a respirator was turned off, with no evidence of brain activity continuing for more than a few seconds after the heart has stopped. The lines on brain waves charts go up and down, and there are seven or so channels of brain waves (including a gamma channel); so at any second you can usually find some little line going up and call that a "surge," although at the same time other lines (representing other brain wave channels) will probably be going down. Using the term "surge" in the title of the paper was misleading, rather like  tracking the price of Microsoft, seeing it go up 2% at 2:00, and calling that a surge. The authors of the study did not even report a surge in gamma waves, one of the brain wave channels. Eager to get something they could call a surge, the authors got their little "surge" after some statistical fiddling with the signals, to get some statistical measure that only shows up after arbitrary analytics. Almost any random ten seconds of brain wave activity can be statistically analyzed to show a little "surge" somewhere, if you're willing to dredge up secondary statistical measures. Keep torturing the data, and it will confess as you wish.  Shamefully, the journal Science has an article on this paper with the misleading headline "Burst of brain activity during dying could explain life passing before your eyes"; and the Smithsonian site has an equally misleading click-bait headline of "Surging Brain Activity in Dying People May Be a Sign of Near-Death Experiences." There is no evidence that either of these two people had an experience of "life passing before their eyes" or anything like near-death experiences. The subjects were unconscious when the respirator was turned off, and there is no evidence of any consciousness. Unconscious people have gamma wave activity (the activity reported), and you have plenty of gamma activity while you are sleeping. No "neural correlates of the NDE" were reported by the paper. As two MDs point out in a commentary on this paper, "The researchers reported no evidence whatsoever that these brain activities were correlated with conscious experiences in those two patients—and no reason to compare these results with prospective NDE studies in patients who have survived a cardiac arrest."

But senselessly our Guardian article writer attempts to portray this research as shedding some light on near-death experiences.  We have a quote by Borjigin not matching anything reported in her scientific paper. "As she died, Patient One’s brain was functioning in a kind of hyperdrive,” Borjigin tells the article writer.  That does not match any data reported in the scientific paper, which shows nothing special happening in the patient's brain as she died. In fact, see the first  visual below which plainly contradicts such a claim, showing this Patient One's brain waves trailing off into flat lines as her heart stopped.   "Hyperdrive" is a word used in science fiction, and is not a legitimate neuroscience word. We read, "Given the levels of activity and connectivity in particular regions of her dying brain, Borjigin believes it’s likely that Patient One had a profound near-death experience with many of its major features: out-of-body sensations, visions of light, feelings of joy or serenity, and moral re-evaluations of one’s life." This is a groundless and implausible speculation not supported by any evidence. 

As two MDs point out in a commentary on this paper, "The researchers reported no evidence whatsoever that these brain activities were correlated with conscious experiences in those two patients—and no reason to compare these results with prospective NDE studies in patients who have survived a cardiac arrest." There are no known neural correlates that are signs of near-death experiences, so no match  has been made to any such correlates.  So the belief attributed to Borjigin (about the patient having a near-death experience with particular features) is every bit as silly as someone looking at some EEG readouts of a dying patient and saying, "I believe she was having a vision of becoming the queen of Mars," when the patient never spoke a word. 

But that's how so many of our neuroscientists are these days.  It seems so many of them are so often squinting at data and claiming to see things that aren't really there, and jumping to conclusions without any warrant. It seems that our neuroscientists (members of a belief community with entrenched dogmas) tend to be very big People of Belief. A neuroscientist such as Borjigin believes without the slightest warrant that a silent dying patient had a near-death experience with particular features. And neuroscientists believe without any good warrant the "old wives' tales" stories of their conformist belief community, such as the claim that brains store memories and that brains produce thinking and imagination and ideas (disregarding a great wealth of evidence discussed in this site's posts that brains are too slow, noisy, unstable and unreliable to explain the wonders of human mental performance, and disregarding the failure of any microscopic examinations of brain tissue to ever find any trace of learned human knowledge). 

The Guardian article writer makes use of a little trick to fool readers into thinking that brain activity continues after the heart stops.  The trick is to discuss two cases when life support machines were turned off and brain activity continued for a tiny bit, and to try to insinuate that this means that brains keep working minutes after hearts stop, something that is not true. The article says, "At the very least, Patient One’s brain activity – and the activity in the dying brain of another patient Borjigin studied, a 77-year-old woman known as Patient Three – seems to close the door on the argument that the brain always and nearly immediately ceases to function in a coherent manner in the moments after clinical death."  No, that isn't true at all, because turning off a life support machine is not the same as stopping the heart. Both the heart and the brain may continue to work for a few minutes after a life support machine has been turned off. 

The evidence on this matter is crystal-clear: within 15 or 20 seconds after the heart has stopped, brain activity as measured by EEG dies away to become a flat line. In fact, if we look at the Supplemental Information document of Borjigin's paper on this Patient One, we get some information that very much contradicts what the quote above states (information which also shows the untruth of Borjigin's claim that this patient's brain was in "hyperdrive" as she died). 

Below is part of Figure S1A from the supplemental information of the paper. We see the brain waves of the dying Patient One in blue (EEG readings), and we see in the last row a red ECG reading that is a  measure of heart activity.  

The text below this visual tells us this about these stages that are labeled S5, S6, S7, S8, S9 and S10, using the term "bradycardia" which means lower-than-normal heart rate: 

"The pacemaker was automatically turned off (S5) and restarted from S6. S7 starts when rapid heartrate drop was seen which ended when pacemaker was turned off by clinical staff. S8 denotes the bradycardia period where RR interval (RRI) is longer than 5s. In S9, RRI is below 5s (partial heartrate recovery). S10 saw the reappearance of the P-waves and further recovery of heartrate. S11 ends at the last recorded heartbeat with periodical PAC-like ECG pattern."

The evidence in this case is crystal clear: there was virtually no brain activity at stage S10 (when there was "further recovery of heartrate") and no brain activity at all at stage S11, which ended with the "last recorded heartbeat." The case of this Patient One thereby shows the  untruth of the Guardian writer's claim that "At the very least, Patient One’s brain activity – and the activity in the dying brain of another patient Borjigin studied, a 77-year-old woman known as Patient Three – seems to close the door on the argument that the brain always and nearly immediately ceases to function in a coherent manner in the moments after clinical death." To the contrary, the data on this Patient One showed that her brain activity had shut down completely by the time of her last heartbeat. 

Below is the brain wave data on Patient Three, as displayed in Figure S1C of the supplemental information of the paper.  The blue lines are EEG brain wave readings, and the red line at bottom is an ECG heart activity reading. 

Below this visual is this description which refers to stages such as S5 and S6:

"In S5, heartrate was partially recovered. During this period, R-peak duration increased. P-waves became invisible. In S6, while heartrate was maintained at the same level as in S5, R-peak width returned to a normal level but still without visible P-waves. In S7, while heartrate saw further recovery (shortening of RRI), PR interval lengthening became evident on ECM. The PR-interval continued linear expansion in S8, which ended at the last recorded heartbeat."

The evidence in this case is crystal clear: there was virtually no brain activity at stage S7 ("while heartrate saw further recovery") and no brain activity at all at stage S8, which ended with the "last recorded heartbeat." Like the case of Patient One, the case of this Patient Three thereby shows the  untruth of the Guardian writer's claim that "At the very least, Patient One’s brain activity – and the activity in the dying brain of another patient Borjigin studied, a 77-year-old woman known as Patient Three – seems to close the door on the argument that the brain always and nearly immediately ceases to function in a coherent manner in the moments after clinical death." To the contrary, the data on this Patient Three showed that her brain activity had shut down completely by the time of her last heartbeat. The data of the supplemental information document tells the same story for Patient Two and Patient 4: none of the EEG lines of the four patients show significant brain electrical activity after the heart stopped beating. 

The data above is consistent with one of the main claims made by those arguing that near-death experiences are beyond any neural explanation: the claim that brain activity ceases within a few seconds after the heart starts beating during cardiac arrest. It is very baffling that Borjigin has given an interview with the Guardian trying to insinuate that the cases of such patients do anything to support any neural explanation for near-death explanation. We may reasonably ask: did Borjigin bother to study the data in the supplemental information of her paper, data that so clearly defies such insinuations?  And did the writer of the Guardian article bother to study such data, defying some of what he wrote?

Borjigin is quoted as making the statement, “The brain, contrary to everybody’s belief, is actually super active during cardiac arrest." This claim is every bit as misleading as saying that the heart is very active when someone shoots a rifle bullet through it. The fact is that a heart will stop pumping when you shoot a rifle bullet through it,  and a brain will stop its electrical activity when the heart stops.  The charts above show how misleading Borjigin's quote is. Why were such charts (contradicting  Borjigin's claims) hidden away in the supplemental information attachment of Borjigin's paper? They should have been in the main text of the paper. 

One of the many misleading parts of the Guardian article is when the author attempts to insinuate that those interested in life after death (and believing in signs from the deceased) have lost interest in near-death experiences, an insinuation that is very untrue. Always expect misleading information in mainstream publication articles about paranormal phenomena. Always remember that the authors of such articles are very rarely careful scholars of the topics they are writing about. 

Near-death experiences are one of the strongest lines of evidence against claims that the brain is the source of the mind. Contrary to the predictions of such claims, when brains have shut down during cardiac arrest (showing only flat lines in their electrical activity), minds often have long, vivid experiences -- not merely some type of experience, but experiences that people routinely report being more vivid than regular life experiences.  And very vivid and detailed memories are formed. In near-death experiences people very commonly report perceiving their bodies from outside of their bodies, from meters away. There is no credible explanation of such reports under the assumption that the brain is the source of your mind and the storage place of your memories. Remarkably, the recent Guardian article is a very long article, and it kind of presents Borjigin's Patient One as its "star witness" for the claim that near-death experiences have a neural explanation. But as I show above, this is a farce, because the actual data of Patient One's death (shown in my second visual above) provides no support  for the claim that near-death experiences have a neural explanation, and strongly supports one of the pillars of the claim that such experiences have no neural explanation: the claim that brains shut down when hearts shut down or a few seconds later. 

A 2017 paper was "Electroencephalographic Recordings During Withdrawal of Life-Sustaining Therapy Until 30 Minutes After Declaration of Death." That 2017 paper studied the brain waves of four humans who died in Ontario, Canada after their hearts stopped. These were patients different from the four Michigan, USA patients whose deaths were documented in the 2023 Borjigin paper described above. Referring to the 2013 paper co-authored by Borjigin, the 2017 paper stated, "We also did not observe any well-defined EEG states following the early cardiac arrest period as previously reported in rats." Of course -- brain electrical activity stops when the heart stops, or only a few seconds later. The paper points out that "one must be careful about false positive EEG signals from muscular and/or cardiac sources."  Motion and muscle activity shows up on EEG readouts, producing what are called motion artifacts. An involuntary muscle twitch (or a movement by a medical person of part of an unconscious body) a few seconds after death may show up as a blip on an EEG reading. Such a thing is no actual evidence of brain activity during conscious experience. A scientific paper commentary says, "Contamination of EEG recordings by muscle artifact is a well-recognized problem, especially in the high-frequency gamma range, leading to erroneous estimates of EEG spectral power and coherence  (Goncharova et al., 2003; Pope et al., 2009; Fitzgibbon et al., 2013)."  It is just such a false-alarm-prone gamma range that Borjigin's papers on this topic have been centered around. 

Below is Figure 3 from the paper.  In Patients 1, 2 and 3 there is no significant brain wave activity (as shown in the blue EEG lines) after the time point marked 0 (time of last heart beat).  In Patient 4 the EEG lines flatline at five seconds after the heart stopped, and there is about 15 seconds later merely a weak blip or two around the time 20 to 30 seconds after the heart stopped, but that dies away after a few seconds. 

In none of the eight patients graphed in these two papers do we have any substantive evidence of brains working for more than an instant after the patient's last heart beat.