The Groundless Myth That "Floods"' or "Surges" Help Explain Near-Death Experiences

 The phenomena of near-death experiences and out-of-body experiences are strong evidence against a cherished claim of neuroscientists, the claim that your brain is the source of your mind. During near-death experiences and out-of-body experiences arising during cardiac arrest when brain activity flatlines, people often report having the most vivid experiences in which they observe their bodies from outside of the bodies. No such thing should ever occur if your brain is the source of your mind.  Under the idea that your brain is the source of your mind, nothing but unconsciousness should result from a state of cardiac arrest in which brain signals flatline.  And if the brain is the source of your mind, no one should ever observe his body from a viewing position meters away from the body, something commonly reported in near-death experiences and out-of-body experiences. 

To try and combat this evidence which so clearly refutes their most cherished dogmas, neuroscientists and materialists have resorted to spreading myths. There is the flood myth and the surge myth. 

The Flood Myth

DMT is some molecule that can produce hallucinations in humans. The main type of flood myth regarding near-death experiences is the utterly fictional claim that there occurs a flood of DMT or some other relevant chemicals when a person is dying. There is no scientific evidence for any such thing occurring in any organism.  It is sometimes claimed that some study showed that a flood of DMT occurs in rats when they die.  The claim has no basis in fact. 

The wikipedia.org article on DMT makes this claim: "A significant increase of DMT levels in the rat visual cortex was observed following induction of experimental cardiac arrest, a finding independent of an intact pineal gland."  The statement is based on a paper that failed to show any robust of such a thing. The paper is the paper "Biosynthesis and Extracellular Concentrations of N,N-dimethyltryptamine (DMT) in Mammalian Brain," which you can read here. Figure 4 of the paper has a graph that claims to show DMT levels in the brain of rats during normal times and during cardiac arrest. We see only negligible levels in both cases. The graph is below:

The nM on the left scale stands for nanomoles. The claimed amount in both cases is the negligible amount of only 1 or 2 nanomoles, something like about 1 billionth of a gram.  The "cardiac arrest" part of the graph is misleading. The measurement was not made during cardiac arrest. This should come as no surprise when you consider that cardiac arrest quickly kills an organism, within a few minutes, unless it is stopped. Within the few minutes of cardiac arrest, there would never be time to reliably make some very delicate measure of  some tiniest trace amount of a few nanomoles. 

A reading of the full caption of the figure above gives us the truth. The claimed measurement of DMT in rats did not actually occur during cardiac arrest, but between 30 minutes and an hour after cardiac arrest.  So the "cardiac arrest" in the graph is misleading. The graph should have been labeled like this. 

Should we have any confidence in the reliability of this claimed measurement, given the failure of the authors to correctly label their graph? There are three reasons we should not:

(1) The failure to correctly label the graph should cause us to doubt the reliability of the investigation. 

(2) The reported levels are so very low that they almost certainly fall within the measurement uncertainty of whatever measurement technique was used. We cannot even have confidence that there is any DMT at all in any of these rats. 

(3) The authors fail to mention any use of a blinding protocol, and their paper fails to use the word "blind" or "blinding." The very tiny difference reported is so small it can easily be explained by merely assuming that when the investigators studied the dead rats, they were more prone to report finding DMT, because of their desire to show some effect of DMT increasing when a rat dies. 

In short, we have no robust evidence here of anything that can reasonably be called a surge or a flood or even a significant increase in DMT levels in dying rats. No reliable evidence has been provided that DMT levels increase in rats when they undergo cardiac arrest. Claims of a flood of DMT in rats undergoing cardiac arrest are lies.  

The question of DMT in the brain was clarified by David E. Nichols in a paper he authored in the Journal of Psychopharmocology. Speaking of DMT (also known as N,N-dimethyltryptamine) in the paper Nichols says, “It is clear that very minute concentrations of N,N-dimethyltryptamine have been detected in the brain, but they are not sufficient to produce psychoactive effects.” Addressing speculations that DMT is produced by the tiny pea-sized pineal gland in the brain, Nichols points out that the main purpose of the pineal gland is to produce melatonin, but the pineal gland only produces 30 micrograms of melatonin per day. But the pineal gland would need to produce about 20 milligrams of DMT (about 660 times more than 30 micrograms) to produce a mystical or hallucinatory experience. “The rational scientist will recognize that it is simply impossible for the pineal gland to accomplish such a heroic biochemical feat,” says Nichols. In the article in which he states that, it is noted that “DMT is rapidly broken down by monoamine oxidase (MAO) and there is no evidence that the drug can naturally accumulate within the brain.” Strassman attempted to detect DMT in the brains of 10 human corpses, but was not able to find any.

Given these facts, it is quite absurd to suggest that near-death experiences are being produced by DMT in the brain. Judging from the amount of DMT in rat brains, we have about 100,000 times too little DMT in our bodies for DMT-produced experiences to appear. Web pages speculating that near-death experiences may be produced by DMT will typically tell us that DMT has been detected in rat brains, failing to tell us how much DMT was detected (merely trace levels 100,000 times too small to produce any remarkable mental experiences).

The latest news story to repeat the false claim about a flood of brain chemicals at the time of death is a very recent BBC Science Focus article "What Is It Like to Die? The Reassuring Science of Near-Death Experiences." After a bogus section header of "A Huge Release of Chemicals," the BBC article claims this:

"For instance, Borjigin's team have previously studied rats in a state of asphyxia (a lack of oxygen in the brain – comparable to when a human has a heart attack) and found that this triggered a sudden release of brain chemicals, including adenosine, dopamine, norepinephrine, gamma-aminobutyric acid, glutamate and aspartate. Serotonin also surged to 20 times its normal levels within just two minutes of asphyxiation. Given the key roles these chemicals play in emotions and dream-like states, scientists suggest that this swell in neurotransmitters may contribute to the intense subjective experiences reported by people who undergo NDEs."

The paper the article referred to is the 2015 Borjigin paper Borjigin "Asphyxia-activated corticocardiac signaling accelerates onset of cardiac arrest," which is a low-quality study. The main reason that the study is not reliable experimental science is that it uses a way-too-small study group size of only 7 rodents. To be robust evidence, experimental studies attempting to show the effects of interventions in rodents require a sample size of at least 15 or 20 rodents per study group, and almost always a much larger number of rodents. When such experimental studies use only much smaller study group sizes such as 7 rodents per study group, they in general deserve only scorn, particularly when they are guilty of two failures this paper was guilty of: a failure to follow a blinding protocol, and a failure to report a sample size calculation (which typically occurs when experimenters know the study group sizes are way too small). 

Another reason why this paper is not reliable evidence for any surge of chemicals in dying rodents is that it was attempting to do something that could not reliably be done in 2015: to track changes in levels of brain chemicals existing in only the tiniest trace amounts, over a time period of a few minutes. There did not exist in 2015 any technology capable of reliably tracking such chemicals over so short a time span. The relevant graph in the paper is Figure 4. There we see a graph purporting to track some brain chemicals existing at levels of only about 20 nanomoles. That's an incredibly tiny amount. In 2015 there did not exist any technology capable of reliably tracking changes in brain chemicals existing in such tiny amounts, over the span of a few minutes.  The authors state, "To probe the neurochemical basis of the heightened cortical activities, we performed minute-by-minute microdialysis in the frontal and occipital lobes of unanesthetized rats (n = 7) before and during asphyxiation and analyzed cortical dialysates using liquid chromatography-mass spectrometry (LC-MS)." In 2015 that was not a reliable technology for tracking changes in minute traces of neurotransmitters in rodents over a period of a few minutes, particularly when using a way-too-small study group size such as only 7 rodents.  For more on the unreliability of such claimed measurements, see the appendix of this post. None of the supposedly increasing chemicals listed in this 2015 paper are hallucinogens, so it makes no sense for the BBC Science Focus article to be claiming they have relevance to explaining near-death experiences. 

The recent BBC article is guilty of a particularly misleading claim by using the header "A Huge Release of Chemicals." The actual release of chemicals reported in the low-quality paper it cites is a level of something like 20 nanomoles, only the tiniest trace amount, something like 20 parts per billion. Calling that a "huge release of chemicals" is like calling a millionth of a raindrop a rain storm.  

The Surge Myth

What we can call the surge myth is the utterly fictional claim that there is a surge of some type of brain activity when a person undergoes cardiac arrest. The claim is the exact opposite of the truth. 

The claim seems to have got started after the publication of a 2013 paper with the misleading title "Surge of neurophysiological coherence and connectivity in the dying brain." The paper was based on EEG readings of dying rats. An EEG is a device for measuring brain waves, one requiring the attachment of multiple electrodes on the head.  

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 momentary 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 very 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.  

A 2023 paper discussed brain readings of coma patients in Michigan, USA who had their life-support systems turned off. Like the rat death paper described above, the paper had a misleading use of the word "surge." 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."

Innumerable false claims have appeared in the press based on these papers which made misleading uses of the word "surge" in their titles. What we have is a "give them an inch, and they'll take a mile" situation. Materialists are very eager consumers for any tiny scrap that may sound like something offering the faintest hope of some neural explanation for near-death experiences. So when a neuroscientist incorrectly uses the term "surge" in describing momentary blips that are not actual surges, then there may occur a "give them an inch, and they'll take a mile" effect, and before long the press may be talking all over the place about a surge of brain activity in dying patients. Such claims are lies. What actually happens to brains when cardiac arrest occurs is the exact opposite of a surge in brain activity. 

The latest news story to repeat the false claim about a surge in brain activity at the time of death is a very recent BBC Science Focus article  "What Is It Like to Die? The Reassuring Science of Near-Death Experiences." The article makes this false claim:  "Led by Dr. Jimo Borjigin, the team made the remarkable observation that two of the patients observed a surge of brain activity after their relatives had agreed to the removal of life support."  The untrue claim is similar to equally bogus claims made by the British newspaper The Guardian. For a very detailed discussion of the untrue claims that this newspaper  made on this topic and about these two patients who had no such surges of brain activity, read my widely read post here. I was invited by someone at a science journal to turn that post into a scientific paper, but I declined because I prefer to keep my writings entirely on my blog sites so that everyone can read them for free, without encountering any paywall or advertisements. There was no such surge of brain activity in any such patients studied by the paper mentioned.  

The term "isoelectric" or iso-electric in reference to brain waves means a flat-lining equivalent to no electrical activity in the brain, as measured by EEG readings. The paper here states, "Within 10 to 40 seconds after circulatory arrest the EEG becomes iso-electric." Figure 1 of the paper here says that such an isoelectric flat-lining occurred within 26 seconds after the start of ventricular fibrillation, the "V-fib" that is a common cause of sudden cardiac death, with "cortical activity absent." Also referring to a flat-lining of brain waves meaning a stopping of brain electrical activity, another scientific paper says, "several studies have shown that EEG becomes isoelectric within 15 s [seconds] after ischemia [heart stopping] without a significant decrease in ATP level (Naritomi et al., 1988; Alger et al., 1989)."  Another paper tells us this about brain waves and infarction (obstruction of blood flow), using CBF to mean cerebral blood flow, and the phrase "the EEG becomes isoelectric" to mean a flat-lining of brain electrical signals:

"When normal CBF declines, the EEG first loses the higher frequencies (alpha and beta bands), while the lower frequencies (delta and theta bands) gradually increase. When the CBF decreases further towards an infarction threshold, the EEG becomes isoelectric." 

Similarly, another paper refers to blood pressure, and tells us, "When flow is below 20 mL/100 g/min (60% below normal), EEG becomes isoelectric." meaning that brain electrical activity flat-lines. The 85-page "Cerebral Protection" document here states, "During cardiac arrest, the EEG becomes isoelectric within 20-30 sec and this persists for several minutes after resuscitation." Another scientific paper states this: 

"Of importance, during cardiac arrest, chest compliance is not confounded by muscle activity. The EEG becomes isoelectric within 15 to 20 seconds, and the patient becomes flaccid (Clark, 1992; Bang, 2003)."

You can find quite a few additional papers asserting that brains flat-line very quickly after cardiac arrest by doing Google or Google Scholar searches for the phrase "EEG becomes isoelectric" or "EEG becomes iso-electric." 

A recent scientific paper referring to EEG readings of brain waves states this: 

"The trajectory of EEG activity following cardiac arrest is both well defined and simple. It consists of an almost immediate decline in EEG power, which culminates in a state of isoelectricity [flatlining] within 20 s [seconds]." 

The paper refers to three studies "where gamma oscillations are essentially or mostly artifactual and non-functional biorhythms masquerading as authentic EEG signals," noting how such oscillations can be produced by muscle movements. The paper concludes by saying this about the blips reported in the papers with "surge" in their titles: "Regardless of what the electrogenesis of the gamma spikes ultimately turns out to be, it is highly unlikely that they could be responsible for generating an NDE [near-death experience]."

A recent new study I discuss here gives us additional evidence that at death brain waves flatline, the exact opposite of undergoing some surge in activity. 

We have seen above how mainstream news sources tend to be utterly unreliable in their coverage of neuroscience attempts to explain near-death experiences. The same BBC Science Focus site that misinformed us so badly on this topic (as described above) is a site that has recently been guilty of very bogus science-related headlines, as I document in my post here. 

Appendix: The 2015 paper mentioned above entitled "Asphyxia-activated corticocardiac signaling accelerates onset of cardiac arrest" claimed to use a technology called liquid chromatography-mass spectrometry (LC-MS). In 2015 there did not exist any technology for reliably tracking changes over a few minutes in neurotransmitters such as serotonin existing in only the tiniest trace amounts such as a  few nanomoles.  The pitfalls of this LC-MS technology are discussed in the 2012 paper here ("Pitfalls Associated with the Use of Liquid Chromatography–Tandem Mass Spectrometry in the Clinical Laboratory"), which states this:

"However, application of this technology is not automatically or necessarily translated into accurate results. Its pitfalls have to be recognized and must be addressed systematically. In particular interferences from in-source transformation of metabolites, differential matrix effects of analyte and internal standard and isobaric transitions can lead to inaccurate results of LC-MS/MS analyses."

Mass spectrometry does not measure the levels of neurotransmitters in a sample. As a wikipedia.org article tells us, "Mass spectrometry (MS) is an analytical technique that measures the mass-to-charge ratio (m/z) of charged particles (ions)." Attempting to deduce changes in the level of a particular neurotransmitter chemical (over a time span of a few minutes) from mass spectrometry readings would involve guesswork and some complex and largely arbitrary analysis pathway that would be very hard to get right. 

To get an analogy what it is like for some scientists trying to find traces of neurotransmitters by analyzing mass spectroscopy data from the brain of a rodent, consider the visual below:

This text consists of many different sentences, overlaid on top of each other. Imagine trying to extract a particular word from such a mess. That's pretty much impossible. It's a similar deal for a scientist analyzing mass spectroscopy data derived from the tiny brain of a rodent, because what such a person gets is signals from many different elements and compounds and chemicals, arriving all at once. Unless you are very lucky, there is almost no way to reliably extract which part is a signal from which chemical, compound or element. But with a mess like a neuroscientist gets in such a situation (or a mess like the one shown above), there are unlimited opportunities to see what you are fervently hoping to see. All that can be truthfully said about such a mess is something like this: "The data is too noisy for me to say much of anything reliable about it." 

We have seen the pitfalls of mass spectrometry analysis claiming tiniest trace amounts in the recent K2-18b affair, in which overeager scientists claimed to have found something called dimethyl sulfide in the tiniest trace amounts in a planet in another solar system. As discussed here, the claims were soon discredited by other scientists who basically said: no, your data did not show any such thing.

The LC-MS/MS technology was not designed for analyzing real-time changes over a short time span such as a few minutes. It was instead designed for a more leisurely type of analysis such as determining what is in a static sample of something.  Any claims of using such a technology in 2015 for real-time analysis of very short term in vivo changes in blood levels of neurotransmitters (over a time span of a few minutes) should be regarded with the great suspicion. To have any confidence in such claims, you would need to have best practices such as sufficient study group sizes and the use of a blinding protocol. Neither occurred in the 2015 paper "Asphyxia-activated corticocardiac signaling accelerates onset of cardiac arrest." The paper makes no mention of using any blinding protocol. 

We can make a good guess about what probably went on. One or more analysts motivated to report some increase in neurotransmitters in dying rodents analyzed some mass spectroscopy data that could be analyzed in a 1001 conflicting ways, and then claimed to see the desired result. Such an event has little value as evidence. There might have some good evidence of neurotransmitter levels if you had used a much larger number of rodents, and given the mass spectroscopy data to some independent analyst, asking him, "Tell me if you can find any reliable evidence of any chemicals, and how much of such things you see." 

It takes the human body hours or days to produce the most minute generation of the tiniest amounts of chemicals such as melatonin and serotonin. The human body produces about 30 micrograms (millionth of a gram) of melatonin daily. Rates of serotonin production in the brain are estimated at about 70 picomoles per gram per minute, which is some extremely minute amount like .000000000070 of a gram. There is no credible mechanism by which an organism could produce any strong increase in very-hard-to-produce neurotransmitters such as serotonin over the course of only a few minutes, as something like a response to death or a loss of oxygen or a stopping of a heart. If readings were to show a difference of, say, 300% over such a short interval of a few minutes, by far the best explanation would be the uncertainty and error levels and subjectivity of the claimed readings, rather than any actual increase over so short a time, which would not be time for any substantial increase. When you are attempting to measure in a tight time frame the levels of chemicals existing in only the tiniest trace amounts, the uncertainty from one attempted reading to another can easily be something like 1000%. 

A 2022 article mentions some new technology for measuring in real time changes in neurotransmitters such as serotonin. The article speaks just as if no such technology existed prior to 2022, which should make us further doubt year 2015 claims about neurotransmitter changes occurring at the minutes around death. It states this:

"Now, for the first time, UCLA scientists have attached nanoscale biochemical sensors, which are tuned to identify specific neurotransmitters, to a soft, implantable brain probe in order to continuously monitor these chemicals in real time. The new brain probe, described in a paper published in ACS Sensors, would allow scientists to track neurotransmitters in laboratory animals — and, ultimately, humans — during their day-to-day activities. 

The ability to continuously measure neurotransmitters in high resolution over long periods would provide a more accurate understanding of how serotonin, dopamine and other neurotransmitters affect psychological states, potentially leading to more effective treatments for depression and other mental health disorders, said the paper’s corresponding author, Anne Andrews, a UCLA professor of psychiatry and biobehavioral sciences and of chemistry and biochemistry."

A 2025 paper highlighting the unreliability of serotonin measurements is entitled "The Continued Mismeasurement of Plasma Serotonin: A Systematic Review." It states this:

" The review covered the period from 2010 to July 2024 and is a follow-up of a similar review published in 2011 which found that nearly all published reports of PPP 5-HT [serotonin] were clearly and markedly erroneously high. This problem has persisted unabated with nearly all retrieved 47 reports from the past 14 years also apparently being erroneously high." 

It seems rather clear that the  2015 paper mentioned above (entitled "Asphyxia-activated corticocardiac signaling accelerates onset of cardiac arrest") did not actually provide any robust evidence of a surge or even a substantial increase of cognition-relevant chemicals in the brains of dying rodents. The Figure 4 of the paper purporting to show an increase in certain neurotransmitters in dying rats is a figure reporting two statistical significances, both of only "p < .05," which is very unimpressive. It is widely regarded in experimental science that evidence listed as "p < .05" is mere borderline evidence, and when papers present such a "p < .05" other researchers may scorn it and use the derisive term "p-hacking" to describe it. Look at the error bars in the graph (indications of uncertainty in measurement) -- they are very large, and probably underestimate the uncertainty.  Even if there had been some big increase in the chemicals listed in the Figure 4 of the paper, it would do nothing to explain near-death experiences, because none of the chemicals mentioned are hallucinogens. A serotonin surge might explain a little perk in your mood, but could never explain you reporting seeing yourself out of your body, or visiting some realm of the dead or having mystical experiences. Also, Figure 5 of the paper contradicts claims of brain waves persisting after heart rate stops. In Figure 5A we see the brain waves of the rats completely flatlining by the time the red EKG reading shows a cessation of heart rate. 

The fact that the BBC Science Focus article has referred us to a 2015 paper rather than a more recent paper hints that the claimed  result of an increase in brain chemicals of dying rats has not been replicated by any high-quality paper.