Newspaper Accounts of Mental Math Marvels

The credibility of claims that mathematical calculation comes from brains is inversely proportional to the speed and capacity and reliability at which things can be calculated. There are numerous signal slowing factors in the brain, such as the relatively slow speed of dendrites, and the cumulative effect of synaptic delays in which signals have to travel over relatively slow chemical synapses (by far the most common type of synapse in the brain). As explained in my post here, such physical factors should cause brain signals to move at a typical speed very many times slower than the often cited figure of 100 meters per second: a sluggish "snail's pace" speed of only about a centimeter per second (about half an inch per second).  Ordinary everyday evidence of very fast and accurate math calculation by unaided humans is therefore evidence against claims that unaided human math calculation occurs because of brain activity, particularly because the brain is totally lacking in the things humans add to constructed objects to allow fast recall (things such as sorting and addressing and indexes). Chemical synapses in the brain do not even reliably transmit signals. Scientific papers say that each time a signal is transmitted across a chemical synapse, it is transmitted with a reliability of 50% or less.  (A paper states, "Several recent studies have documented the unreliability of central nervous system synapses: typically, a postsynaptic response is produced less than half of the time when a presynaptic nerve impulse arrives at a synapse." Another scientific paper says, "In the cortex, individual synapses seem to be extremely unreliable: the probability of transmitter release in response to a single action potential can be as low as 0.1 or lower.")  The more evidence we have of very fast and very accurate calculation occurring by humans unaided by any devices,  the stronger is the evidence against the claim that human math calculation occurs from brain activity. 

It is therefore very important to collect and study all cases of exceptional human mathematics performance. The more such cases we find, and the more dramatic such cases are, the stronger is the case against the claim that unaided human math calculation is a neural phenomenon. Or to put it another way, the credibility of claims that math calculation is a brain phenomenon is inversely proportional to the speed and reliability of the best cases of human math  performance.  The more cases that can be found of humans that seem to calculate too quickly and too accurately for a noisy address-free brain to ever do,  the stronger is the case that human thinking is not a neural phenomenon but instead a spiritual or psychic or metaphysical phenomenon.  Let us look at some newspaper clips that document such cases. 

Below is a quote from page 265 of the April 23, 1936 edition of the  periodical Light, which you can read here:

"Quoting from the Portuguese journal, Constancia, the Revive Spirite has a report of Moreira, the Blind Boy of Lisbon. This 12-year-old boy, blind practically from birth, of very rudimentary education and humble origin, is another example of the child prodigy type and the problem of supernormal faculties. He has repeatedly been examined by groups of mathematical, medical and psychological experts, sometimes for hours at a time, during which he instantaneously supplied the answers to lengthy mathematical problems, up to the multiplication of 21 digits by 15 digits; at the termination of the test, he will even amaze his interlocutors by dictating a long row of figures representing the sum of the total answers previously given."

Below is a quote from the Omaha Morning Bee of May 12, 1924. We read of a young man with astonishing powers of calculation and memory:

"Maum Lotowsky, young Lithuanian student, has astonished Harvard, Tufts and Columbia universities. When told the date of a man’s birth he instantly calculates back and tells the man on what day of the week he was born, allowing for changes of the day each year and for leap years. He works out logarithmic numbers in his mind, after glancing at a long list of complicated figures repeats them without a mistake."

In the 19th newspaper account here, we have a similar account:

Here is another newspaper account of a math marvel, from the Topeka State Journal of November 16, 1912. The account says the man had these amazing powers despite a serious brain injury:

QUICK AT FIGURES 

Ed Shaw Can Tell Seconds and Minutes Quickly.

But He Has to Husk Corn to Make Living.

Hutchinson. Kan.. Nov. 18. 

Ed Shaw, Reno county's human lightning calculator, has worked out two new mathematical problems. Here they are:

"First when will we have the same  number of seconds left in the year as are minutes gone in the year?

"Second when will there be the same number of minutes left in the

year as there are seconds gone in the month?"

Foolish waste of time, you say? Well, it s au a matter of taste. In

stead of worrying over election returns or checking golf scores, Mr. Shaw works out this kind of problems.

"I've figured it out," he said. "The answer to the first question is: The

25th of November, at 12 o'clock mid night. The answer to the second

question is: November 1, at 12 o'clock at night."

It's All in His Head.

Mr. Shaw doesn't use pencil and paper in doing mathematical stunts.

Everything is worked out in his head. Tell him how old you are and he'll tell you In a flash just how many days. hours, minutes and even seconds old you are. The reporter who wrote this article,

for instance, is one . billion, nine million, one hundred and fifty-two thousand seconds old. It took Ed Shaw just two seconds to calculate it.

Ed Shaw is a farm hand and common laborer. He makes a living working on farms around Hutchinson and Nickerson. His home is in Grant township northwest of the city. When he was a little over a year old he met with an accident which injured his head. Ever since then something has been wrong with his brain. Part of his brain evidently is overdeveloped, - giving him an abnormal

power of calculating. He Is a steady, intelligent and hard working man, respected by all. 

Discovered Power as Boy.

"I first found out that I could do this kind of mental calculating when I was a boy 9 years old,'' said Mr. Shaw, today. "One night while I was . in bed I got to figuring out how many days old

I was. . I figured it out in my head. In the morning I told my mother and she got a paper and pencil and worked it out and found I had the right answer."

"As I got older the power developed until I could instantly multiply without figures, until now I can figure out any

sum. I can calculate down into the seconds any period of years."

The newspaper story below is from 1891:

"The late George Bidder, at the age of 8, could answer almost instantaneously how many farthings there were in any sum under £868,424,121.  Zerah Colburn was another lightning calculator of the same generation. Once he was asked to name the square of 999,999, which he instantly stated to he 999,908,000,001. He multiplied this by 49j and the product by the same number, and the total result he then multiplied by 25. He could raise the figure 8 to the sixteenth power almost instantly and with perfect ease. lie once instantly named the factors of 941 and 263, and in five seconds calculated the cube root of 413,993,348,677. —St. Louis Republic.

The 1912 newspaper account below gives an obituary of Arthur F. Griffith of Milford, Indiana, USA. 

"Without pencil or paper he could raise a figure to the sixth power in about eleven seconds: could multiply three figures by three figures in five seconds and could multiply nine figures by nine figures in eight seconds. As proof of his lightning calculating

system he once did the work of four teen clerks in the state auditor's office ... On three occasions, twice in Indianapolis, and once in Bloomington.  Ill., he won races with adding machines.

In a test before professors at Harvard he answered every mathematical question propounded—the fabled

'fourth dimension" alone being barred. Problems that would require hours of figuring by most persons were solved in a few moments by Griffith. The answer to a problem like this would be at bis tongue's end; 'What is the compound interest on 1 cent at per cent from the birth of Christ to the present date, and how far would that many silver dollars reach in the air if placed flat and against each other on every square |foot of a clear and level tile floor 25.000 miles in circumference?' Questions such as this were regarded as 'light mental exercises' by Mr. Griffith."

In the newspaper account you can read here, we read of a math calculation marvel named George Parker Bidder:

"The late Mr. George Parker Bidder cultivated his

remarkable faculty to a highly useful purpose...At the age of ten

we read that he answered in two minutes the question: What is the

interest of 1444 for 4444 days at 4 per cent per annum ? ... 

A year later he divided correctly less than a minute 468592413568

by 9076. At 12 years of age he answered in less than a minute the

question: if a distance of 99 inches is passed over in a second of time

how many inches will be passed 

over in 365 [days] 5 [hours] 48 [minutes] 55 seconds]?  Much

more surprising however was his  success when 13 years old in dealing with the question: What is the cube

root Of 897,339,273,974,002,155?  He

obtained the answer in 2 minutes : 964537."

The newspaper account here tells of the same George Parker Bidder:

The same newspaper account tells us this about Zerah Colburn:

Ever-prone to censor or distort in a way that prevents us from about learning correctly about phenomena that conflict with "brains make minds" ideology, Wikipedia gives us no details of Bidder's calculation powers, but merely tells us that in a book entitled "The Great Mental Calculators" Bidder was placed second, behind Jacques Inaudi.  The Wikipedia article on Jacques Inaudi also tells us almost nothing about his astonishing mental calculation abilities, telling us little more than that "he could readily indicate the day of the week of any date from the 17th century onward."

The newspaper account here gives us details of the power of Jacques Inaudi when he was only a boy of 11:

"Jacques Inaudi is advertised in Paris as a little prodigy. He is 11 years old and a lightning calculator. The first task that he was asked to  perform was a subtraction sum, and when eight figures had been

given out some of the audience, fearing that his brain would be too heavily burdened, called out, 'That is enough!'  Inaudi, however, immediately replied, 'It does not matter. Give me some more,' 

and he had accordingly to subtract one line of fifteen figures from another of the same number, giving the result of

the operation without any appreciable delay. One of the spectators, advanced in years, put the following query to the 'calculating boy':

'I am twenty days less than 80 years old. How many hours have I lived?' After devoting about a minute to the mental

calculator, Inaudi gave the answer as 753,306 hours, which proved correct. He was then made to do multiplication and

division sums, with lines of figures to trillions and quadrillions, and always worked them out ' in his head' without the

slightest mistake or stumble. Among his other trials was the solution of a simple equation. A gentleman asked, ' If to my present age I added a third of my age and six years more I should be a hundred and twenty-six years old ; what is my age?'  Inaudi replied, 'Oh, that is easy enough ; you are ninety." Some body else asked him the cube root of 39,304, and, with scarcely a moment's hesitation, he answered, 'thirty-four.' "

In the newspaper account you can read here, we read of a math calculation marvel named Jedediah Buxton:

"Jedediah Buxton was another prodigious calculator more

remarkable in some respects than
either Colburn or Bidder. He never learned to write and in other
branches of education was as back ward as a boy of 10 while his mental faculties were slow saving always his faculty of calculation. So completely was he absorbed in his theme that he took little cognizance of external objects save as they suggested themselves. Thus if a period of time or the age of a man were spoken of Buxton at once announced that that made so many seconds and a distance
was to him so many hair-breadths. By walking over the fields of Sir
John Rhodes lordship of Elinton his step was as infallible as a surveyors chain. Buxton gave the proprietor their contents of some
thousands of acres first in acres then in roods, perches, square feet
square inches, and finally in square hair-breadths, forty eight to each
side of an inch.  He had the faculty of being able to rest a calculation at any stage and take it up next morning a week later or after a lapse of months. He could number all the pints of beer he had ever drunk at all the houses he had ever visited in half a century. 

Among the problems given him to solve were such as this: How many cubical eighths of an inch are there in a quadrangular mass 23145789 yards long 5642732 yards wide and 54966
yards thick an appalling calculation which he performed
mentally. Once he set himself to doubling a farthing 140 times and
on another occasion he made him self in his own phrase drunk
with reckoning by calculating how many hairs an inch long and
how many grains of eight different sorts of cereals there were in a mass of 200000000000 cubic miles having previously counted the hairs and grains in a single inch to get his point of departure. What was most curious about Buxton perhaps was his capacity for carrying on these calculations while conversing or listening "

In another newspaper account we are told this about Buxton:

"Ho had a remarkable memory, and while In the midst of a problem he could desist and resume the operation again where ho had left off, even if it were n year after. A remarkable thing about the man was that he would allow two persons to propose different problems at the same time, and he would answer each without the least confusion. He could also talk freely while working out his problems."

The Groundless Memory Research Boasts of the Late Susumu Tonegawa

Today's neuroscience is guilty of promoting many a groundless triumphal legend. One of those groundless socially-constructed triumphal legends is the clam that researcher Susumu Tonegawa did something to show a physical basis for memory. Tonegawa recently died, and the Transmitter magazine has a worshipful article repeating some of these groundless legends. 

The article starts out by quoting false boasts about the very low-quality 2015 paper "Engram cells retain memory under retrograde amnesia" co-authored by Tonegawa. The boasts are made by a co-author of the paper. When we look at the end of the supplemental material, and look at figure s13, we find that the experimenters were using a number of mice that was equal to only 8 in one study group, and 7 in another study group.  Such a paltry sample size does not result in any decent statistical power, and we should have no confidence in any paper using such way-too-small study groups sizes.  The paper failed to use a blinding protocol, an essential for a paper like this to be taken seriously. The paper had a thorough reliance on an utterly reliable technique for trying to judge recall in rodents: the worthless method of trying to judge "freezing behavior." All research papers relying on that method are examples of junk science, for reasons I thoroughly explain in my post here. 

Google Gemini infographic (pardon its spelling errors)

Next the Transmitter article makes this untrue claim: "In a series of papers in the 2010s, Tonegawa and his team showed that simply activating a subset of cells via optogenetics could reactivate a memory, change its valence and even create a false memory." The claim has no basis in fact. 

Let's take a look at some of the schlock work that Tonegawa and his collaborators produced on this topic, all of which is very low-quality research work utterly unworthy of praise:

• The reference in the quote above to reactivating a memory is a reference to the very low-quality 2012 paper "Optogenetic stimulation of a hippocampal engram activates fear memory recall." Figure 2 tells us that in one of the groups of mice there were only 5 mice, and that in another group there were only 3 mice. Figure 3 tells us that in two other groups of mice there were only 12 mice. Figure 4 tells us that in some other group there was only 5 mice. Such  paltry sample sizes does not result in any decent statistical power, and the results are no good evidence of anything, because the study group sizes are way-too-small for any reliable result to be claimed.  The paper has a very big reliance on the use of "freezing behavior" judgments, not a reliable method for measuring fear or recall in rodents. No convincing evidence has been provided of artificially activating a fear memory by the use of optogenetics.
• The reference in the quote above to creating a false memory is a reference to the very low-quality science 2013 paper "Creating a False Memory in the Hippocampus" co-authored by Tonegawa, which you can read here. When we look at Figure 2 and Figure 3, we see that the sample sizes used were paltry: the different groups of mice had only about 8 or 9 mice per group. Such a way-too-small sample size does not result in any decent statistical power, so the results have no weight, because the study group size is way too small for any reliable result to be honestly claimed.  The paper had a thorough reliance on an utterly reliable technique for trying to judge recall in rodents: the worthless method of trying to judge "freezing behavior." The paper makes no use of a blinding protocol, an essential for a paper like this to provide serious evidence of an effect. No convincing evidence has been provided of creating a false memory.
• The claim in the quote above about switching a valence is a reference to the 2015 low-quality science study "Bidirectional switch of the valence associated with a hippocampal contextual memory engram" co-authored by Tonegawa.  We see in that paper 5 or 6 results reported with a borderline statistical significance of only "< 0.05," so this paper is  guilty of p-hacking. No detailed description is given of how an effective blinding protocol was achieved, and only the skimpiest mention is made of blinding, so this paper fails to convince us effective blinding was achieve.  The study used only "freezing behavior" to try to measure fear or recall, without corroborating such a thing by measuring heart rates.  So the paper has done nothing to reliably measure fear or recall in the mice it studies.  The study involved stimulating certain cells in the brains of mice, with something called optogenetic stimulation. The authors have assumed that when mice "freeze" after stimulation, that this is a sign that they are recalling some fear memory stored in the part of the brain being stimulated. What the authors neglect to tell us is that stimulation of quite a few regions of a rodent brain will produce freezing behavior. So there is actually no reason for assuming that a fear memory is being recalled when the stimulation occurs. Some of the study group sizes are good, but others are too-small. Because of all of these problems, no reliable evidence has been produced of a brain storage of memory in mice. 
• Tonegawa co-authored the 2016 paper "Memory retrieval by activating engram cells in mouse models of early Alzheimer’s disease."  This very low-quality paper states that “No statistical methods were used to predetermine sample size.” That means the authors did not do what they should have done to make sure their sample size was large enough. When we look at page 8 of the paper, we find that the sample sizes used were merely 8 mice in one group and 9 mice in another group. On page 2 we hear about a group with only 4 mice per group, and on page 4 we hear about a group with only 4 mice per group. Such a paltry sample size does not result in any decent statistical power, and we should have no confidence in any paper using such way-too-small study groups sizes. The paper had a thorough reliance on an utterly reliable technique for trying to judge recall in rodents: the worthless method of trying to judge "freezing behavior." The study therefore provides no convincing evidence for any of its main claims. 

A close look at the memory research work of Susumu Tonegawa  will fail to find any studies that provide any good evidence for the grander boasts made in the titles of the papers. Although he apparently did some good work in another field (immunology), Susumu Tonegawa was a crappy experimenter in the field of cognitive neuroscience.  The praising quotes about him in the Transmitter article are mostly from scientists often guilty of the same type of bungling and poor experimental design that Tonegawa was so often guilty of. 

The Transmitter article also links to these very low-quality papers co-authored by Tonegawa:

• A Tonegawa study claimed to have “identified engram cells” in the prefrontal cortex. It was a study entitled “Engrams and circuits crucial for systems consolidation of a memory.”  In Figure 1 (containing multiple graphs), we learn that the number of animals used in different study groups or experimental activities were 10, 10, 8, 10, 10, 12, 8, and 8, for an average of 9.5. In Figure 3 (also containing multiple subgraphs), we have even smaller numbers. The numbers of animals mentioned in that figure are 4, 4, 5, 5, 5, 10, 8, 5, 6, 5 and 5. None of these numbers are anything like what would be needed for a moderately convincing result, which would be a minimum of 15 or 20 animals per study group. No detailed description is given of an effective blinding protocol.  The study relies on judgments of freezing behavior of rodents, which is not a reliable way of measuring fear or recall in rodents. 
• Tonegawa co-authored a study "Brain-wide mapping reveals that engrams for a single memory are distributed across multiple brain regions." It is a very low-quality piece of work using way-too-small sizes such as only 7 mice and only 9 mice. The study relies on judgments of freezing behavior of rodents, which is not a reliable way of measuring fear or recall in rodents. 

Tonegawa got a Nobel Prize not for any memory research, but for work in an entirely different area: immunology. 

Tonegawa founded a memory research lab at MIT. Every time I study the rodent memory research results of that lab I find research as low-quality as Tonegawa's memory research papers. For a look at some bogus boasts and very bad experimental methods employed by researchers at that lab, see my post here. 

I might try to put myself in the shoes of the person writing the gushing Transmitter article, and ask: what is going through the mind of such a person when you get that person falling "hook, line and sinker" for such junk science studies? Trying to imagine the person's train of thought, I can imagine the person thinking something like this:

The studies were published in major journals such as Nature and Cell. And the researchers worked at big prestigious universities such as MIT. And the papers were peer-reviewed. So the claims of the studies were probably true. If the authors had made untrue claims, the peer reviewers would have prevented publication. 

But the actual situation is this:

• The church-like neuroscientist belief community (in which professors serve like priests) is a community that has long been addicted to very low quality methods of neuroscience research, largely so that it can maintain the illusion that its cherished but easily debunked belief dogmas are true.  
• Junk cognitive neuroscience research is more the rule than the exception these days, even at laboratories of major universities such as Harvard and MIT. 
• Leading journals such as Nature and Cell are routinely publishing very low-quality research in cognitive neuroscience. Such journals do not have published research standards guaranteeing high-quality research work in neuroscience. 
• Peer-reviewers of submitted papers in cognitive neuroscience tend to be other researchers following research practices as bad as the methods of papers they are asked to review. Such peer-reviewers don't like to reject papers for being guilty of the same research methodology sins that the peer reviewers themselves are guilty of. So peer review does very little to prevent the publication of junk low-quality studies making false claims in their titles and abstracts. 

I can give an analogy for the type of memory research Tonegawa typically did. Imagine that you are testing whether people can get more "heads" flips than "tails" flips when flipping coins, if the people try to use psychokinetic "mind over matter" power to cause a "heads" flip. Imagine if you tested several small groups, each consisting of only 8 or 9 people.  There would be a good chance that one of the groups would report a better-than-50% number of "heads" flips. But that would be mere chance at work, and the effect would disappear if you used larger test groups such as 40 subjects per group. Imagine you also did not verify what each coin flip was, but relied on self-reports by the coin flippers of whether a coin on the ground viewed 10 meters away had landed "heads" or "tails." That would not be a reliable way of observing what the coin flips were, because some of the coin flippers might lie, or might be more prone to say that some not-very-clearly-seen coin had landed "heads."  Such an experiment would be  similar to a typical Tonegawa experiment. He typically used way-too-small study groups much smaller than 15, and reported claimed effects that chance could very easily have produced, effects that would disappear if a larger study group (such as 30 subjects) had been used. And the "freezing behavior" method he typically used to try measure fear or recall in rodents was as unreliable as self-reports from coin flippers viewing a coin from ten meters away. 

Today's cognitive neuroscience research landscape is a swampland of junk research, groundless legends, sleazy shortcuts, poor study design, bad methods and irreproducible results. When people who did frequently bungling memory-related research as bad as Tonegawa's are lionized as "giants," it helps show how deceptive a hall-of-mirrors echo chamber legend machine the world of today's neuroscience literature is. Bogus boasts and unjustified lionization are the enemies of the quest to establish scientific truth. Science goes astray when people put on pedestals scientists who made false boasts of doing things they did not do. 

Appendix: A Short Look at the Folly of "Freezing Behavior" Estimations

When "freezing behavior" estimations go on, things typically work like this. A rodent will be trained to fear some thing such as a shock plate that gives the rodent a shock when the rodent steps on it. Then later the rodent will be placed in a cage that includes the fear stimulus such as the shock plate. The researchers will attempt to record what percentage of some time (say, a minute or 3 minutes) that the rodent was immobile when placed in such a case. This will be called a "freezing percentage," and will be claimed as a measure of how well the rodent remembered the fear stimulus. 

The technique makes no sense. In the real world, rodents don't usually freeze and become immobile when they are afraid. They are much more likely to flee. I know that from years of observing how mice act in the presence of shrieking humans, in an apartment where mice would occasionally appear. So trying to judge recall of a fearful stimulus by judging how much time a rodent was immobile in a cage makes no sense as a way of measuring fear or recall. The thing that utterly destroys the credibility of all "freezing behavior" graphs is that they can be produced in any of more than a dozen ways. A researcher can put a rodent in the cage for three minutes and graph the whole three minutes. Or he can graph only the first 30 seconds, or only the first minute, or only the first two minutes. In each ten seconds of such a three minutes, the researcher can count it as "moving" if the rodent moves one second during that period; or the researcher can count two seconds of movement as being mobility; or the researcher can use three seconds, or four seconds, or five seconds. 

There are no prevailing standards for how "freezing behavior" is judged. With there being a dozen different possibilities of how "freezing behavior" can be judged and graphed, with each having a possibility of success of about 50% (and with pre-registration -- a commitment to an exact methodology before gathering data -- being rare in neuroscience, as a neuroscientist recently confessed), it will be almost certain that the researcher will be able to choose some analysis method that will show the desired difference in "freezing behavior," even if the memory intervention being tested had no real effect. This is a large part of the reason why "freezing behavior" judgments are worthless as evidence for an increase or decrease in memory in rodents. 

A rodent may sometimes "freeze" or become immobile when seeing some fearful stimulus. But there was never any sound basis for assuming that you could reliably measure how well a rodent recalled something by measuring (over a timespan such as a minute) how immobile a rodent was in a cage that contained a fearful stimulus. No one ever did a study with a large sample size establishing the truth of such an assumption. 

Below is a depiction of a reliable method for measuring recall in rodents. 

Using this technique, a mouse is trained to avoid a fear stimulus -- the red shock plate shown in the center of the diagram. At some later date the mouse (in a hungry state) is put into the cage. If the mouse does not remember that the shock plate will cause pain, the mouse will take the direct route to the cheese, which requires crossing over the shock plate. If the mouse does remember that the shock plate will cause pain, the mouse will take an indirect and harder route, requiring it to jump up and down a set of stairs.  This is an easy and foolproof method of testing memory recall in rodents. Here we have a nice binary result -- either the mouse touches the shock plate, or it doesn't. There's no subjective element at all. 

You could use this fear stimulus avoidance technique with a setup even simpler than the one above, a setup with no stairs. You simply put a hungry mouse in a special cage with only one route to the cheese, a route that requires walking over the shock plate. If the mouse avoids the cheese, and fails to touch the shock plate, that would count as remembering that the shock plate will shock; but any touching of the shock plate would count as forgetting that the shock plate will shock. 

Instead of using good reliable objective methods such as the ones above,  today's cognitive neuroscience researchers tend to use the utterly unreliable and subjective method of trying to judge recall by trying to judge how immobile a mouse was in a cage during some arbitrary time interval such as one minute or three minutes.  This method is preferred because it is a "see whatever you want to see" method that maximizes the chance that some researcher will be able to claim some desired effect supposedly involving an increase or decrease in recall.  If peer reviewers were doing their job well, they would reject all papers using the worthless "freezing behavior" method of trying to judge recall. 

A Bullet to Their Brains Caused Little Mind Damage

 One of the very great investigation failures of today's psychologists and neuroscientists is their tendency to only search scientific papers when writing scientific papers. The fact is that there are huge additional sources of information providing very important cases of medical case histories. Those include newspapers and magazines. It is not hard to search for medical case histories documented in newspapers. For example, the free Chronicling America site allows you to search through more than 100 years of American newspapers. You can use the site by using the link below:

https://www.loc.gov/collections/chronicling-america/about-this-collection/

 Below are some of the very interesting cases I get on that site when using the search phrase "brain gone." An account you can read here is entitled "Part of Brain Gone, But Galloway Lives."  We read of a man who tried to kill himself, by shooting himself in the head. We hear that he seemed to recover well, and "talks rationally" despite the fact that he destroyed part of his brain. We read nothing mentioning any mental damage. 

Another account similar to the one above is the account below, which you can read here. We read of a man who lost four ounces of his brain (about 8 percent) after shooting himself in the head. Despite the bad brain damage, after shooting himself the man learned how to play checkers (which he had not learned before), and also apparently played checkers very well. Soon after the shooting he died. 

A similar account is below. We read of a young boy who is of an "unusually bright mind" even though he was accidentally shot through the head.

A similar account is below, from 1910. We read of a boy who "carries on an intelligent conversation" even though he has lost "five square inches" of his brain. We may presume the "five square inches" means "five cubic inches," which is about 7% of a boy's brain. 

A similar account is below. In the 1908 account we read of a man who was shot through the head, losing about 4 ounces of brain, about 6% of the brain. But after this bad brain damage, he is "appparently...in possession of all his mental faculties."

The article below appeared in the New York Times. We read of a person who was left with half a brain after he shot himself in the head, with the wound being treated by surgeons removing additional brain tissue. The patient is described as "rational." We are told "it was believed a few days ago that he would recover completely." No one would have said such a thing unless the subject had relatively little damage to mind and memory. 

The 1912 article below (which you can read here) discusses the case of a soldier who was left with about half a brain, after he was accidentally shot by another soldier, and after surgeons operated on him. We are told that after five weeks the man was "about again as usual." We hear of damage to his ability to read and write, which was restored after five months of training. Other than that, we read no mention of any damage to his memory or intellect.  The claim that he was "about again as usual" five weeks after losing half of his brain suggests there was no very great damage to his mind or memory or speaking ability. Damage to reading and writing skills could be caused by damage to perceptual and muscle ability, and does not necessarily involve any memory loss. 

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The only reason I can imagine that someone would do this would be if there were some reason why the regular site (the site you are now at) was not available.  That could conceivably happen if this site were to be hacked by malicious actors, or conceivably it might happen long after my death. 

The Wayback Machine has many snapshots of the previous contents of my three blogs. You can access them by typing these URLs into the search bar of the Wayback Machine, shown above. 

https://orbpro.blogspot.com/

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https://futureandcosmos.blogspot.com/ 

No, Near-Death Experiences Are Not Dreams

 We have a new paper trying to explain near-death experiences, one entitled "The dying-moment dream hypothesis: heaven and hell as the brain’s final dream." The explanation is one that makes no sense: that near-death experiences are a dream. Anyone who has carefully studied near-death experiences may well realize the main reason why the hypothesis makes no sense. That reason is that dreams are kind of shadowy experiences much weaker and fainter than ordinary waking reality, but near-death experiences are routinely reported as very vivid experiences that are reported as being realer than normal life. 

The paper has two of the main tendencies of almost all papers trying to explain away near-death experiences: (1) a citation of irrelevant papers, while repeating untrue claims about such papers; (2) a failure to pay any attention to the most important fact about brain performance during cardiac arrest, which is that brains very quickly flatline within 10 to 30 seconds after the heart stops. 

Below are some of the irrelevant papers cited by "the dying-moment dream hypothesis" paper:

Irrelevant Papers Cited by Those Trying to Give Brain Explanations for Near-Death Experiences, Most Having Misleading Titles
"Surge of neurophysiological coherence and connectivity in the dying brain"	This 2013 paper co-authored by Borjigin had a misleading title. Rats were given a chemical causing their heart to stop. The paper failed to show any such "coherence" or "connectivity," but merely showed a very quick flatlining of the brain waves of the rats, occurring within a few seconds after their hearts stopped. In this context it is not honest to describe a momentary blip as a "surge." 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 below.  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. A year 2025 scientific paper ("Near-death experience during cardiac arrest and consciousness beyond the brain: a narrative review") states this: "In the context of circulatory arrest, cortical electrical waves in the alpha (8-13Hz) and beta (13-30Hz) bands disappear after an average of 6.5 seconds, while at the same time, the background activity of EEG is replaced by slow waves at delta frequency (<4Hz), which progressively attenuate and lead to a flat EEG recording with no measurable electrical wave pattern around 10-30 seconds—a neural process called isoelectricity or electrocerebral silence (Clute & Levy, 1990; de Vries et  al., 1998; Singer et  al., 1991; Smith et  al., 1990; van Lommel, 2023, p. 28; Visser et  al., 2001; Vriens et  al., 1996). Furthermore, in monkeys and cats, the EEG becomes isoelectric within 20 seconds of the cessation of cerebral blood flow (Hossmann & Kleihues, 1973). The EEG results suggest that cortical electrical activity critical for consciousness, namely alpha and beta activity reflecting top-down connectivity, is eliminated within an average of 6.5 seconds following CA [cardiac arrest]."
"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 2023 science paper title, a paper co-authored by Borjigin. 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. 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.  In this context it is not honest to describe a momentary blip as a "surge. 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." For a discussion of the misleading statements made by Borjigin and others writing about this study, see my post here.
"Asphyxia-activated corticocardiac signaling accelerates onset of cardiac arrest,"	A 2015 paper co-authored by Borjigin, and sometimes cited as evidence that there is a "surge of chemicals" in dying brains, something relevant to explaining near-death experiences. 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.  None of the supposedly increasing chemicals listed in this 2015 paper are hallucinogens, so it makes no sense for the press to be claiming the paper has a relevance to explaining near-death experiences.  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." The "Asphyxia-activated corticocardiac signaling accelerates onset of cardiac arrest" reports increases in dopamine and serotonin at death. But even if such things occur, they cannot explain near-death experiences.  The paper "Effects of dopamine in man" describes an experiment in which authorities gave 13 subjects a 1% infusion of dopamine, which is enough to cause levels of dopamine to increase by very many times. The paper makes no mention of any hallucinations produced, nor does it mention any mental effects. The paper here involved experiments that increased by very many times (between 100 times and 1000 times, in other words 10000% to 100000%)  the serotonin levels in human volunteers, by infusions of serotonin. No hallucinations were reported.
"Enhanced Interplay of Neuronal Coherence and Coupling in the Dying Human Brain"	This paper with a misleading title reported on some EEG readings of a silent dying patient.  The press tried to make the paper sound as if it had some relevance to near-death experiences, which was ridiculous, because the silent dying patient reported no experience at all. The paper had a misleading title, because no actual "coherence" was observed in the dying patient.  The paper here casts cold water on the "Enhanced Interplay of Neuronal Coherence and Coupling in the Dying Human Brain" paper discussed above, implying that whatever it observed may have been an artifact of muscle movement, which produces confounding signals in EEG readings.

The author of the "dying-moment dream hypothesis" paper fails to inform his readers of the most essential relevant fact related to a discussion of potential brain explanations for near-death experiences: the fact that within 10 to 30 seconds, brains flatline after the heart stops. Any decent explanation of that reality would use the words "isoelectric" and "flatline" in an explanatory way, discussing facts like those discussed in the appendix of this post. But the author's only use of that word "isoelectric" is in a discussion of some hypothetical reality;  and his only use of the word "flatline" is one failing to explain how brains flatline within seconds after cardiac arrest. 

The fact that the brain shuts down electrically very quickly after the heart stops (becoming isoelectric, flatlining within 10 to 30 seconds) is a fact ruling out anything like dreams as an explanation for near-death experience.  The author of the "dying-moment dream hypothesis" paper conveniently fails to tell us this fact. His description of the performance of brains during cardiac arrest is extremely misleading. Instead he repeats the opposite-of-the-truth "surge" claims made in the papers stated above, none of which showed any such thing, with nothing other than the briefest of blips being reported. 

The author of the "dying-moment dream hypothesis" is making statements that have no basis in fact when he states things such as "When the brain is completely decoupled from external sensory constraints, it initiates a profound top-down projection of its own internal architecture—relying exclusively on memory and affective priors to generate a highly structured, closed-loop internal simulation." The author makes quite a few assertions about dreams that are not well-founded. 

Nothing that we know about the content of dreams gives any support to the idea that near-death experiences are some kind of dream. People almost never have dreams in which they are floating above their bodies viewing them from above (a common report in near-death experiences). People almost never have dreams in which they are traveling through a tunnel, seeing a Being of light (a common report in near-death experiences). People don't have dreams in which they are reviewing all of the events of their life (a common report in near-death experiences). While people commonly have dreams about deceased relatives, such dreams almost invariably involve such relatives existing here on Earth. People almost never have dreams in which they view some other realm of existence and see a deceased relative.

I have been carefully recording my dreams for years. My post "I Keep Dreaming of Danger, Death, the Deceased and Life After Death" (which I have been updating almost every week, for years) is one of the most extensive records of a single person's dream experiences ever published, consisting of well over 500 dream descriptions.  While the dreams I have had very frequently involve the deceased and very frequently seem to symbolize the idea of life after death, there has been very little match between the content of my dreams and the content of near-death experiences.  Excluding dreams about subway tunnels and other earthly tunnels, I seem to have never or almost never had a dream matching the common report in near-death experiences of being propelled through a tunnel. I have never had a dream of encountering some mysterious or mystical Being of light. I have never or almost never had any dream of encountering a deceased person in some unearthly realm or heavenly realm. 

Dream content is something very different from near-death experiences. Near-death experiences have a high repetition of a small number of motifs,  motifs that very rarely appear in dream content. The content of dreams is enormously more diverse and varied than the content of near-death experiences.  And dreams are shadowy, faint experiences, unlike the "realer than life" experiences so often reported in accounts of near-death experiences. 

Appendix:  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)."  

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, again using the word "isoelectric" to refer to flatlining of brain waves: 

"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)."

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]." 

A year 2025 scientific paper ("Near-death experience during cardiac arrest and consciousness beyond the brain: a narrative review") states this:

"In the context of circulatory arrest, cortical electrical waves in the alpha (8-13Hz) and beta (13-30Hz) bands disappear after an average of 6.5 seconds, while at the same time, the background activity of EEG is replaced by slow waves at delta frequency (<4Hz), which progressively attenuate and lead to a flat EEG recording with no measurable electrical wave pattern around 10-30 seconds—a neural process called isoelectricity or electrocerebral silence (Clute & Levy, 1990; de Vries et  al., 1998; Singer et  al., 1991; Smith et  al., 1990; van Lommel, 2023, p. 28; Visser et  al., 2001; Vriens et  al., 1996). Furthermore, in monkeys and cats, the EEG becomes isoelectric within 20 seconds of the cessation of cerebral blood flow (Hossmann & Kleihues, 1973). The EEG results suggest that cortical electrical activity critical for consciousness, namely alpha and beta activity reflecting top-down connectivity, is eliminated within an average of 6.5 seconds following CA [cardiac arrest]."

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."