Prolonged Recalled Experiences of Death: “Being Alive When You are Cold and Dead”
Adrian Parker, & Annekatrin Puhle
University of Gothenburg, Gothenburg, Sweden
A major impasse in current research on Near-Death Experiences (NDEs), which are currently being reframed as “Recalled Experiences of Death” (REDs) is that the medication given at cardiac arrest severely reduces memory recall of experiences during surgical operations. A review of current research in this field reveals the enigma that veridical perceptions are often reported during these REDs, and cognitive activity is beyond what might be expected from a brain devoid of brain stem reflexes and cortical activity. Yet it can still be argued that some subcortical areas are responsible for the experiences reported, and thus the claims of ESP are illusory. It is proposed here that a means of resolving some of the basic issues is to focus on cases of resuscitation with prolonged accidental hypothermia due to drowning, snow avalanches, and similar events. In these cases, brain activity is literally frozen, and according to conventional neuropsychological belief, then REDs would not occur. We do not know if they do.
Interventions in Norway pioneered the use of gradual re-warming of the brain prior to the re-starting of the heart, with the record of recovery from cardiac arrest being nearly seven hours. The dictum became, “You are not dead until you are warm and dead”- which we rephrase in the title here as “being alive when you are cold and dead.” Similar interventions have been used successfully also in mountainous and lake areas in Sweden, Denmark, Germany, and Austria. Medical-induced hypothermia is, moreover, an accepted procedure in inventions where treatment CPR is applied but the treatment of arrests is delayed.
Given accident rates, it is expected that there are now at least several hundred cases during the last twenty years in the regions mentioned. It is, however, not customary in medical post-operational assessment to ask or to report patient experiences. However, the project is aided by some authoritative guidelines and recommendations for dealing with this issue of patients’ experiences that were recently published in the Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences. These guidelines will be followed in this project. The project aims to collect any such cases and to spread information in accordance with these guidelines. Cases will primarily be obtained through internet interest groups and journalistic contacts in the above countries mentioned. Where possible medical records would be requested in deference to the usual ethical requirements. Any resulting cases will be analyzed with the conventional scale used for REDs and compared to those obtained in cases of cardiac arrest hypothermia.
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Adrian Parker Ph.D is emeritus professor at the University of Gothenburg and Board member of the Scandinavian International University, Vice President of the Swedish Society for Psychical Research, and President of the Society for Psychical Research.
Annekatrin Puhle Ph.D is a philosopher and health consultant who has published numerous books and papers on psychical research.
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Program chaired by Jacob W. Glazier. Download the Abstracts at https://parapsych.org/uploaded_files/pdfs/00/00/00/01/26/2023_pa_abstracts_of_presented_papers.pdf
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Published on February 2, 2025
