Hi guys, today I want to continue our discussion on human consciousness. Previously, I talked
about ho w most current scientists embrace the view of consciousness generated by the brain,
wherein the mind comes from brain alone. This mind-brain unity hypothesis is different from
early dualism theories, which suggests the human body and soul are separate; each human
possesses a non-physical and spiritual soul that confers consciousness, thought and free will.
With advancing technology, researchers have been studying the generation and transmission
of the electric signals by the firing neurons in our brains. These signals of brain activity are
called brain waves, which are electromagnetic waves directly relate to our consciousness.
So, thoughts are not immaterial and consciousness can be measured through electrodes placed on the
scalp. But is that a sufficient reason to conclude that’s all human consciousness is: biological
neurons, cells, brainwaves and definitely no separate souls? Before making a judgment call,
we need to examine some intriguing phenomena which actually point to the soul-body dualism direction,
such as Near-Death Experiences and Memories of Past Lives. These two examples are absolutely
fascinating; and the good thing is they have been well documented with scientific studies.
In this video, I’ll start with Near-death experiences. Let’s see what that might reveal
about our consciousness. A heads up, there are twists and turns so please watch till the end.
Near-death experiences are an extraordinary phenomenon across cultures and history,
shared by countless individuals, who almost died but ultimately survived. These experiences are
commonly described as intensely vivid and realistic while involving bodily sensations
that give a strong impression of being real, more real than memories of true events.
Although the specifics vary, most near death experiencers depicted a profound
feeling of peace at the moment of death; no pain, a detachment from one’s body, floating
above and observing things below, traveling towards a bright light at the end of a tunnel,
seeing one’s life flashing before their eyes, and meeting deceased relatives,
loved ones or supernatural beings. After they came back from it, they usually felt like that
they went through a meaningful evaluation of life and feel “as one” with something universal.
The accounts of near-death experiences are remarkably consistent in character and
content across the globe. This commonality suggests that near-death experiences might
arise from something more fundamental than religious or cultural expectations. It’s
very possible that such experiences are indeed what we all encounter at the end of our lives.
Near death experiencers remembered the “realer than real” sensation of leaving their bodies and
floating in the air looking down then ascending towards light, which naturally made one believe
that these are signs of life after death and souls being separate and independent
from the body, especially when some cases were documented with brain dead patients.
Since most researchers now consider the mind comes from the brain, many propose that perhaps
near-death experiences reflect changes in how the brain functions as we approach
death. Multiple scientific investigations utilized electroencephalography/ EEG to study near-death
experiences. A 2022 large study led by researchers at NYU Grossman School of Medicine and elsewhere,
documented 567 people from 25 medical institutions in about 3 years who received CPR following a
cardiac arrest during hospitalization. In the less than 10 percent of survivors, one in five
reported the lucid heightened experience that occurred while they were seemingly unconscious
and on the brink of death. The research work included tests for hidden brain activity.
A key finding was the discovery of spikes in gamma waves, along with other types of brainwaves
up to an hour into CPR. Gamma waves normally happen when a conscious person is performing
higher mental functions including thinking, memory retrieval, and information processing.
Gamma waves can induce lucid dreaming; therefore scientists think gamma brain
waves could be an indicator of the hyper-real near-death experiences.
Another interesting discovery of this study is that a person's consciousness doesn't die when
the body dies. The EEG brainwave data can persist for a brief period after the heart stops beating,
which means that the human sense of self and consciousness, much like other biological body
functions, may not stop completely around the time of death. Related studies have established
that EEG activity continues in approximately 20% of “brain dead” patients, cerebral blood flow is
detectable in 5% and pathologic destruction is not seen in at least 10% of cases where
normal blood circulation has been maintained for more than 24 hours after brain death.
These findings imply that current methods used to ascertain brain death may not provide the
information needed to confirm irreversible loss of all clinical functions of the entire brain.
Therefore, even when a person is pronounced dead or brain dead,
his or her brain might still be active in some capacity for a short period and if the person
gets resuscitated during this time, then he or she might recall a conscious experience.
Now, the event of a strong and sudden brainwave spike or surge before and even after death has
been confirmed by other studies. In 2009, researchers reported that seven patients
who were at end of life and had life support withdrawn exhibited a surge of EEG activity.
The observed brainwave surges appeared from 1 to 5 minutes, a more than sufficient duration
and strength as to account for the near-death experiences. In 2011, another record on more
than 100 similar end-of-life cases, where about 80% of end-of-life patients showed an EEG surge.
So, the spikes of brainwaves, especially gamma waves on EEG might correlate with the vivid
near-death experience; and the persisting brain activity and EEG data can potentially
explain why in certain cases, people who were declared dead can come back to life and tell
others that they were conscious the whole time even when their bodies were non-responsive.
To people who believe mind and brain are inseparable, that consciousness doesn’t
exist without a brain, these studies can be taken as proof that near-death experiences are basically
what a dying brain produces when the brain cells lack oxygen and blood flow, toxic fluids not being
able to be flushed out etc., which result in this almost-drugged, hallucinogenic kind of state.
But to people who contemplate that a soul and body are separate entities, they might perceive the EEG
surge as a sign of the soul detaching or removing itself from the body as it travels to another
realm. The thing is, although there are plenty of observations of the brainwave surges that occur
simultaneously when one’s body is shutting down; we don’t know what causes this surge
of heightened brain activity. Is it a natural thing? Or does it relate to something spiritual?
In 2013, a research paper demonstrated that similar surges of highly coherent brain electrical
activity particularly gamma waves appeared in rats in the 30 seconds after cardiac arrest.
This finding suggests that the mammalian brain is naturally highly activated at near death.
If such EEG surges do relate to near death experience, then not only humans but also
rodents would have similar episodes; so, it can be true with other animals.
This argues that near-death experiences might not be a unique human phenomenon but a shared, natural
process at the final moment of life. Furthermore, if near-death experience is evidence of life after
death or souls separating from the body, then does that mean humans and animals could all have souls?
Besides the similar EEG data shared between humans and rodents at near death,
I found out that there are further parallels concerning human and animal brain activities;
for instance, studies show that the brainwaves of both humans and animals synchronized during
social interactions; EEG scans also indicate that dogs learn when sleeping—just like people.
Based on these findings, it seems we are not that different from other animals after all, right?
Then what distinguishes us from other animals? What makes us human?
In spite of the fact that we humans are in many ways animals, one thing we can’t deny is that we
are, at least in certain senses, fundamentally different. The majority of animals cannot even
recognize their own reflections in a mirror. Your super adorable puppy? Or your smart-looking cat?
Sorry but neither reaches to the consciousness level to realize they are staring at themselves
in front of a mirror. In reality, very few animal species have passed the mirror test.
These include chimpanzees and other great apes, some rays, dolphins, orcas and Eurasian magpies.
Granted that primates possess the closest near-human consciousness which accounts
for them reacting to themselves in mirrors, there is a world of difference that separates
stimulus-response cognition (a monkey “recognizing” its body in a mirror)
versus a person conceptually “recognizing” his or her oneself. Despite their psychological
sophistication, a primate lacks the complex, convoluted, highly symbolic understanding that
humans have; which leads to the fact that while some animals do use simple tools,
early humans not only utilized tools, but also designed and manufactured them. People do more
than just manipulate their environment; they build and repurpose their surroundings in an astounding
manner; they constantly develop better technology and eventually landed rocket ships on the moon
and Mars. These amazing achievements are light years ahead of any other known organism on earth.
So, humans are undoubtedly very different from other animals. And the biggest factor that enables
these accomplishments is our powerful cognitive ability which is facilitated by the brain.
Our brain is the single crucial factor that makes us human; and consequently,
should showcase significant differences from animal brains, both physically and cognitively.
Physically, we know humans and animals have dramatically diverse brain sizes, neuron counts,
neurostructures and more. For example, a human brain contains around 86 billion neurons. Dogs
have about 2 billion, gorillas 33 billion and elephants 257 billion. Then there is
encephalization quotient, the brain-to-body ratio.
These physical markers exhibit quite obvious differences between humans and animals.
In contrast, the EEG method which measures electric signals of brains and represents
different brain activities shows similar brainwave patterns while reading human and animal brains,
whether during sleep, social interactions or near death. I searched for EEG charts of humans
and rats; and to a lay person like me, they look very much alike. It’s said that the waveforms in a
human EEG are far more complex than in rodents and this is related to a steeper decay of the
power spectrum; which implies the more complex human brain waveforms are not really caused by
the depths or sophistication level of human brain activity. Considering that human brains
are so much more powerful and set us apart from other animals, I can’t help but assume that when
brain activities are recorded, there should be clear signs proving this amazing feature
of human brains. I don’t know if the current EEG technology can make that type of detection.
From what I gathered, today’s EEG is useful to see the big picture of general brain functioning,
like to use brainwaves to differentiate an active thinking state from sleeping.
Yet it fell short on providing meaningful information on the diverse awareness or
consciousness level between humans and animals. As an example, gamma waves can be detected from
a human or a dog and gamma waves on both subjects relate to higher mental functions.
A dog can’t even recognize its own reflection in a mirror so higher mental functions for a dog can
be strikingly distinct from that of a human. There is likely no comparison on the cognitive
degrees between a human and a dog; though on EEGs we see similar patterns with gamma waves.
So here is the question, is EEG a sufficient method to measure and illustrate the vast
cognitive capacities of human brains? And back to our topic, if EEG is a rudimentary tool that
can’t denote the nuances of the extremely complex brain activities, can we confidently use its data
to conclude that similar brain patterns observed between humans and animals at
near death represent similar experiences? Are we projecting human consciousness into animals again?
The surge of brain activities involving gamma waves at the end of one’s life is a common
observation. The rodent near-death experiments show EEG surges on all tested subjects. The
multiple human end–of-life studies show at least 80%, sometimes 100% of patients had EEG spikes.
Some scientists have proposed this surge of terminal brain activity could potentially
explain the hyper-real near-death experiences. However, despite such prevalent EEG surges,
near-death experience is not that common. Since these experiences are known for their intensity
and vividness, it’s unlikely the experiencers would forget about such an exceptional event.
But most people who went through a life-threatening illness or injury do not report
near-death experiences. The 2022 study recorded that one in five reported a lucid experience.
Numbers from other studies range from 17% to 35%. So, there is about 70-80% discrepancy.
Even though the surge of EEG is exceedingly common and would happen to almost anyone that is dying;
only a minority of people have had near-death experiences. Why is that? This makes me question
whether the EEG surge is a good indicator of near-death experience or not. Perhaps the natural
brainwave spike at the time of death is only part of the story related to near-death experience,
and there are other unknown factors not shown in the EEG brain activity.
Could it be that the near-death EEG surge is a natural process when a living body,
human or animal, is facing imminent death; while the near-death experience is unique
to humans and might only partially involve the brain? Can consciousness exist without a brain?
Is it possible that our brain is the physical substrate of higher level consciousness, but to
ignite this consciousness we need something else? There is so much unknown and so much to think
about. At the end, I want to quote the lead investigator Dr. Sam Parnia of the 2022 research,
that the near death experience "is a purposeful, meaningful reevaluation of
every aspect with a focus on morality and ethics and how they conducted themselves."
Don't you find it too much of a coincidence that all these individuals with various backgrounds
and differing interests share this same profound near death experience? It’s almost like that these
unrelated people all have the same dream. What are the odds of that? What’s more, near-death
experiences sound like the closing chapter of a long training program where the professor
wants you to self-reflect and ponder what you have learned. Could this reveal what our life is about
so far as its true purpose and meaning? Is it a training ground? A school? What do you think? Btw
I plan to make another video on memories of past lives and reincarnation. If you have any insights,
please leave me a comment. If you like my video, please subscribe to my channel and share
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appreciate your support. This is Curious Being, I am Tina. Thanks for watching and see you next time