4/8/2014BEHV 3200 NotesTopic: Near Death Experiences- Raymond Moody wrote a book called “Life after Life” and he documented roughly 50 cases of NDE’s (near death experiences).- He thought of it as these experiences must mean life after death.- A lot of common things happen in NDE’s.- Even amongst different cultures the similarities remain pretty consistent.- Some of these examples include: light at the end of the tunnel, out of body experiences, extremely light or extremely dark, meeting loved ones who have gone before them, Jesus, Angels…etc.- NDE’s have a lot of skeptical opinions toward these events.- It is hard for people to believe this unless it happens to them.- Sometimes during the experiences, the victim changes their religious views.- NDE’s do not always happen to Christians.- An NDE could be described as your life flashing before your eyes- NDE’s are reported 10-20% of the time.- It does not usually matter how the person died the occurrences are typically the same. - Duncan Macdougall did a research study a long time ago trying to see how much a soul “weighed”, if anything.- He found a lot of the time the scale would go down about .75 after death, but his findings were inaccurate because he did not take in account; temperature, water evaporation, and the time varied. - Another guy, Lewis Hollander, did a study on a sheep and found the sheep’s body weight actually increased! WHAT?!?4/8/2014- As I said, a lot of people are skeptical about NDE’s and believe they are natural occurrences or that they can usually be explained. - Blackmore wrote a book called “Dying Brain Hypothesis”.- She believes the brain dies the same on everyone that is why a lot of similar occurrences happen.- She also believes that endorphins are released after death because it is such a stressful thing and that causes a sense of peace that many people report.- The difference in NDE’s and dreaming might be that we can picture ourself someplace else, but our brain tells us we are not there and we KNOW we are not there. Unlike NDEs, they do not KNOW. - Some say that they right temporoparietal junction is what causes the feel of “out of body” experiences. - Ketamine is an anesthetic drug that blocks the neurotransmitter for excitement.- People who use ketamine quite frequently have reported out of body experiences that have happened to