Magical Realist
Valued Senior Member
Found this interesting blog post. It raises some intriguing albeit all too ignored questions:
[color="99000"]"Not many people have heard of an article that appeared in a 1980 issue of Science, one of the most reputable Science Journals in the world, and which article was quite provocatively titled: “Is Your Brain Really Necessary?” (Science, Volume 210, December 12, 1980). Yes, provocative, because, as neurologist John Lorber explains, it is only because of this that he could get the attention he wanted. The final article appeared in 1983 in a German medical journal, and it all boiled down to an extremely strange phenomenon: There are people in this world who have virtually no brain, yet are healthy, have normal to high intelligence and normal social behavior. Lorber investigated 600 people who are affected by hydrocephalus, that is, having water on the brain, or rather only have water where there should be brain. Normally these people are, not surprisingly, complete imbeciles, hence with almost total absence of intelligence. Yet, amongst those 600 there were 30 whose IQ was equel to 100 or even more. Lorber cited the story of a student of mathematics at Cambridge who has a global IQ of 126, and his verbal IQ even reaching 143. Yet, this student’s cranium (skull) was/is for 95% filled with “water”, or more specifically “cerebrospinal fluid”. What is left of the brain is a layer, 1-2 millimeters thick on the inside of the cranium. In other words, the man has virtually no brain...
Calculations resulted in brain tissue somewhere between 100 and 150 grams, whereas a normal brain weighs 1500 grams! Of course, this goes against anything that neuroscience tell us. And as no one knew and knows how to handle such a grand anomaly, it was and is completely ignored. At the end of his life (1994) Lorber complained that nobody had ever taken up these findings. Even, in a very recent book, issued in my home country, with as title “We are our brains”, authored by a highly respected neurobiologist, this issue of practically brainless, but nonetheless intelligent people is totally ignored. Just as if it does not exist. [But it does: at the beginning of this year, after I had delivered a lecture on NDE’s, a man came to me and said: “I am a retired neurologist, and one of my patients also appeared to have virtually no brain, yet he is highly intelligent, and happily married with four children”. I asked him whether he had an explanation. He said: “no, I cannot explain this”.]
Now, that is one anomaly which makes us think! But another one is this:
Ever heard of “Terminal Lucidity”? This a very rare phenomenon which happens with people who are either in a highly progressed condition of dementia (such as Alzheimer), or are suffering from mental diseases in a similar condition. It all boils down to an inexplicable lucidity during the last days or even hours before their death, although, in the case of total dementia, their brains are irreparably damaged. Al of a sudden they are completely normal again, have their full memory and cognitive qualities back, they can talk to their relatives and make arrangements with them for their funeral and division of their heritage, and so on. After that they die peacefully. The same applies with people who suffer from irreparable mental diseases. Two examples, as these were published in Journal of Near-Death Studies, Volume 28, No 2, Winter 2008, article “Michael Nahm, Ph.D.: Terminal Lucidity in People with Mental Disease and Other Mental Disability”.
Example 1 (page 92): “A mad and very violent ex-lieutenant of the Royal Navy, who also suffered from severe memory loss to the extent he did not even remember his first name. On the day before his death, he became rational and asked for a clergyman. With him, the patient conversed attentively and expressed his hope that God would have mercy on his soul. An autopsy revealed that his cranium was filled with a straw-coloured water to a degree that it widened parts of the brain, whereas the brain matter itself and the origin of the nerves were uncommonly firm, the olfactory nerves displaying an almost fibrose appearance.”
In other words, his brain was irreparably damaged. Yet, at the end of his life, he was completely lucid.
Case 2 (page 95): “G.W. Surya (1921) recounted an account handed to him by a friend of his. This friend had a brother living in asylum for many years because of serious mental derangement. ‘One day, Surya’s friend received a telegram from the director of the asylum saying that his brother wanted to speak to him. He immediately visited his brother and was astonished to find him in a perfectly normal state. On leaving again, the director of the asylum decently informed the visitor that his brother’s mental clarity is an almost certain sign of his approaching death. Indeed, the patient died within a short time. Subsequently, an autopsy of the brain was performed, to which Surya’s friend was allowed to attend. It revealed that the brain was entirely suppurated [i.e. consisting of pus] and that this condition must have been present for a long time. Suraya asks: With what, then, did this brainsick person think intelligently during the last days of his life?’”
Indeed: no brain, because what was left of that was a heap of pus, nothing else; yet, during his final hours, completely lucid....
That we do no hear much of terminal lucidity may be because it is deliberatey ignored by doctors and/or nursing staff, as it is unexplainable.
Now, echoing William James’s famous quote: “it takes one white raven to show that not all ravens are black”, we can with some confidence say that the above “anecdotes”, and given these factual reports (which cannot be denied ) as well as the fact that some virtually brainless people can be highly intelligent and social, will lead to an almost unavoidable conclusion, namely that consciousness is not a product of the brain. Consciousness will make use of the brain, or even won’t use a brain in case of its virtual absence, but will then express itself through other pathways.
Parnia talks about an illusion. Yes, there is an illusion, i.e. that it is the brain that produces OBE’s and NDE’s. Rather, it seems far more likely that consciousness acts separately from the brain, and that NDE’s and OBE’s are manifestations of that separately acting consciousness.
Oh, I forgot: Michael Nahm, together with the nestor of NDE-research Bruce Greyson, also published an article: Terminal Lucidity in Patients with Chronic Schizophrenia and Dementia: a Survey of the Literature, in The Journal of Nervous and Mental Disease, 197, 12, 942-944, 2009.
The above conclusions are not theirs, but mine... - of course, they must be far more prudent in this than I may be - but I think that quite logically there cannot be another conclusion, unless someone discovers that in the absence of a brain within the skull, brain matter is spread out all over the body, which seems unlikely to me..."---[/color]http://forum.mind-energy.net/skeptiko-podcast/1743-lucid-before-death-evidence-seperate-mind.html
[color="99000"]"Not many people have heard of an article that appeared in a 1980 issue of Science, one of the most reputable Science Journals in the world, and which article was quite provocatively titled: “Is Your Brain Really Necessary?” (Science, Volume 210, December 12, 1980). Yes, provocative, because, as neurologist John Lorber explains, it is only because of this that he could get the attention he wanted. The final article appeared in 1983 in a German medical journal, and it all boiled down to an extremely strange phenomenon: There are people in this world who have virtually no brain, yet are healthy, have normal to high intelligence and normal social behavior. Lorber investigated 600 people who are affected by hydrocephalus, that is, having water on the brain, or rather only have water where there should be brain. Normally these people are, not surprisingly, complete imbeciles, hence with almost total absence of intelligence. Yet, amongst those 600 there were 30 whose IQ was equel to 100 or even more. Lorber cited the story of a student of mathematics at Cambridge who has a global IQ of 126, and his verbal IQ even reaching 143. Yet, this student’s cranium (skull) was/is for 95% filled with “water”, or more specifically “cerebrospinal fluid”. What is left of the brain is a layer, 1-2 millimeters thick on the inside of the cranium. In other words, the man has virtually no brain...
Calculations resulted in brain tissue somewhere between 100 and 150 grams, whereas a normal brain weighs 1500 grams! Of course, this goes against anything that neuroscience tell us. And as no one knew and knows how to handle such a grand anomaly, it was and is completely ignored. At the end of his life (1994) Lorber complained that nobody had ever taken up these findings. Even, in a very recent book, issued in my home country, with as title “We are our brains”, authored by a highly respected neurobiologist, this issue of practically brainless, but nonetheless intelligent people is totally ignored. Just as if it does not exist. [But it does: at the beginning of this year, after I had delivered a lecture on NDE’s, a man came to me and said: “I am a retired neurologist, and one of my patients also appeared to have virtually no brain, yet he is highly intelligent, and happily married with four children”. I asked him whether he had an explanation. He said: “no, I cannot explain this”.]
Now, that is one anomaly which makes us think! But another one is this:
Ever heard of “Terminal Lucidity”? This a very rare phenomenon which happens with people who are either in a highly progressed condition of dementia (such as Alzheimer), or are suffering from mental diseases in a similar condition. It all boils down to an inexplicable lucidity during the last days or even hours before their death, although, in the case of total dementia, their brains are irreparably damaged. Al of a sudden they are completely normal again, have their full memory and cognitive qualities back, they can talk to their relatives and make arrangements with them for their funeral and division of their heritage, and so on. After that they die peacefully. The same applies with people who suffer from irreparable mental diseases. Two examples, as these were published in Journal of Near-Death Studies, Volume 28, No 2, Winter 2008, article “Michael Nahm, Ph.D.: Terminal Lucidity in People with Mental Disease and Other Mental Disability”.
Example 1 (page 92): “A mad and very violent ex-lieutenant of the Royal Navy, who also suffered from severe memory loss to the extent he did not even remember his first name. On the day before his death, he became rational and asked for a clergyman. With him, the patient conversed attentively and expressed his hope that God would have mercy on his soul. An autopsy revealed that his cranium was filled with a straw-coloured water to a degree that it widened parts of the brain, whereas the brain matter itself and the origin of the nerves were uncommonly firm, the olfactory nerves displaying an almost fibrose appearance.”
In other words, his brain was irreparably damaged. Yet, at the end of his life, he was completely lucid.
Case 2 (page 95): “G.W. Surya (1921) recounted an account handed to him by a friend of his. This friend had a brother living in asylum for many years because of serious mental derangement. ‘One day, Surya’s friend received a telegram from the director of the asylum saying that his brother wanted to speak to him. He immediately visited his brother and was astonished to find him in a perfectly normal state. On leaving again, the director of the asylum decently informed the visitor that his brother’s mental clarity is an almost certain sign of his approaching death. Indeed, the patient died within a short time. Subsequently, an autopsy of the brain was performed, to which Surya’s friend was allowed to attend. It revealed that the brain was entirely suppurated [i.e. consisting of pus] and that this condition must have been present for a long time. Suraya asks: With what, then, did this brainsick person think intelligently during the last days of his life?’”
Indeed: no brain, because what was left of that was a heap of pus, nothing else; yet, during his final hours, completely lucid....
That we do no hear much of terminal lucidity may be because it is deliberatey ignored by doctors and/or nursing staff, as it is unexplainable.
Now, echoing William James’s famous quote: “it takes one white raven to show that not all ravens are black”, we can with some confidence say that the above “anecdotes”, and given these factual reports (which cannot be denied ) as well as the fact that some virtually brainless people can be highly intelligent and social, will lead to an almost unavoidable conclusion, namely that consciousness is not a product of the brain. Consciousness will make use of the brain, or even won’t use a brain in case of its virtual absence, but will then express itself through other pathways.
Parnia talks about an illusion. Yes, there is an illusion, i.e. that it is the brain that produces OBE’s and NDE’s. Rather, it seems far more likely that consciousness acts separately from the brain, and that NDE’s and OBE’s are manifestations of that separately acting consciousness.
Oh, I forgot: Michael Nahm, together with the nestor of NDE-research Bruce Greyson, also published an article: Terminal Lucidity in Patients with Chronic Schizophrenia and Dementia: a Survey of the Literature, in The Journal of Nervous and Mental Disease, 197, 12, 942-944, 2009.
The above conclusions are not theirs, but mine... - of course, they must be far more prudent in this than I may be - but I think that quite logically there cannot be another conclusion, unless someone discovers that in the absence of a brain within the skull, brain matter is spread out all over the body, which seems unlikely to me..."---[/color]http://forum.mind-energy.net/skeptiko-podcast/1743-lucid-before-death-evidence-seperate-mind.html
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