by Steven Novella via NeuroLogica Blog
In an article for Newsweek, neurosurgeon Eben Alexander recounts his near death experience during a coma from bacterial meningitis. This is sure to become a staple of the NDE/afterlife community, as Alexander recounts in articulate and breathless terms his profound experience. His book is called, Proof of Heaven – a bold claim for someone who insists he is and remains a scientist.
Alexander claims:
There is no scientific explanation for the fact that while my body lay in coma, my mind—my conscious, inner self—was alive and well. While the neurons of my cortex were stunned to complete inactivity by the bacteria that had attacked them, my brain-free consciousness journeyed to another, larger dimension of the universe: a dimension I’d never dreamed existed and which the old, pre-coma me would have been more than happy to explain was a simple impossibility.
While his experience is certainly interesting, his entire premise is flimsily based on a single word in the above paragraph – “while.” He assumes that the experiences he remembers after waking from the coma occurred while his cortex was completely inactive. He does not even seem aware of the fact that he is making that assumption or that it is the central premise of his claim, as he does not address it in his article.
Of course his brain did not go instantly from completely inactive to normal or near normal waking consciousness. That transition must have taken at least hours, if not a day or more. During that time his neurological exam would not have changed significantly, if at all. The coma exam looks mainly at basic brainstem function and reflexes, and can only dimly examine cortical function (through response to pain) and cannot examine higher cortical functions at all. 
His recovery would have become apparent, then, when his brain recovered sufficiently for him to show signs of consciousness.
Alexander claims there is no scientific explanation for his experiences, but I just gave one. They occurred while his brain function was either on the way down or on the way back up, or both, not while there was little to no brain activity. During this time he would have been in an altered state of consciousness, with different parts of his cortex functioning to different degrees. This state is analogous to certain drug-induced mental states, or those induced by hypoxia and well documented, and there is even some overlap with the normal dream state. All of these are states in which the brain’s construction of reality is significantly different from the normal waking state.
Documented features of these altered states (and features commonly experienced by everyone during dreams) include a sense of oneness with the universe, a sense of the profound, of being in the presence of a godlike figure, and of automatic knowledge with absolute certainty. The latter is not uncommon during dreams – you just know things in your dreams that were not communicated or directly observed, and you have no doubt about that knowledge.
MORE . . .
Also see: Victor Stenger: Not Dead Experiences (NDEs).
Related articles
- Is Heaven Real? A Neurosurgeon’s Near-Death Experience (maverickphilosopher.typepad.com)
- Proof of Heaven? (theness.com)
- Heaven Is Real: A Doctor’s Experience With the Afterlife (ascendingstarseed.wordpress.com)
- Heaven is Real, Says Magazine That Doesn’t Employ Fact-Checkers (patheos.com)
If many sources on cable TV and the Internet are to be believed, the world is currently under attack by a variety of supernatural forces, apparently acting in concert.
At first, one might expect that the witnesses to these phenomena would be residents of the wilder shores of psychological instability; however, many of the people who report these things are sober, educated, reasonable individuals. Many are actively adverse to publicity, and an appreciable fraction of them passes polygraph tests. In short, many of these witnesses—in fact, probably the majority of them—are neither lying nor mentally ill. They have normal nervous systems, and they are convinced that they have experienced something extraordinary.
Every human phenomenon involving reportage—from recall of childhood memories in psychotherapy to the observation of a planetary transit—coalesces around some kind of account of some variety of human experience. This means that the processes involved in eyewitness cognition per se are continually operating, albeit at a relatively subtle level, through the entire fabric of human existence.
This illustrates the effect of personal belief on an individual’s memory. People generally expect barns to be red; therefore, when Loftus asked experimental witnesses for the color of the barn they had seen, their imaginations obligingly provided the most typical color even though no actual barn had been presented to them.
by 
Monster: Aliens; One-eyed creature.
Monster: The Phantom; disfigured Claudin.
Monster: Frankenstein’s Bride.
Monster: Imhotep; ancient priest.
Monster: Griffin; Mad scientist.
GUATEMALA CITY — Guatemala’s Mayan people accused the government and tour groups on Wednesday of perpetuating the myth that their calendar foresees the imminent end of the world for monetary gain.
Back in 1955, the late 
If Allende was telling the truth, then the Navy had not only begun to grasp the nature of invisibility, but it had also stumbled upon the secret of teleportation of the type demonstrated – decades later, in fictional, on-screen format – in Star Trek and The Fly. On these very matters, Allende made the disturbing claim that not only did the experiment render many of the crew-members as mad as hatters, but some, he said, even vanished – literally – from the ship while the test was at its height, never to be seen again. Others reportedly suffered horrific and agonizing deaths.
VIRGIE, Ky. (WYMT) – An object spotted in the sky by several people across Pike County last week has still not been identified. One local astronomer captured pictures and video of it through his telescope.
Today we’re going to descend into the darkest depths of the human mind to learn what makes a conspiracy theorist tick; or, as some would put it, to learn why his tick seems just a bit off. Is there anything we can learn from the conspiratorial mind, and is there a method to its apparent madness?
So then, why aren’t we all conspiracy theorists? Why don’t we all see conspiracies all day long? It’s because we also have an intellect, and enough experience with living in our world that we are usually able to correctly analyze the facts and fit them into the way we have learned things really work. It is, exactly as it sounds, a competition between two forces in our head. One is the native, instinctive impulse to see everything as a threat, and the other is our rational, conscious thought that takes that input and judges it.
The term déjà vu is French and means, literally, “already seen.” Those who have experienced the feeling describe it as an overwhelming sense of familiarity with something that shouldn’t be familiar at all. Say, for example, you are traveling to England for the first time. You are touring a cathedral, and suddenly it seems as if you have been in that very spot before. Or maybe you are having dinner with a group of friends, discussing some current political topic, and you have the feeling that you’ve already experienced this very thing — same friends, same dinner, same topic.
There’s plenty of brain activity even when people are thinking nothing at all. But it’s the brain’s right side — for most people the less-dominant half — that stays busiest while you’re at rest, according to surprising new findings.
by Brian Dunning via 
Recency bias is the tendency to think that trends and patterns we observe in the recent past will continue in the future. Predicting the future in the short term, even for highly changeable events like the weather or the stock market, according to events in the recent past, works fine much of the time. Predicting the future in the long term according to what has recently occurred has been shown to be no more accurate than flipping a coin in many fields, including meteorology, 
A gaggle of far-left actors have signed on for a new film 
We’ve all seen movies in which a character has a retinal scan to prove his or her identity before walking into a top-secret installation. That’s an example of a biometric system. In general, biometrics is a collection of measures of human physiology and behavior. A biometric system could scan a person’s 
Testimonials and vivid anecdotes are one of the most popular and convincing forms of evidence presented for beliefs in the supernatural, 
Thus, stories of personal experience with paranormal or supernatural events have little scientific value. If others cannot experience the same thing under the same conditions, then there will be no way to verify the experience. If there is no way to test the claim made, then there will be no way to tell if the experience was interpreted correctly. If others can experience the same thing, then it is possible to make a test of the testimonial and determine whether the claim based on it is worthy of belief. As parapsychologist 
“Resonate with natural frequencies” – they can’t even be bothered to make up their own ridiculous pseudoscientific technobabble. Improving blood flow by separating blood cells is also an old scam. We have evolved very robust mechanisms to ensure optimal delivery of oxygen to our tissues. There is no simple way to “improve” this in a healthy person. These mechanisms may not be adequate in someone with advanced disease affecting the pulmonary or cardiovascular systems, neither is a little wrist band going to have any effect in such serious conditions.
They quote Einstein and E=mc2 – it’s so sciencey. Yes, all atoms vibrate and have energy (unless they are at absolute zero). That’s called heat. None of this explains how their chip, or anything, can emit “subatomic energies” (what energy, exactly, is that?), and how this energy is transferred to the blood of the wearer. How is a computer chip “programmed” to do this? Are they saying that the energy of atoms responds to the programming inside a computer chip?
Harsha Maddula, a Northwestern University pre-medical student from Long Island, N.Y., went missing Sept. 22, last seen leaving an off-campus party in Illinois. Police and volunteer searchers were unable to find him, but Maddula’s family said reassuring words from psychics had raised their spirits.
Indeed, as a news article on Michigan Live.com noted, the mother of a missing woman will be seeking advice from a nationally-known psychic next week: “The mother of 
The idea of special — apparently paranormal — mental abilities such as 
The program, called Stargate, tested “remote viewers” to see if their feelings and visions were accurate. The research continued for about two decades, ending in the mid-1990s with little apparent success. Finally the CIA took over the program and asked scientists to review the results. They concluded that the psychics did no better than chance, and that the psychic information was neither validated nor useful. 
Over the years there have been a lot of television shows that promotes things that are either non-sense, or just bizarre (I myself even admit that I loved these types of shows) and even today these shows seems to be more popular then ever.
This reality show follows demonologist John Zaffis as he travels around the country, investigating allegedly haunted homes and buildings in which the haunting may be being caused by a certain object, or objects, within the property. After Zaffis has “determined” what object is causing the haunting activity, he then usually removes object (which is usually pretty nice looking and expensive) at the owner’s request, and puts it into his own private museum.
Here at the Conspiracy section of truTV.com, we like to be at the cutting edge of what theories are out there.
21. 
15. 
In an interview with MSN, 
World nations would probably pool their technology together like in films such as Independence Day.
“One possibility would be trying to unite all the nations of the world. For those who think that far-fetched, Ronald Reagan once hinted at it in a speech to the UN. He said ‘I occasionally think how quickly we would set aside our difference if we faced some alien threat from the other side.’”
Shoehorning is the process of force-fitting some current affair into one’s personal, political, or religious agenda. So-called 
But he will be assassinated or die in office though not necessarily in his first term.” John F. Kennedy was elected and was assassinated in his first term. This fact was shoehorned to fit her broad prediction and her reputation was made as the psychic who predicted JFK’s violent death. In 1960 she apparently forgot her earlier prediction because she then predicted that 
In a September 1975 document, 
Near the very beginning of the modern UFO craze, in the summer of 1947, a crashed “flying disc” was reported to have been recovered near Roswell, New Mexico. However, it was soon identified as simply a weather balloon, whereupon the sensational story seemed to fade away. Actually, it went underground; after subsequent decades, it resurfaced as an incredible tale of extraterrestrial invasion and the government’s attempt to cover up the awful truth. The media capitalized on “the Roswell incident,” and conspiracy theorists, persons with confabulated memories, outright hoaxers, and others climbed aboard the bandwagon.
Here is how the prototype of the Roswellian Syndrome began and developed:
Sometimes 
As everyone knows, the 9/11 Truth movement is a loose group of people who believe that the United States government committed the 9/11 attacks.
Well, well, well. 
A 
Within the annals of 
Schmitt duly complied, and on July 10, 1978 wrote to Chief Martin E. Vigil, of the 
Today we’re going to point the skeptical eye at a topic that’s intrigued nearly everyone who’s thought about it: hypnosis. The hypnotist appears to have the ultimate superpower, the ability to persuade anyone to do or feel whatever he wants them to. For the subject, hypnosis appears to be the miracle cure to just about anything: lose weight, stop smoking, feel happier. We’ve all heard the basic plot points — that it can’t make you do anything you don’t want to do, that different people are susceptible to varying degrees — limitations that seem to negate the potential benefits. So what can it actually do, and might it be of any value to any of us?
VANCOUVER, Wash. – The new Bruce Willis movie “Looper” opened this weekend, in which Willis’ character is sent back in time to kill himself.
And his time travel wasn’t recent – it’s when he was a kid.
Have you ever told a story that you embellished by putting yourself at the center when you knew that you weren’t even there? Or have you ever been absolutely sure you remembered something correctly, only to be shown 
Between December 26 and 29, 1980, multiple UFO encounters occurred within 
Let’s say some malevolent group — the government, powerful corporations, extraterrestrials — really is trying to read and/or control your thoughts with radio waves. Would the preferred headgear of the paranoid, a foil helmet, really keep The Man and alien overlords out of our brains?
