Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences
October 1, 2011
Pim van Lommel
124 citations
Near-death experiences (NDEs) in survivors of cardiac arrest are authentic phenomena that cannot be dismissed as imagination, fear of death, hallucination, psychosis, drug effects, or oxygen deficiency. Patients often undergo lasting changes after an NDE lasting only minutes during cardiac arrest. The experience includes clear and enhanced consciousness with memories, self-identity, cognition, and emotions during apparent coma. The prevailing materialistic view of consciousness as solely dependent on brain function is too limited to explain NDEs. Evidence suggests consciousness and a continuous sense of self can occur independently of a functioning brain, possibly as enhanced or nonlocal consciousness experienced apart from the lifeless body. People report that the self they encountered during an NDE feels real, not illusory.
World Futures
January 1, 2006
Pim van Lommel
65 citations
Near-death experiences (NDEs) in cardiac arrest survivors cannot be explained by physiological, psychological, or pharmacological factors, according to a prospective study in the Netherlands. The article discusses general aspects of NDEs, questions about consciousness and its relation to brain function, and details from the 2001 Lancet study. It explains neurophysiology during cardiac arrest and in a normally functioning brain, and explores implications for consciousness studies, including how continuity of consciousness might be possible. The scientific study of NDEs challenges medical and neurophysiological ideas about the range of human consciousness and the mind-brain relationship.
Trends in Cognitive Sciences
August 3, 2012
Bruce Greyson, Janice Miner Holden, Pim van Lommel
47 citations
No Summary
The Journal of near-death studies
January 1, 2022
Bruce Greyson, Pim van Lommel, Peter Fenwick
4 citations
An invited commentary discusses how to interpret brainwave recordings from an elderly patient who suffered a cardiac arrest, and what those recordings might reveal about near-death experiences. The authors argue that certain patterns of electrical activity in the brain after cardiac arrest could correspond to the subjective phenomena reported by people who have had near-death experiences, though they caution that the relationship remains speculative and requires further investigation.
Frontiers in Psychology
October 16, 2025
Bruce Greyson, Jeffrey Long, Janice Miner Holden et al.
3 citations
A new scale, the veridical Near-Death Experience Scale (vNDE Scale), was developed to assess how strong the evidence is for perceptions reported during near-death experiences. Thirteen experts used a Delphi method to agree on eight criteria, including timing of investigation, medical conditions, third-party verification, and the number and quality of perceptions, scored on a four-level Likert scale. The scale was then tested on 17 cases of potentially veridical NDEs by 11 human raters and three artificial raters using large language models. In 14 of the 17 cases (82.3%), human and artificial raters agreed at over 75% when considering two adjacent evidence levels, such as moderate plus strong or low plus very low. The scale offers a practical way to evaluate the evidential strength of reported NDE perceptions.
International review of psychiatry (Abingdon, England)
January 1, 2025
Bruno Angeli-Faez, Bruce Greyson, Pim van Lommel
3 citations
Near-death experiences (NDEs) during cardiac arrest likely occur when the patient is unresponsive and the brain is severely compromised, not in early arrest or after resuscitation. There is no evidence that cortical electrical activity recorded during dying or CPR is linked to NDEs; such recordings may be artifacts. Cardiac arrest halts blood flow to the brain, causing loss of cortical electrical activity within 10–30 seconds. During CPR, brain activity may remain absent or severely disturbed. Because NDEs appear at the moment the brain is severely compromised, this may support the idea that consciousness can persist beyond the brain.