Migraine aura, a predictor of near-death experiences in a crowdsourced study.
PeerJ January 1, 2019 Daniel Kondziella, Markus Harboe Olsen, Coline L. Lemale et al. 17 citations
People who experience migraine with aura are more than twice as likely to report a near-death experience (NDE) as those without migraine aura. In a sample of 1,037 adults from 35 countries, 13.0% of those with migraine aura reported an NDE compared to 6.1% of those without, an odds ratio of 2.33 after adjusting for age and gender. This association indirectly supports the idea that NDEs involve rapid eye movement (REM) sleep intrusion, a feature also linked to migraine with aura. The finding may relate to spreading depolarization, a brain wave pattern that occurs both in migraine aura and at the end of life.