蜜芽传媒

Good morning. Out of many experiments that rats endure on our behalf, perhaps Near Death Experiences are a short straw. For the poor rats, they are a certain death experience. The University of Michigan has been investigating the phenomena in which about one in five survivors of cardiac arrest see a white light or a tunnel. This has yielded surprising results. Even after the point of clinical death - when the heart has stopped and there is no flow of blood to the brain - the brain reveals electrical activity normally associated with 鈥渁 hyper-alerted state鈥� of awareness.

Putting the ethics of animal-testing aside, I have no dispute whatsoever with the science nor with the findings. But, I do think that this experiment is a good example of how scientific results can be interpreted in two rather different ways.

On one hand, proceeding on the assumption that the brain is the source of consciousness, these results appear to show neural activity that might explain why some people , who have returned from the brink of death, say that they鈥檝e experienced feelings of calm and peace as well seen as visions of light or heaven...