From: internetado@gmail.com   
      
   Approaching Light   
      
   Historically, people who have had near-death experiences (NDEs)   
   described them as blissful or peaceful - and neuroscientists still   
   aren';t sure why that is.   
      
   But famed neuroscientist Christof Koch, president and chief scientist   
   of the Allen Institute for Brain Science, has some ideas. In an article   
   for Scientific American, Koch probes historical accounts of NDEs and   
   the underlying science of consciousness to unravel what';s going on in   
   a person';s brain that makes them feel blissful and accepting of their   
   looming demise.   
   Hidden Mechanism   
      
   Koch points to decades of research on NDEs that describe them as vivid,   
   real-seeming experiences that tend to be blissful. But while many   
   survivors describe their experiences in spiritual terms, Koch remains   
   grounded in biology.   
      
   "I accept the reality of these intensely felt experiences," Koch wrote   
   in SciAm. "They are as authentic as any other subjective feeling or   
   perception. As a scientist, however, I operate under the hypothesis   
   that all our thoughts, memories, percepts and experiences are an   
   ineluctable consequence of the natural causal powers of our brain   
   rather than of any supernatural ones."   
   Shutting Down   
      
   Koch hypothesizes that the root cause of an NDE is core parts of the   
   brain shutting down due to trauma or a lack of oxygen - and compared   
   the resulting rush to that of extreme behaviors like free diving,   
   mountain climbing, or even erotic asphyxiation.   
      
   "Local brain regions go offline one after another," Koch wrote in   
   SciAm. "The mind, whose substrate is whichever neurons remain intact,   
   then does what it always does: it tells a story shaped by a person's   
   experience, memory and cultural expectations."   
      
   READ MORE: What Near-Death Experiences Reveal about the Brain   
   [Scientific American]   
      
   More on Christof Koch: Neuroscientist: Conventional Computers Will   
   Never Be Conscious   
      
   The post A Famed Neuroscientist Is Investigating Near-Death Experiences   
   appeared first on Futurism.   
      
   https://futurism.com/neuroscientist-unravel-near-death-experiences   
      
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   Eduardo   
      
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