Near Death experiences or spiritual experiences who have ‘retuned’ to life after staring death in the face, can be attributed to a surge of electrical activity in the brain, researchers have claimed.
That out of body experiences of feeling as though one was floating over their own body, and the experience of seeing a shining bright light reportedly experienced by those who have had a near death experience could be explained by this burst of brain activity.
According to Dr Lakhmir Chawla, an intensive care doctor at George Washington University medical centre in Washington, the brain runs out of oxygen at this time, which results in a surge of electrical energy being released by the brain that may last from half a minute to three minutes.
It is a last electrical impulse created by the body as the blood circulation slows and oxygen supplies deplete.
This electrical impulse starts at one point in the brain and then has a “cascade effect” that causes it to spread all over the brain, causing very vivid sensations for the mind.
According to Dr Chawla, seeing religious figures at this time has a biological explanation and not a metaphysical one. The electroencephalograph (EEG) device that measures brain activity in terminally ill patients was seen to report this brain activity in patients just before being pronounced dead.
