Conscious While Unconscious?

As seen in Popular Mechanics, Assistant Professor of Psychology and Counseling Robert Alexander, Ph.D., is featured in an article discussing veridical near-death experiences (vNDEs)—the phenomenon where people accurately describe details occurring while they were clinically unconscious.

To uncover whether this medical anomaly is true or if the brain is simply piecing together memories from consciousness, experts and artificial intelligence systems scored case studies against the vNDE Scale, which includes eight criteria to validate patients’ vNDEs.

“For claims that consciousness can operate outside the brain or body, Carl Sagan’s standard applies: extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence,” says Alexander, who maintains that while the scale is a methodological advance, a high score is not necessarily extraordinary evidence. Instead, he believes the most important piece of a vNDE is its timing—at what stage of brain function did it occur? “Cases that withstand rigorous scrutiny may deserve attention,” he says.

The article also appears on AOL and MSN France, as well as across multiple Yahoo! sites, including those in the United States and Canada.