“When the brain displays no measurable activity”

A little bit more, now, from Pim van Lommel, Consciousness Beyond Life: The Science of the Near-Death Experience (New York: HarperCollins, 2010):

We still do not know how it is possible for people to experience an enhanced consciousness during a cardiac arrest, that is, during a period when the brain displays no measurable activity and all brain function, such as bodily and brain-stem reflexes and breathing, has ceased.  Looking at the interaction between consciousness and the brain, we concluded that consciousness cannot be seen as the product of brain function.  (205)

Actually, having dealt for years with online critics, I’m not nearly so skeptical as I would once have been about the existence of a kind of consciousness during a period when the brain displays no measurable activity and all brain function has ceased.  But I somehow suspect that we’re talking about two different things here.

When brain function is impaired, NDErs experience an enhanced consciousness detached from the body followed by a conscious reentry into the body, rendering a materialist explanation of consciousness highly unlikely.  (241)

Neurophysiological studies have shown that brain activity cannot account for the content of thoughts and feelings whereas there is incontrovertible evidence for the mind’s influence on the brain, given that the anatomical structure of the brain and its associated functions can change in response to experiences in the mind (neuroplasticity).  (242)

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Interesting new items from the world of science — which, of course, I hate, fear, and cannot comprehend:

First, here’s one more parameter that makes us fortunate to live on what I grew up being told was an ordinary planet circling an ordinary star in an ordinary galaxy.  Move along.  There’s nothing to see here:

“Early Sun’s ‘Goldilocks’ Rotation Rate May Be Why We’re Here”

“Mathematics,” said Galileo Galilei, “is the language in which God has written the universe.”  The universe, he also remarked, “cannot be read until we have learnt the language and become familiar with the characters in which it is written. It is written in mathematical language, and the letters are triangles, circles and other geometrical figures, without which means it is humanly impossible to comprehend a single word.”

I expect that Galileo would have been fascinated with this little article:

“How math helps explain the delicate patterns of dragonfly wings:  Scientists have found a mathematical explanation for the complex patterns on the wings of dragonflies and other insects.”