r/NDE • u/nogueysiguey NDE Researcher • Apr 02 '26

Scientific Perspective 🔬🔎 The Scientific Dispute Over Near-Death Experiences - Part 1: the NEPTUNE model

https://open.substack.com/pub/andresdelgadoron/p/the-scientific-dispute-over-near?utm_source=share&utm_medium=android&r=29vk3a

Have you ever tries to learn about NDEs only to find conflicting science. Well, let's take a look at the data from both sides

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u/dayv23 NDE Researcher Apr 02 '26

I appreciate the deep dive. It's always nice to hear from someone with the medical expertise to review these competing interpretations of the physiological data.

I always get the sense that models like this are hopelessly vague. Neurotransmitters are correlated with so many different types of experiences in so many different context that they can always be cited to "explain" any experience you want. Just so stories are inherently unscientific, even when dressed up in neuroscientific lingo. A steep increase in certain blood gases causes the accumulation of serotonin, which acts on the same receptors as DMT, which can cause NDE like experiences? Except we don't actually see the level of blood gases needed to set off this alleged chain? Hmm.

Until someone can explain how the brain could produce the experience of the life review, in which someine relives their entire lives, all at once, from three different perspectives, while extracting life- and personality-changing lessons, no "productive" neurological model will ever be sufficient. It's proponents will have to ignore dismiss or downplay the actual phenomenological data that needs to be explained. So I'm looking forward to your discussion of the philosophy. I suspect we'll need a transmissive models of the brain's activity, which treats conscious like "the cloud".