This video describes the very similar process at the synaptic junctions between neurons, and may explain a detail or two more clearly, if less completely.

Unlike humans however, if you come close to them they'll rip your face off.>> ^dag:

Bears have mirror neurons too.

Comment hidden because you are ignoring dag. (show it anyway)

Bears have mirror neurons too.

You had better get right with God and stop messing around. You know God exists, and you're rejecting Him. A very unwise position to be in. The only reason we move and breath is due to His providence and mercy. He is patient with you, because He desires you come to repentence. But you aren't guaranteed a single day. Don't count on His patience to last forever.

>> ^A10anis:
>> ^shinyblurry:
So, you had an out of body experience and you know you have a spirit, yet you keep denying God anyway. Incredible. This is what is meant by this verse:
Romans 1:18-19
For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who by their unrighteousness suppress the truth. For what can be known about God is plain to them, because God has shown it to them.
Do you realize that when you stand before God you will have no excuse?
>> ^A10anis:
Oh dear. Another "near death" experience. Near death means exactly that. You may appear dead but, you're just near it. At times of great stress neuron activity increases, this is simply the body trying to survive. I had an out of body experience when hit by a car, all sorts of weird thoughts went through my mind in slow motion. I attributed my survival to many factors, none of which were god. Of course the gullable will be rejoicing and saying; "see, god exists." So, how long before the book, cult following, and his evangelical ministry? Ignorance is not a blessing from god, it's a debilitating disease.


I am truly sorry for you. you are a brainwashed moron.Get educated, and try to think for yourself.

>> ^shinyblurry:

So, you had an out of body experience and you know you have a spirit, yet you keep denying God anyway. Incredible. This is what is meant by this verse:
Romans 1:18-19
For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who by their unrighteousness suppress the truth. For what can be known about God is plain to them, because God has shown it to them.
Do you realize that when you stand before God you will have no excuse?
>> ^A10anis:
Oh dear. Another "near death" experience. Near death means exactly that. You may appear dead but, you're just near it. At times of great stress neuron activity increases, this is simply the body trying to survive. I had an out of body experience when hit by a car, all sorts of weird thoughts went through my mind in slow motion. I attributed my survival to many factors, none of which were god. Of course the gullable will be rejoicing and saying; "see, god exists." So, how long before the book, cult following, and his evangelical ministry? Ignorance is not a blessing from god, it's a debilitating disease.


I am truly sorry for you. you are a brainwashed moron.Get educated, and try to think for yourself.

So, you had an out of body experience and you know you have a spirit, yet you keep denying God anyway. Incredible. This is what is meant by this verse:

Romans 1:18-19

For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who by their unrighteousness suppress the truth. For what can be known about God is plain to them, because God has shown it to them.

Do you realize that when you stand before God you will have no excuse?

>> ^A10anis:
Oh dear. Another "near death" experience. Near death means exactly that. You may appear dead but, you're just near it. At times of great stress neuron activity increases, this is simply the body trying to survive. I had an out of body experience when hit by a car, all sorts of weird thoughts went through my mind in slow motion. I attributed my survival to many factors, none of which were god. Of course the gullable will be rejoicing and saying; "see, god exists." So, how long before the book, cult following, and his evangelical ministry? Ignorance is not a blessing from god, it's a debilitating disease.

Oh dear. Another "near death" experience. Near death means exactly that. You may appear dead but, you're just near it. At times of great stress neuron activity increases, this is simply the body trying to survive. I had an out of body experience when hit by a car, all sorts of weird thoughts went through my mind in slow motion. I attributed my survival to many factors, none of which were god. Of course the gullable will be rejoicing and saying; "see, god exists." So, how long before the book, cult following, and his evangelical ministry? Ignorance is not a blessing from god, it's a debilitating disease.

What I do for a living and what I do in my bedroom are polar opposites...

>> ^AgentSmith:

>> ^MonkeySpank:
I don't understand how this works. I read the articles and I am a little skeptical. I've designed fMRI and DTI algorithms for years and I don't see why they keep talking about fMRI and brain waves. fMRI is an activity map that is related to the hot spots in the brain where the hydrogen protons aligned by the magnetic field resonate to the frequency of the emitter (TR/Echo Time) and only show consumption of glucose (hydrogen protons motility) during a designed paradigm, which in this case would be having the subject watch a video. Diffuse Tensor Imaging will help map the neurons going there in case a surgical procedure is necessary, and that's about it. Extrapolating fMRI (a very coarse k-space reconstruction) to brainwaves (an EEG signal) and images sounds very suspicious to me, and nothing published so far explains how this is technically done. I understand the excitement and it certainly would be possible in the future, but under the current state of the art, I don't see how this is possible, especially with fMRI or Fractional Anisotropy.

...says "MonkeySpank", lol! Really, thank you for the insight, but the association between your well informed comment and your avatar is what did it for me.
This is what led me to believe that E = MC² --LoudBelcher78

>> ^MonkeySpank:

I don't understand how this works. I read the articles and I am a little skeptical. I've designed fMRI and DTI algorithms for years and I don't see why they keep talking about fMRI and brain waves. fMRI is an activity map that is related to the hot spots in the brain where the hydrogen protons aligned by the magnetic field resonate to the frequency of the emitter (TR/Echo Time) and only show consumption of glucose (hydrogen protons motility) during a designed paradigm, which in this case would be having the subject watch a video. Diffuse Tensor Imaging will help map the neurons going there in case a surgical procedure is necessary, and that's about it. Extrapolating fMRI (a very coarse k-space reconstruction) to brainwaves (an EEG signal) and images sounds very suspicious to me, and nothing published so far explains how this is technically done. I understand the excitement and it certainly would be possible in the future, but under the current state of the art, I don't see how this is possible, especially with fMRI or Fractional Anisotropy.


...says "MonkeySpank", lol! Really, thank you for the insight, but the association between your well informed comment and your avatar is what did it for me.

This is what led me to believe that E = MC² --LoudBelcher78

I don't understand how this works. I read the articles and I am a little skeptical. I've designed fMRI and DTI algorithms for years and I don't see why they keep talking about fMRI and brain waves. fMRI is an activity map that is related to the hot spots in the brain where the hydrogen protons aligned by the magnetic field resonate to the frequency of the emitter (TR/Echo Time) and only show consumption of glucose (hydrogen protons motility) during a designed paradigm, which in this case would be having the subject watch a video. Diffuse Tensor Imaging will help map the neurons going there in case a surgical procedure is necessary, and that's about it. Extrapolating fMRI (a very coarse k-space reconstruction) to brainwaves (an EEG signal) and images sounds very suspicious to me, and nothing published so far explains how this is technically done. I understand the excitement and it certainly would be possible in the future, but under the current state of the art, I don't see how this is possible, especially with fMRI or Fractional Anisotropy.

The main difficulty in simulating a brain is that the brain is almost infinitely parallel, while turing machines are inherently serial. Each neuron is dependent on the neurons around it, which themselves are dependent on the neurons beside them and so on.

To do that calculation in a serial machine is crazy time consuming. You have to essentially re-iterate every single neuron several time to advance one single "step", while the brain does it in real time. We're getting closer, but we're not nearly there yet.

There are ways to simplify it, of course, but then we sorta lose the point, don't we?
>> ^hpqp:

@gwiz665
I like the hardware/software analogy too. In fact, there is a project to make a computer model of the human brain (for circa 2023): http://bluebrain.epfl.ch/page-52741-en.html

Personally I find it hard to reconcile what I know about physics with the existence of consciousness to begin with. Perhaps a better thought question would be something along the lines of Chalmers' zombie world arguments. That is, could a person appear outwardly to perceive and act in the world normally and not be conscious? That is, could they just be some sort of robot, or cascade of known biochemical processes? Alan Turing, in his own way, was interested in the same question.

Therein lies the problem. If there is no satisfactory physical test for consciousness, how can we be so sure about how consciousness is anchored to matter? Frankly, I see little hope of unifying an understanding of consciousness with an understanding of physics without invoking quantum mechanics. Even that just feels like punting to the physics equivalent of magic.

Personally I'm on the lunatic fringe with consciousness. I can't derive consciousness, but I'm overwhelmingly convinced of its existence. So, instead of dealing with all the paradoxes I just assume consciousness is present in all matter. There are varying experiences, or "degrees" of consciousness however. The nice entropy reducing capabilities of our nervous system make our particular conscious experience substantially richer than that of, for example, a rock. So I guess my thought is that the experience sort of fades towards the experience the matter would have without the metabolic energy necessary to support neuronal conduction. Honestly, I don't think it would be possible to obtain data on it, but I imagine it to be somewhat like fading to gray. I suppose it would be equally likely to be like fading into chaos.

>> ^lantern53:

There is far more evidence that God exists than that God does not exist.
Study near-death experiences.


lol, spewed milk out my nose when i read this
and i wasn't even drinking milk :-0

using your rationalization, there's more evidence for Clockwork/Machine Elves than there isn't:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Machine_elf

simplest possible explanation?
our brains, while we are different people, are really similar to other people's brains... and when they get oxygen deprived, or the neurons stop firing, or drugs that actual occur naturally in the brain are taken in large amounts... the results are pretty similar or even identical independant of which human being it happens to...

analogy: start any car... while its running, cut off the supply of fuel to the engine... and see how many cars don't sputter out and stop... how long it continues to run, the sputter sound, etc may vary... but that's the subjective portion... ie I saw Christian angels.. or all my ancestors... or my spirit animal... etc

the actual stop of the engine is the tunnel of light "phenomenon" etc

if a person's first response or only response to something they can't explain is something of a divine nature... they aren't trying hard enough

>> ^dag:
But to care about SF, it has to be about how it relates to human beings. In some sense we have to put ourselves in the shoes of the people who are experiencing the wonder. Otherwise it's dry and boring.
When I think about SF movies without good character, I think of Transformers. Style over substance.
Contact on the other hand had a great central character that let you feel the wonder of what she was experiencing through her eyes. That's vital.Well there's my point. We have theory of mind, plus mirror neurons firing away - if children can see through the eyes of a doll, we ought to be able to put ourselves into even the most simply drawn character. That doesn't have to mean badly drawn, like Transformers.

Just saw Rise ten minutes ago. It's surprisingly good stuff; a fantastic successor to the original PotA. I have a particular weakness for this story because I deeply wish we could make smart animals. I want to hear their perspective. I'd love to have a conversation with someone as intelligent as me but who didn't share my exact evolutionary heritage and inbuilt biases. Imagine living on earth with a separate race of equals. I really think it'd be enlightening - and, okay, potentially problematic.

@berticus Thank You for the link. I've read the article and it was very enlightening.

SUMMARY:
Reactions to claims of near-death experiences (NDE) range from the popular view that this must be evidence for life after death, to outright rejection of the experiences as, at best, drug induced hallucinations or, at worse, pure invention. Twenty years, and much research, later, it is clear that neither extreme is correct.

I think you are commenting on this part of mine,

"Science suggests it could be the result of a series of biological reactions that help the body cope." (1:42) Can you show me the studies that suggest this--No, there are none. That is an incorrect use of the word "science".

I was commenting on the part, "...that help the body to cope." This is the bad science I was referring to. There is no doubt that a series of biological reactions take place.

As the summary shows the article doesn't conclude that science proves that the near death experience is only the result of dying neurons.

I would like to hear your evaluation of the article and your thoughts on this subject.