Near-Death Experience as a Probe to Explore (Disconnected) Consciousness.

Forty-five years ago, the first evidence of near-death experience (NDE) during comatose state was provided, setting the stage for a new paradigm for studying the neural basis of consciousness in unresponsive states. At present, the state of consciousness associated with NDEs remains an open question. In the common view, consciousness is said to disappear in a coma with the brain shutting down, but this is an oversimplification. We argue that a novel framework distinguishing awareness, wakefulness, and connectedness is needed to comprehend the phenomenon. Classical NDEs correspond to internal awareness experienced in unresponsive conditions, thereby corresponding to an episode of disconnected consciousness. Our proposal suggests new directions for NDE research, and more broadly, consciousness science. Scientific investigation of NDEs has accelerated in part because of the improvement of resuscitation techniques over the past decades, and because these memories have been more openly reported. This has allowed progress in the understanding of NDEs, but there has been little conceptual analysis of the state of consciousness associated with NDEs. The scientific investigation of NDEs challenges our current concepts about consciousness, and its relationship to brain functioning. We suggest that a detailed approach distinguishing wakefulness, connectedness, and internal awareness can be used to properly investigate the NDE phenomenon. We think that adopting this theoretical conceptualization will increase methodological and conceptual clarity and will permit connections between NDEs and related phenomena, and encourage a more fine-grained and precise understanding of NDEs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]