Ether or ...?

Roger Knights points me to an article at a site called io9.com summarizing studies of memory retention after anesthesia. The studies show that, in general, people under sedation retain only the simplest memories of stimuli to which they were exposed while unconscious.

As readers of this blog know, some skeptics (notably anesthesiologist G. M. Woerlee) have argued that veridical observations in near-death experiences can sometimes be explained by anesthesia awareness – a condition in which a patient is partly awake on the operating table.

If complex memories cannot be retained by anesthetized persons, then this explanation would fail.

The article states:

One experiment involved an odd assortment of tests. Sometimes people were instructed to touch either their ear or their nose while under anesthesia. During a post-operative interview, they touched the suggested body part longer than the part that wasn't suggested, but only by a matter of seconds. Patients were also played tapes of words, all of which had the same first three letters. Later they were shown those letters, and asked to think of words starting with them. They generally picked more words from the list played during the operation than unlisted words. Finally, patients were played a list of nonsense words, either frequently or infrequently, during the operation. Afterwords, they were asked to guess the comparative frequency of the nonsense words. They recognized the words played more frequently than the ones played less frequently, but the frequently-played words were only recognized 62% of the time.

Anything more complicated than single words seems right out of the question. In a study of a group of patients, half of whom were played "The Three Little Pigs" during an operation and half of whom were played "The Wizard of Oz" during an operation, only 49% of the group guessed right.

Overall, it seems that softer tests of "learning" during anesthesia can get mildly positive results. On the other hand, "controlled studies using explicit memory tests" get "uniformly negative results."

Clearly, this degree of memory retention would not explain the detailed veridical observations reported by some NDErs. However, before we jump to conclusions, we need to keep in mind that the memory studies involved patients who had undergone ordinary anesthesia experiences. In other words, these subjects did not claim to have experienced anesthesia awareness. This is not surprising, since other studies have shown that anesthesia awareness is extremely rare, occurring in only 0.13% of procedures.

It's possible that the very small minority of patients who experience some degree of alertness under anesthesia do retain more complex memories than the average patient. I don't know if there is any way of testing this, since anesthesia awareness is so seldom encountered. For now, I guess, the jury is still out.

Comments

[Roger Knights]

But if "anesthesia awareness is extremely rare, occurring in only 0.13% of procedures," and if NDEs are fairly common (tens or hundreds of thousands of cases?), then there shouldn't seem to be room to fit the latter into the former.

[Stephen Heyer]

Also, I seem to remember being told by medical people that drugs that prevented the formation of any new memory were used in anesthesia specifically to prevent the nuisance of anesthesia awareness.

If that is true, then it makes memory tests fairly pointless and means we have no idea what the "natural" situation would be without those drugs.

One would also expect this to almost completely suppress memories of NDEs no matter how genuine or common they may be under "natural" conditions.

Anyway, perhaps someone who knows the real situation can tell us if this is true.

Stephen Heyer

[Douglas]

Nowhere else to put this, so thought I would share some video evidence of Kai Meuge's (of the Felix Mediumship circle)latest experiments with apporting objects.
This latest example shows him apporting a large crystal from his eye socket.

There is a video of this, as well as still on their website http://felixcircle.blogspot.co.uk/

I would be interested in people's views on this.

Watching this, I am open to the possibility of a hoax, and of course, it could be, but bear in mind that Kai's group has been investigated by Stephen Braude, who has personally sat in the Felix Circle's séances and witnessed a variety of phenomena there.

It is *possible* for Kai to have somehow stashed this crystal in his eye socket, behind his eye ball, and then moved it around until it pops out in full view.

However, have you seen the size of the crystal? I don't see how this is possible. I would like to invite a skeptic to demonstrate this to us and see how they get on - without having to take a visit to A&E.

[Andrew Paquette]

For what it's worth, I've had general anesthesia three times in my life. This is what it was like:

1) At 16 years old, I was being examined at a hospital for severe abdominal pain. The doctor diagnosed appendicitis. My father was called at work for permission to perform an appendectomy, after which an IV was inserted into my arm. I asked how they would know the anesthetic had taken effect. The next thing I knew, I was in a darkened room and the surgery was done. I had no memory of anything that had happened between my question and then waking up.
2) The second time was at the age of 40, when I had 4 wisdom teeth extracted. Like the first time, I asked how I would know the anesthesia had taken effect, and then was suddenly in another room and the operation was over. No memory.
3) The third time was also at the dentist, this time for a large crown. After going under, there was a brief period when I noticed the sensation of vibration in my jaw but couldn't feel any pain. I opened my eyes momentarily, saw the dentist over me, and then was unconscious again until the operation was over.

I have had veridical OBEs and can say definitively that they are nothing like this third example where I briefly became aware of my surroundings (notably from the correct perspective sitting in the dentist's chair.)

Maybe it's different for other people, but when you include long distance veridicality, I do not see how these anesthesia awareness explanations get any traction. They simply do not explain the data.

AP

[Matt Rouge]

Douglas,

Here's another good resource for you: the posts on David Thompson on this site:

http://www.paranormalreview.com/index.php/category/mediumship/

We've also debated and discussed David here.

David has produced a lot of phenomena in his seances, some extremely difficult to explain. There has also appeared to be some shady stuff going on. Although he has recorded seances, he has not allowed the filming of them in infrared (they are held in absolute darkness). He says that doing so would mess with the mojo, so to speak, even though an infrared camera is a completely passive device and should be no more disruptive than a tape recorder.

In my view, infrared (or regular, if circumstances permit) video of such seances would be quite convincing. In website link you kindly provided, they say they retrieved a hibiscus flower from ectoplasm. Video of that would be quite interesting.

I'm not convinced at all by the crystal. It would be painful to stick it in the eye, but it certainly doesn't look too big. And it looks like a cheap fake diamond instead of a beautiful natural crystal.

I have seen psychics provided amazing information, and I'm a psychic and (infrequent) medium myself, so I have no general skepticism about these matters. But aports represent a gross distortion of everyday physical laws, so I want to see some pretty solid proof of those before I believe.

[Kris]

I just remind Gerry over and over again that everyone heard the beeps which were used on Reynold's. Seeing his "hypothesis" requires the opposite that flushes his supposition laden nonsense down the toilet and we don't have to waste time going down the rabbit hole with him and his convoluted nonsense.

[Douglas]

That's true Matt and I agree with you. However, I would also point out that apports are a fairly established phenomenon, both inside and outside the seance Room, so i accept that these 'violations' of known laws do occur from time to time - indicating that our knowledge of the wider reality, in which all physical laws are embedded, is very limited indeed.

Whether or not The felix circle's photo and video evidence are genuine examples of this phenomenon is of course a matter of personal opinion.

[Matt Rouge]

Douglas,

In the main I agree with you about aports. I certainly think that just about anything in our physical world is *possible.*

The trouble with aports is that they are going to be just about the easiest type of thing to fake, since producing objects is such a basic sleight of hand technique, and there are many hiding places on and in the human body.

[Matt Rouge]

With regard to anesthesia awareness, I've been with lots of people in the recovery room as a medical interpreter. Needless to say, they've always remembered nothing. Docs use powerful drugs like midazolam that knock people right out *and* induce amnesia about the surgery. Cases of awareness, it would seem, are more likely to come from the past when the technology wasn't as good.

[Duck soup]

Kris, Woerlee was last "seen" signing a copy of his book, the only one he's sold...to someone by the name of Keith I think...

[Kris]

I wasn't aware his books are worth money Duck :)

[Kathleen]

I've been under twice, and have remembered absolutely nothing. Nor have I ever heard of anyone else remembering anything.

Which makes me wonder - if the brain as a receiver theory is true, what happens to our consciousness when we're under anesthesia? When we sleep, we dream, and still have some sort of consciousness, and when I was knocked unconscious, I had maybe a "mini" NDE. When dreaming and when knocked out, I still had a very strong consciousness of myself. But when we're under anesthesia, if the brain is a filter, what happens? We may be having all sorts of adventures, experiencing ourselves as spiritual beings completely, but obviously something is preventing us from remembering.

[Art]

Kathleen, many anesthetics have drugs in them which cause amnesia. They are added to the cocktail on purpose to prevent anesthesia awareness - so you don't remember what happened during your surgery. I suspicion that is why more people who "die" during surgery don't remember having NDE's. They may very well have had an NDE but don't remember it because of the drugs (which induce amnesia on purpose) were used during their surger.