'Erasing Death' Explores The Science Of Resuscitation
On a Hieronymus Bosch painting that depicts an image similar to images described by people who have had near-death experiences
"There's a very interesting painting by Hieronymus Bosch from the 15th century where he's actually painted what looks like a classical near-death experience, but in reality people didn't know about near-death experiences at that time and it certainly isn't what classical Christianity would have taught of what people would have experienced when they've died."
On why most people who are resuscitated do not have memories of lights or tunnels or mysterious beings
"We've certainly found in our studies ... that if we manage to get to patients immediately after waking up — which is not easy at times — and talk to them, they tend to remember more, and if you go back and reinterview them within a couple of days, they tend to have forgotten their experiences, possibly. So we think that probably many more people have these experiences — if perhaps not even everyone — but somehow their memories get wiped in the same way that most of us — if not all of us — dream every night, but somehow there's a disruption to the memory circuits that allow us to recall our dreams the following day."
“ If we cool people down by a number of degrees Celsius ... we slow down the rate by which cells — particularly brain cells — are undergoing their own process of death, because we have to remember that cell death takes place though chemical steps.