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intermediate

Memories of near-death experiences: Are they self-defining?

Cassol, H. et al. (2019)

Published
Mar 1, 2019
Journal
Neuroscience of Consciousness · Vol. 2019 · No. 1
DOI
10.1093/nc/niz002
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At a GlanceAI

NDE memories become central to identity, and richness of the experience matters more than whether life was at risk.

SummaryAI

Cassol and colleagues asked 71 people with NDEs, with or without a real threat to life, to describe their two main self-defining memories and rate how central each is to their identity. Those who chose the NDE rated it as more central than their other self-defining memories, and the richer the NDE, the more central it was. Real and NDE-like experiencers did not differ, which suggests the content of the experience, not its circumstances, makes it self-defining.

Method SnapshotAI

Self-defining memory task with the Centrality of Event Scale.

BackgroundAI

Basic autobiographical memory research.

In Collections

Psychology28 papers

Near-death experiences: reports, measurement and explanations

Some people who come close to death later report leaving their body, a tunnel, a bright light, meeting deceased relatives or a review of their life. This collection follows how psychology and medicine have studied these reports: from the first case collections (Moody, Ring) and the Greyson NDE Scale, through prospective studies of cardiac arrest survivors, to neurobiological, psychological and cultural explanations, distressing NDEs, and what changes in people's lives afterwards. What NDEs are is still debated, and the verdicts here are ours. Terms: * NDE: near-death experience * OBE: out-of-body experience * WCEI: Ring's Weighted Core Experience Index, an early measure of NDE depth

ES
Evgeny Smirnov

An NDE becomes one of the memories that define a person. And what matters is not whether life was threatened but how rich the experience was.

— ES