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Plain English Summary
What do people actually experience when they nearly die? This study from a top coma-research lab in Belgium took 34 cardiac arrest survivors' stories and analyzed them with serious rigor — two independent coders combed through the narratives using specialized software. They found 11 recurring themes: seeing a bright light (reported by 74%), a sense of returning to the body, meeting other beings, and — fascinatingly — a feeling of "hyperlucidity," or thinking more clearly than normal. Nearly half reported time feeling warped or meaningless. Seven of these themes matched an existing checklist scientists already use, but three were brand new discoveries that no standard questionnaire captures: entering a threshold, the return experience, and vivid scene descriptions. The big takeaway? NDEs look remarkably similar across different people, suggesting a universal human experience with a surprisingly consistent structure.
Actual Paper Abstract
Near-death experiences (NDEs) refer to profound psychological events that can have an important impact on the experiencers' (NDErs) lives. Previous studies have shown that NDEs memories are phenomenologically rich. In the present study, we therefore aimed to extract the common themes (referred to as "features" in the NDE literature) reported by NDErs by analyzing all the concepts stored in the narratives of their experiences. A qualitative thematic analysis has been carried out on 34 cardiac arrest survivors' NDE narratives. Our results shed the light on the structure of the narratives by identifying 10 "time-bounded" themes which refer to isolated events encountered during the NDE and 1 "transversal" theme which characterizes the whole narrative and generally appears as a retrospective comment of self-reflection on the experience. The division of narratives into themes provides us with detailed information about the vocabulary used by NDErs to describe their experience. This established thematic method enables a rigorous description of the phenomenon, ensuring the inclusion of all self-reported manifestations of themes in narratives.
Research Notes
One of few rigorous qualitative analyses of NDE narratives using established thematic methods. Validates Greyson Scale while identifying 3 additional themes. Key evidence for Controversy #7 on NDE phenomenological consistency. From the Liège Coma Science Group (Laureys lab), same program as Thonnard, Martial, and Charland-Verville NDE studies.
Qualitative thematic analysis of 34 cardiac arrest survivors' NDE narratives using NVivo software and Braun & Clarke methodology. Two independent coders (Cohen's kappa = 0.73) identified 11 themes: 10 'time-bounded' (Light 74%, Return 56%, Meeting 44%, Hyperlucidity 41%, Description of scenes 41%, Darkness 38%, OBE 35%, Awareness of death 26%, Life events 24%, Entrance 18%) and 1 'transversal' (Altered time perception 47%). Seven themes match Greyson NDE Scale features; three additional themes (Entrance, Return, Description of scenes) are not formally captured by existing questionnaires. Supports NDEs as 'universal human experiences' with consistent phenomenological structure.
Links
Related Papers
Cites
- The Near-Death Experience Scale: Construction, Reliability, and Validity — Greyson, Bruce (1983)
- Near-Death Experience in Survivors of Cardiac Arrest: A Prospective Study in the Netherlands — van Lommel, Pim (2001)
- Near-Death Experiences in Non-Life-Threatening Events and Coma of Different Etiologies — Charland-Verville, V (2014)
- Characteristics of Near-Death Experiences Memories as Compared to Real and Imagined Events Memories — Thonnard, Marie (2013)
- Intensity and Memory Characteristics of Near-Death Experiences — Martial, Charlotte (2017)
- Epistemological Implications of Near-Death Experiences and Other Non-Ordinary Mental Expressions: Moving Beyond the Concept of Altered State of Consciousness — Facco, Enrico (2015)
- Incidence and Correlates of Near-Death Experiences in a Cardiac Care Unit — Greyson, Bruce (2003)
- Consistency of Near-Death Experience Accounts over Two Decades: Are Reports Embellished over Time? — Greyson, Bruce (2007)
Cited By
Same Research Program
- Near-Death Experiences in Non-Life-Threatening Events and Coma of Different Etiologies — Charland-Verville, V (2014)
- Intensity and Memory Characteristics of Near-Death Experiences — Martial, Charlotte (2017)
- Temporality of Features in Near-Death Experience Narratives — Martial, Charlotte (2017)
- A systematic analysis of distressing near-death experience accounts — Cassol, Helena (2019)
Also by these authors
More in Nde
Explanation of Near-Death Experiences: A Systematic Analysis of Case Reports and Qualitative Research
AWAreness during REsuscitation - II: A Multi-Center Study of Consciousness and Awareness in Cardiac Arrest
Which Near-Death Experience Features Are Associated with Reduced Fear of Death?
Advancing the Evidence for Survival of Consciousness
The Mystical Experience and Its Neural Correlates
📋 Cite this paper
Cassol, Helena, Pétré, Benoît, Degrange, Sophie, Martial, Charlotte, Charland-Verville, Vanessa, Lallier, François, Bragard, Isabelle, Guillaume, Michèle, Laureys, Steven (2018). Qualitative thematic analysis of the phenomenology of near-death experiences. PLOS ONE. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0193001
@article{cassol_2018_nde_memory,
title = {Qualitative thematic analysis of the phenomenology of near-death experiences},
author = {Cassol, Helena and Pétré, Benoît and Degrange, Sophie and Martial, Charlotte and Charland-Verville, Vanessa and Lallier, François and Bragard, Isabelle and Guillaume, Michèle and Laureys, Steven},
year = {2018},
journal = {PLOS ONE},
doi = {10.1371/journal.pone.0193001},
}