Doctors who found the first evidence supporting possible existence of an afterlife are now starting another research into near-death experiences (NDE). Dr Sam Parnia and Professor Peter Fenwick will begin in March a year-long study taking place at the Hammersmith Hospital and 12 other hospitals across the UK.

The research will be looking at patients who have had cardiac arrest to find out if they have had any experience or memories whilst their heart stopped beating. It will be also looking at out-of-body experiences (OBE). Symbols will be placed in strategic places to be seen only by those having an OBE.

Accounts of near-death experiences have been found in many different cultures and throughout history and it is estimated that six per cent of people suffering a cardiac arrest will have such an experience.

There are currently three explanations for these accounts. The first is physiological; that the hallucinations patients experience is due to disturbed brain chemistry caused by drug treatment, a lack of oxygen or changes in carbon dioxide levels.

A second explanation is that out of body experiences and vivid encounters with tunnels, lights or deceased relatives are constructed by the mind to ease the process of death. The third possible explanation is transcendental, an event indicating the continuation of life after death.

Dr Parnia's team has already spent a year studying people resuscitated at the Southampton's General Hospital after suffering a heart attack. The patients brought back to life were all, for varying lengths of time, clinically dead with no pulse, no respiration and fixed dilated pupils.
A paper was published detailing their pioneering study into NDE that suggests consciousness and the mind may continue to exist after the brain has ceased to function and the body is clinically dead.

In the Southampton study 63 heart attack survivors were interviewed within a week of their cardiac arrest and asked if they remembered anything during their period of unconsciousness. 11 per cent recalled emotions and visions during unconsciousness. They recalled feelings of peace and joy, time speeded up, heightened senses, lost awareness of body, seeing a bright light, entering another world, encountering a mystical being or deceased relative and coming to a point of no return.

With these findings, a charitable foundation, Horizon Research, was launched to further the study of the human mind at the end of life and to undertake this new study involving 13 hospitals. If proven that the mind and consciousness is what remains after death, or the "soul" in philosophical concept; this study will have huge implications opening a whole new field of science.

Horizon Research Foundation Web site