Migraine aura, a predictor of near-death experiences in a crowdsourced study.
PeerJ January 1, 2019 Daniel Kondziella, Markus Harboe Olsen, Coline L Lemale et al. 17 citations
People who experience migraine with aura are more than twice as likely to report a near-death experience (NDE) as those without migraine aura. In a sample of 1,037 adults from 35 countries, 13.0% of those with migraine aura reported an NDE compared to 6.1% of those without, an odds ratio of 2.33 after adjusting for age and gender. This association indirectly supports the idea that NDEs involve rapid eye movement (REM) sleep intrusion, a feature also linked to migraine with aura. The finding may relate to spreading depolarization, a brain wave pattern that occurs both in migraine aura and at the end of life.