Characteristics of Near-Death Experiences Memories as Compared to Real and Imagined Events Memories

Near-Death Experiences (NDEs) are not well explained. Because NDEs are sometimes considered imagined, researchers compared the phenomenological characteristics of NDE memories with memories of real and imagined events. Coma survivors with NDEs (8), with coma memories but no NDE (6), and without coma memories (7), plus 18 healthy volunteers, completed the Memory Characteristics Questionnaire. NDE memories had more characteristics than memories of imagined or real events, and more self-referential and emotional information and better clarity than coma memories. These findings suggest NDE memories cannot be considered imagined events; they may be perceived as real despite not being lived in physical reality.

Study at a glance

Abstract

Since the dawn of time, Near-Death Experiences (NDEs) have intrigued and, nowadays, are still not fully explained. Since reports of NDEs are proposed to be imagined events, and since memories of imagined events have, on average, fewer phenomenological characteristics than real events memories, we here compared phenomenological characteristics of NDEs reports with memories of imagined and real events. We included three groups of coma survivors (8 patients with NDE as defined by the Greyson NDE scale, 6 patients without NDE but with memories of their coma, 7 patients without memories of their coma) and a group of 18 age-matched healthy volunteers. Five types of memories were assessed using Memory Characteristics Questionnaire (MCQ--Johnson et al., 1988): target memories (NDE for NDE memory group, coma memory for coma memory group, and first childhood memory for no memory and control groups), old and recent real event memories and old and recent imagined event memories. Since NDEs are known to have high emotional content, participants were requested to choose the most emotionally salient memories for both real and imagined recent and old event memories. Results showed that, in NDE memories group, NDE memories have more characteristics than memories of imagined and real events (p<0.02). NDE memories contain more self-referential and emotional information and have better clarity than memories of coma (all ps<0.02). The present study showed that NDE memories contained more characteristics than real event memories and coma memories. Thus, this suggests that they cannot be considered as imagined event memories. On the contrary, their physiological origins could lead them to be really perceived although not lived in the reality. Further work is needed to better understand this phenomenon.