2.  Near-death experiences involve common elements, including clarity, sense of peace, traveling through dark tunnel toward light, etc  Most often interpreted in the context of religious experiences  Frequency of about 10% of the nearly-dead  Unknown cause  Many other forms of religious experience tied to abnormalities in temporal lobe functions  May be the opposite of PTSD  May represent abnormal response to threat/distress

3.  Depth electrical stimulation of temporal lobe and temporal lobe seizures can cause similar profound, religiously-interpreted experiences Hypothesis: Could NDEs reflect altered temporal lobe function?

4. METHOD Two groups: NDE (N = 23) >6 on the NDE Scale Control group (N = 20) no near death illness EEG recording during one night sleep Several paper and pencil tests

5. RESULTS 21.7% of the NDE show epileptiform-like activity associated with left temporal lobe and abnormal sleep pattern 5% of control group showed similar pattern but over right temporal lobe Temporal lobe symptoms checklist showed significant difference (p <.005) So did the Complex Partial Epileptic signs test (p <.001)

8. RESULTS In line with the hypothesis, NDE patients showed greater EEG and self-report data implying temporal lobe epileptiform activity than control patients