I found this today and it may have been posted but it is fairly recent. I don't think his project will work, because I am convinced so far that NDEs are a subjective experience and it's just about impossible to bring words and numbers back with you, but he makes some terrific points for the case of consciousness not being a product of the brain without actually committing to it.

http://www.skeptic.org.uk/news/2010/2494

I think the experiment is very interesting, however I don`t believe it will produce results. How many people notice the ceiliing when they are in hospital? HOw many notice it in an emergency situation? And just how many will notice it in an OOBE? No one, thats who, is my guess.

Also, I agree that trying to prove "consciousness" through physical experiments is doomed to fail unless one day we manage to produce "controlled" OBES with the explicit aim to look something up. Consciousness is, per se, something subjective.

It would be nice if a few people reported seeing the signs, but I am not holding my breath. Especially since Parnia is very sceptic (just see minutes 44-47 of that video) and the expectation of the experimenter will vastly influence the results of any experiment.

I imagine they might get better results if the target objects held significance (e.g a family momento) for the subjects- after all how interesting are a series of numbers etc. to a person having a profound spiritual experience ? Many skeptics think that proof is a true/false scenario when really, controlled experiments into the 'paranormal' e.g Schwartz, Tart, Beichel's etc. look for significance above chance level- not 100% yeses. Often those significances are millions to one that the results are not due to chance.

The cardiologist Pim Van Lommel has studied NDEs for many years (Consciousness Beyond Life: The Science of the Near-Death Experience) and he certainly believes that consciousness is not explanable under the prevailing materialism.

Thanks for the link, Beau

it's good to hear what's being done. However I agree with Chrwe and Heisenberg that targets need to have a felt connection to the viewer.

It seems that feelings can become less intense as the viewer gains experience, but there still seems to be a need for a felt connection.
Perhaps consciousness itself will one day be recognized as an aspect of feeling.

Bets

I absolutely agree that a subjective connection to the "material" might make it a better target for those experiencers. But then perhaps that is why we see dead relatives and guides when we get there. It's a whole lot more interesting than a street sign or math equation. I like the lecture because he points out both sides of the argument, but I guess I was a little put off when he said that if he had it to do over again he would blow this topic off altogether... But I can see where he's coming from too. Its got to be potentially highly embarrassing to pursue such a line of thought as life after death in the scientific community. Not to mention nearly impossible to get funding unless one is trying to the seat of consciousness in the brain. He is a brave guy, but he has trimmed his method to such a scientific one that I'm afraid it's going to have little evidence to offer, but yes, it would be nice if something were to come of it.

Even if someone reports everything 100% correctly it won't add up to a hill of beans since all a skeptic has to do is say that the person could have been slipped the information before/after the NDE. The situation simply will not be a controlled experiment no matter what they hope to believe... therefore the results will be treated as such.

:P

Yeah absolutely, they could be passed the information and there will most likely never be objective evidence of the subjective experience even if the information is somehow brought back, but I hate for the guy to go to all the trouble of building his experiment and have nothing to show for it.  ;)