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 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.

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.

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.