In association with ULg's Cognitive Psychology Unit, his team is also exploring the psychological aspect of NDE. Consequently, before using neuroimaging to test the neuroanatomical hypothesis – hence, to conduct systematic investigations aimed at better defining the neuronal correlates of the different components of NDE - the researchers are focusing on the phenomenological characteristics of memories of NDEs.

On 27 March 2013, the magazine PLos One published the results of the first study carried out by the team from Liège regarding the characteristics of NDE memories. The starting point was: are experiencers' accounts based on pure imaginary constructs or, on the contrary, do they have the attributes of memories of real events? It appeared that their wealth of sensorial, self-referential (relating to the subject themselves) and emotional details made the memories seem real. Their precision was such, according to Vanessa Charland-Verville, that experiencers refer to them as ‘hyper real’.  The researchers also established a bridge between these memories and flashbulb memories, which are very detailed entities firmly anchored in the memory, referring to circumstances during which we learnt of an important public event: the assassination of President Kennedy, the September 11 bombings, etc., - vivid circumstances with an intense emotional component that favour the encoding and mnesic trace of our actions.

“However, the characteristics of NDE memories don’t provide a basis for the reality of the events described (conversing with the dead, OBE, etc.), because physiological mechanisms could generate a perception that the experiencer believes relates to elements of external reality, whereas they are actually the fruit of a pure mental product”, Vanessa Charland-Verville adds.  Which led the team at ULg to suggest that NDE memories may be comparable with flashbulb memories of hallucinations.

The case of LIS patients

Nevertheless, psychologists and neuroscientists were certain that it would be a long time before they would be able to understand NDE memories on a phenomenological level. That’s why, in a study whose results were published in Frontiers in Human Neuroscience in 2014(1), they compared the items (content) and intensity of the NDE within various groups of patients who survived a coma as well as in subjects who had had an NDE even though their life wasn't in danger. No significant difference was noted between the groups of patients according to the cause of the coma (anoxia, trauma, other), or between these groups and the one where the members hadn't been faced with a real risk of near death. In March 2015, the researchers proceeded to focus on cases of patients with locked-in syndrome (LIS) in Consciousness and Cognition(2). These are patients who have suffered a coma and subsequently find themselves locked in a paralysed body while being fully conscious. In general, their only means of communication is blinking and vertical eye movements.

The great majority of experiencers are filled with positive emotions when they talk about their near-death experience. They allude to a moment of bliss and generally state that they become less materialistic, more altruistic, more turned towards spirituality, less afraid of death... But is it the same for LIS patients who’ve had an NDE? The question had never been asked and yet it deserved to be.

(1) Charland-Verville V, Jourdan JP, Thonnard M, Ledoux D, Donneau AF, Quertemont E, Laureys S. Near-death experiences in non-life-threatening events and coma of different etiologies. Frontiers in Human Neurosciences, 2014;8:203.
(2) Charland-Verville V, Lugo Z, Jourdan JP, Donneau AF, Laureys, S. Near-death experiences in patients with locked-in syndrome: not always a blissful journey. Consciousness and Cognition, 2015;34:28-32.