[QUOTE=thir;989412]
1) I have said nothing about afterlife or religion.

At least one researcher thinks that what people experience in these situations have to do with what they expect to experience, hence religious people see something religious, non-religious see something else.
This is what I've been saying. Which is why most scientists think these experiences are subjective and internal and not actual OBE's.
And while you may not necessarily be talking about afterlife or religion, the majority of those who experience such things ARE talking about them.

2) What I do say is that reason for these experiences is not known.
Again, we agree. But that does not mean we can just decide to believe they are real events, in which an untethered 'soul' (consciousness) escapes the body. Almost all of the studies done seem to indicate that such things are internal, within the brain.

3) I am very interested in the idea that consciousness is not actually restricted to the brain.
It is Pim Van Lommen who has come up with that idea, and obviously met with lots of criticism and skepticism.
Skepticism is always justified. Perhaps the criticism comes from the fact that he makes the claim without actually showing any evidence for it.
As far as I can follow this, the criticism is that it goes against what you know about the brain,. The reason it interests me even so is that he is a cardiologist who has researched these things for 20 years, by being a person who receives persons with a stroke and who resuscitates them if possible.
He has studied his patient's death symptoms (can you say that) people with no heart beat, and flat brain. And some of these people tell him things.
His being a cardiologist does not necessarily qualify him to study psychological phenomena. And based on a scan of the study you posted, his conclusions appear to be somewhat premature, at least to an amateur like me. His own study shows that only 18% of those studied had an experience, or could remember having one, and even that number is inflated. He states in the study that it could be as low as 5% who actually have them. I'm not a statistics whiz, but that seems to be a rather low percentage. And even of those who had them, the depth, or intensity, of the experiences vary. I honestly don't see how he could conclude that these are anything other than subjective, natural, organic experiences.
I think that such a long period must count for more than people who argue out of their books.
It certainly counts for his skill and understanding of cardiology. I can't comment on his expertise in NDE's.
My own conclusion: something is going on, and the jury is out in what.
I agree, something is going on, and it should be studied. It HAS been studied, extensively. And from what I can see, the skeptical view is still justified. There's no reason to believe that these are anything other than natural processes within the brain.

A couple of comments on the study you posted:
He seems to include those who underwent CPR outside of the hospital. How were they able to determine that these patients were brain dead? I don't think EMT's perform brain scans while transporting patients.

He notes that the majority of NDE-type experiences can be induced artificially, whether through direct stimulation of the brain or through high stress activities (high G-forces, for example) but states that these "induced experiences are not identical to NDE". He doesn't seem to discuss the idea that the psychological stresses of the induced experiences are far different than those of someone actually dying!

So I'm going to stick with my skepticism. I haven't seen anything to show that these experiences are anything but natural processes occurring in an organic body, with no real evidence of a non-biological/psychological cause.