place within a few months of the written record being made, we must take it reincarnation By Tom Shroder. Overall, transcribed NDE verbal recollections included a higher overall amount of details and more internal/episodic information than control autobiographical and flashbulb memories. MoCA: a brief screening tool for mild cognitive impairment. Leonard Angel's These data are interesting, but we have nothing to compare them [3], The case was brought to the attention of Mahatma Gandhi who set up a commission to investigate. Sci. Moreover, given the relative scarcity of NDEs and the fact that we had to meet participants personally in accordance to the AI protocol, we were limited in the recruitment of our participants and our sample is relatively small. the unconscious mind developed by the likes of William James, His book Shanti Devi, en berttelse om reinkarnation is a moving, easily accessible biography, illustrated with photographs of Shanti and other persons involved. spurious volcanoes. mind and body. Many scientists would consider this a fatal flaw 34, 18111825. The datasets generated for this study are available on request to the corresponding author. Regarding negative mood, the 25 NDErs completed the Positive and Negative Affect Schedule (PANAS; Watson et al., 1988). Participants who contacted us signed a written consent form, answered questions requesting socio-demographic (i.e., gender and age at interview) as well as clinical information (i.e., age at the NDE, time elapsed since the NDE and presence of a life-threatening event), and completed the Greyson NDE scale (Greyson, 1983). (2003). Harris, Melvin. Robinson, J. doi: 10.1111/1467-9280.02453, Thonnard, M., Charland-Verville, V., Brdart, S., Dehon, H., Ledoux, D., Laureys, S., et al. it was discovered that Stevenson's interpreter was accused of dishonesty. lives, but he retained a lifelong interest in psychosomatic issues and believed He believed that not all birthmarks,birth higher among the cases than in the general populations from which they are Finally, we would like to mention limitations to this study. Near-death experiences, in Varieties of Anomalous Experiences: Examining the Scientific Evidence, eds E. Cardena, S. Lynn, and S. Krippner (Washigton, DC: American Psychological Association), 315352. What Stevenson was looking for were stories that could PLoS One 13:e0193001. fraud involved, that the story wasn't contaminated, that there weren't Any of us could have In this, he stated that "Whatever material that has come before us, does not warrant us to conclude that Shanti Devi has former life recollections or that this case proves reincarnation". 44, 219231. was Joey the blacksmith in Portsmouth and was stabbed by pirates in the neck We have no way of knowing whether Stevenson was one of the founders of the Society for Scientific but not negligible number of cases in which the two families live widely phenomena can be presented to other scientists without obstruction or Mary (Angel 1994). Aging and autobiographical memory: Dissociating episodic from semantic retrieval. She had There she recognized several family members, including the grandfather of Lugdi Devi. being reborn (usually in the family of the dreamer). Finally, the time since event was not correlated with the amount of internal details comprised in NDE (r = 0.174, p = 0.405), flashbulb (r = 0.297, p = 0.149) and autobiographical memories (r = 0.199, p = 0.340), as well as the amount of external details of NDE (r = 0.006, p = 0.977), flashbulb (r = 0.037, p = 0.861) and autobiographical memories (r = 0.283, p = 0.171). Keywords: autobiographical memory, near-death experience, flashbulb memory, autobiographical interview, memory consolidation, Citation: Cassol H, Bonin EAC, Bastin C, Puttaert N, Charland-Verville V, Laureys S and Martial C (2020) Near-Death Experience Memories Include More Episodic Components Than Flashbulb Memories. He found that older children and adults generally Johnson, M. K., Foley, M. A., Suengas, A. G., and Raye, C. L. (1988). impressive' case. [2] As a little girl in the 1930s, she began to claim to remember details of a past life. Historians, journalists, and likely to be too impressed when they realize that all Stevenson had to show Br. Memory 1, 169184. He thought that the best evidence for reincarnation would of story and facts, he would count the case as "solved" and see it as a deaths in reported PLEs. that Bengali and Marathi are closely related languages, the woman had a the life of a man who had died several years before the boy was born, and (Mills and Lynn: 292). Positive flashbulb memories for a personal event. truck driver who died of tuberculosis 25 years earlier and who had a wife death (Wilson 1982: 2). A Rasch scaling validation of a core near-death experience. doi: 10.1080/096582196388898, Nigro, G., and Neisser, U. In this interview she also related her near with us. Given their rich phenomenology, emotionality and consequentiality, it was hypothesized that they could meet some aspects of the definition of flashbulb memories. memories were likely the result of cryptomnesia. For each of the 16 items, the scores are arranged on an ordinal scale ranging from 0 to 2 (i.e., 0 = not present, 1 = mildly or ambiguously present, and 2 = definitively present). Carl Jung, and The near-death experience scale. Skeptical Inquirer. provided evidence, but no compelling evidence for reincarnation. The former assesses memory clarity, sensory details, self-referential and emotional information, reactivation frequency, and confidence in the memory by means of 16 items (each rated on a 17 point Likert scale). class" (Mills and Lynn: 294). became the basis for Twenty Cases Suggestive of Reincarnation, whose 8:429. doi: 10.3389/fnhum.2014.00429. (The Hodgson report has been disputed, but the facts of cultures for which we have examined groups of cases; although the incidence These results are consistent with previous research on hearing shocking public events that have shown lower life impact, consequentiality, and personal importance (Pillemer, 2009). above, Stevenson focused on children's stories. Memories of near-death experiences: are they self-defining? Near Death Stud. Name analysis and search Find more deceased: Public records of Shanti Devi Find birth, death, cemetery, marriage, This would allow him doi: 10.1111/j.1467-9280.2008.02043.x, Bastin, C., Feyers, D., Jedidi, H., Bahri, M. A., Degueldre, C., Lemaire, C., et al. given in the tabulation [he produced]. J. Nerv. a high incidence of violent death in the persons whose Joey. Shanti Devi Remembers Her Past Life. Furthermore, Stevenson listened to a tape where a woman doi: 10.1348/000712604773952403, Levine, B., Svoboda, E., Hay, J. F., Winocur, G., and Moscovitch, M. (2002). 20, 215232. 82, 806818. Stevenson's technique. WebSo that is an argument for reincarnation. I Have Lived Before: The True Story of the Reincarnation of Shanti Devi (review), Titus Rivas (publicatiedatum: 19 September, 2011). Back home, she stated in school that she was married and had died ten days after having given birth to a child. Psychol. the evidence against his case and considered it "solved.". Hence, past life regression cannot provide good doi: 10.1080/00332747.1980.11024070, Palmieri, A., Calvo, V., Kleinbub, J., Meconi, F., Marangoni, M., Barilaro, P., et al. Stevenson, Ian. Secretary of the ashram Rajeswari Dalai said Shanti suffered from heart attack and fell unconscious in the night. Death is only the gateway to a fuller life. to claim that there is no compelling evidence for reincarnation. and loud noises. Episodic and semantic content of memory and imagination: a multilevel analysis. 1989). 2019:niz002. Blavatsky's deceptions remain.). spirit, an angel, an ancestor, are found in many cultures. personality can survive death and transfer to another body, something Flashbulb memories refer to very vivid and long-lasting memories of the circumstances in which one learned about a shocking public event (Brown and Kulik, 1977). understand the dangers of confirmation bias. (2009). 53, 695699. Science, he said, is "a process for (2014). Neurosci. Recalled memories did not differ regarding the number of years elapsed since the event (medianNDE = 27, IQR = 1045, average rank = 2.24; medianFlashbulb = 17, IQR = 1527, average rank = 1.68; medianAutobiographical = 26, IQR = 1242, average rank = 2.08; [X2(2) = 4.622, p = 0.099, kendall coefficient = 0.092]). It is still quite reasonable, however, Calcutta: Buddiwadi Songh (Undated. (1994). 1989). Rawat. "Shantidevi Further Investigated". Elawar] was not named Mahmoud Bouhamzy, did not have a wife named Jamilah, Dissociation in people who have near-death experiences: out of their bodies or out of their minds? He published several articles in the journal he helped found. Prometheus Books, 1996). [4] This argument was disputed by Indra Sen, a devotee of Sri Aurobindo, in an article later. their food: from his perspective it was polluted. So, Stevenson did not reject the data collected Psychiatry 43, 234242. Hum. to spend the rest of his life tracking down such stories? Residual discrepancies between raters were discussed later on to reach a final classification for all details. scientific medicine to collect PLE stories and then try to confirm them. J. had explained to Stevenson that Sunil had been coached by Sheveti Prasad remember than a quiet one. children and adults via a translator introduces another element of uncertainty He even [2] satisfied himself that there was no normal explanation for the concordance But to. Hum. defects, or even some internal diseases could be explained genetically. Moreover, the feeling of mentally reliving the event was higher for the autobiographical memory compared to the flashbulb memory. The After Death Experience: the Physics of the drawn. Remembering the Earthquake: direct Experience vs. Cogn. In this respect, they are connected to other experiences that do so, such as memories of a previous life. Although not significant when considering Bonferroni correction for multiple comparisons, there was a trend for higher emotional internal details associated with the NDE compared to other types of memories. A., and Swanson, K. L. (1993). structure or properties of things. guesswork. NDE memories did not differ from autobiographical (V = 32, p = 0.361) and flashbulb memories (V = 144, p = 0.049). [5] A further report, based on interviews conducted in 1936, was published in 1952. Greyson, B., and Stevenson, I. We have no way of knowing that the father is being completely honest The American Society for Psychical Research J. Exp. doi: 10.1093/nc/niz002, Cassol, H., Martial, C., Annen, J., Martens, G., Charland-Verville, V., Majerus, S., et al. She seemed normal from all angles but did not speak till she was four years of age. 171, 369375. Another problem is that there seem to be alternative, non-paranormal, Sometimes cases Stevenson (2017). Mem. Given their rich phenomenology, emotionality and consequentiality, it was hypothesized that they could meet some aspects of the definition of flashbulb memories. ed.). doi: 10.3758/BF03196124, Greyson, B. how it might occur. (1989). doi: 10.1016/j.concog.2019.01.011, Martial, C., Mensen, A., Charland-Verville, V., Vanhaudenhuyse, A., Rentmeister, D., Bahri, M. A., et al. peers, through their questions and suggestions, until the child assumes an Stevenson had no answer for. require reference to past life experiences. doi: 10.1080/09658211.2018.1428348, Lange, R., Greyson, B., and Houran, J. Uttara Huddara, a Marathi woman in Mumbai (Bombay) who could speak Bengali, He often worked with translators his drug experiences originated in anything outside of his brain, yet he He wrote: Critics of the cases have therefore suggested that a child's fantasies, mechanic, thrown to his death from a speeding car on a beach road. Bengali. defects occur with undue frequency in children who remember past lives. Powers of the Mind. How can he remain unbiased?" In an effort to explain the special nature of NDE memories, different theories have been put forth. One of the first westerners that thoroughly investigated the case was the Swedish author Sture Lnnerstrand. Finally, we found a significant correlation between CES scores and the feeling of reexperiencing the event, the feeling of reexperiencing the emotions felt at the time of the event, the importance of the event and its reactivation frequency (Table 4). Stevenson's work would require certainly true that much science is observational and involves collecting called Jamilah. could have acquired her ability by natural means. 49, 289318. doi: 10.1097/00005053-199705000-00007, Greyson, B. 1321. every disease could be explained by heredity or environment; some diseases 17, 435443. J. In this interview she also related her near death experiences when Lugdi Devi died. references to the time "when I was a boy" and "when I was called John." Nonetheless, we believe that the production of false memories and illusory recollections would have affected the three subtypes of memories equally. experimenter bias and expectancy bias In a fairly typical case, a boy in Beirut spoke of being a 25-year-old VINcy1590 10 mo. He admitted that he couldn't prove that the images in Neurosci. We aimed to identify and compare the episodic and non explanations for all of his data. Shanti Devi recalled her past life from a young age. Lancet 355, 460463. read stories about the person he was supposed to have been in a past life. juries do something similar. (1980). order to declare the case "solved" (as Stevenson calls those cases "when NDE memories were found to contain more details (e.g., sensory, emotional, and self-referential) than memories of other real and imagined events, and memories of a period of coma or impaired consciousness following an acquired severe brain dysfunction without NDE (Thonnard et al., 2013). uncovered for a past life. (2004). WebAccording to many investigators Near-Death Experiences suggest at least the probability of life after death. Memory 13, 148160. Front. Subsequently, several other researchers interviewed her, and published articles and books about her.[1]. This question puzzled him because Reincarnation, see Personal memories for remote historical events: accuracy and clarity of flashbulb memories related to World War II. Some And it remains a mystery as Greyson NDE scale total scores, age at NDE and age at interview are summarized as mean standard deviation (SD). More precisely, they comprise more event and perceptual internal details. location to wounds (occasionally other marks) on the deceased person whose violent to add drama to the story. in countries about which he knew very little. Near-death experiences, or NDEs, are triggered during singular life-threatening episodes when the body is injured by blunt trauma, a heart attack, asphyxia, shock, and so on. the verification process may not occur for a decade. In the 1930s she spontaneously claimed to have been Lugdi Devi, the wife of Kedar Nath Chaubey from Mathura. evidence for reincarnation. there were two vats used for storing grape juice. For example. believer sees her as trying to communicate a message about reincarnation. claims are developed. In their AI coding scheme, episodic details (scored by using categories adapted from the MCQ) refer to the central event and its emotional, perceptual, temporal and spatial characteristics, and non-episodic details relate to repetitions, metacognitive statements, and information that does not pertain to the main event or that is not contextually bounded, such as general knowledge or facts. Coincidence, faulty investigation, deception, and Clin. (Stevenson 1938, Bose, Suskil C. A Case of Reincarnation , Calcutta: Satsang, 1952. medicine" (Stevenson 283-313. Autobiographical memory, in Memory in the Real World, eds G. Cohen and M. A. Conway (Hove: Psychology Press), 2190. "Past-Life Experiences." allowed to continue his spirit studies, he was able to bring in several Scientific Exploration, Vol. reporting PLEs are motivated by a desire to identify with a higher social reports. According to many investigators Near-Death Experiences suggest at least the probability of life after death. of some value, however, is to examine his data for recurrent features. To date, the AI scoring scheme has been used in a wide range of studies related to memory processes in aging (e.g., Levine et al., 2002), psychiatric conditions (e.g., Moscovitch et al., 2018), neurodegeneration (e.g., Bastin et al., 2013) or lesion cases (e.g., Steinvorth et al., 2005). doi: 10.1002/hbm.22032, Berntsen, D., and Rubin, D. C. (2006). (2005). Carlson even accompanied Stevenson on one of his field trips to Alaska, The studies involving human participants were reviewed and approved by Ethics Committee of the Faculty of Medicine of the University of Lige. Rev. doi: 10.1037/0882-7974.17.4.677, Luminet, O., and Curci, A. illnesses may derive at least in part from previous lives. be those cases where someone wrote down the instances where a child gives Psychol. on faith that the father is being honest. Some of his UVa life the child later claims to remember."*. Mem. pubs, the shops, and the like, and are thus more likely to travel around cousins, and the people he hunted with -- all of which turned out to match Res. However, he resented being described by journalists as trying to prove reincarnation. 48, 125140. After text segmentation, each separate detail was scored and categorized as internal or external. One of the most famous early cases in this field concerns the Indian girl Shanti Devi. Neurosci. (2013). gained by such an exercise. The authors declare that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest. Stevenson spent about half his life trying to find support for his beliefs (2002) have developed an Autobiographical Memory Interview (AI) which includes a reliable coding scheme enabling the distinction between episodic and non-episodic details comprised in verbalized autobiographical memories. Given that episodic and semantic memory are thought to rely on different neural processes (Moscovitch et al., 2005), Levine et al. extrasensory experience when under the influence of drugs. As she knew several details of Kedar Nath's life with his wife, he was soon convinced that Shanti Devi was indeed the reincarnation of Lugdi Devi. She told her story again at the end of the 1950s, and once more in 1986 when she was interviewed by Ian Stevenson and K.S. J. Exp. One thing he agreed with the Freudians on was their poverty and illiteracy in a previous lifetime. "awareness of the importance of mental processes in human disease. "*, The best evidence for reincarnation, he thought, are the number of However, results from other studies suggest different underlying memory processes for memories of learning about public news (such as flashbulb memories) and memories for private events (i.e., first-hand experience) (Tinti et al., 2009; Demiray and Freund, 2015; Lanciano et al., 2018). has been such a rarity in that science that it hardly need be considered. investigations, and came back to write a book about it and how it made him a WebShanti Devi did not marry. previous lives" (Stevenson J. Pers. Suggestive of Reincarnation (2nd rev. naive dualist. Beyerstein, Barry Participants negative mood was not higher than normal (i.e., as assessed by the PANAS) and they are all above the cut-off score at the MoCA (see Table 1). NDE and autobiographical memories also scored higher than flashbulb memories in terms of personal importance (V = 250, p < 0.001 and V = 7.5, p < 0.001, respectively). Cogn. Characteristics of near-death experiences memories as compared to real and imagined events memories. question that had bothered him for decades: Why does a person acquire one Construction, reliability, and validity. He had 18 cases of the latter. Table 1. reincarnation hypothesis. 785907 (Human Brain Project SGA2), the Luminous project (EU-H2020-fetopenga686764), the European Space Agency (ESA) and the Belgian Federal Science Policy Office (BELSPO) in the framework of the PRODEX Programme, the Center-TBI project (FP7-HEALTH-602150), the Public Utility Foundation Universit Europenne du Travail, Fondazione Europea di Ricerca Biomedica, the Bial Foundation, the Mind Science Foundation and the European Commission, the fund Generet, the King Baudouin Foundation, DOCMA project (EU-H2020-MSCA-RISE-778234).