What Near-Death Experiences Reveal About Consciousness | Àlex Gómez-Marín

Àlex Gómez-Marín discusses how the study of consciousness has evolved across history, and how near-death experiences can help us to understand the connection between the brain and the mind.

Should we treat testimonies of near-death experiences as scientific evidence or discard them as unreliable anecdotes?

Neuroscientist and theoretical physicist Àlex Gómez-Marín argues that the brain may not produce consciousness, but instead filter or permit it. Tracing a provocative history from Galileo to modern consciousness science, he argues that scientific progress came by prioritising what can be measured, leaving inner experience behind. Using his own near-death experience and cases like terminal lucidity, he calls for a more open, rigorous “Science 2.0” that takes anomalous experiences seriously.

#neardeathexperience #consciousness #neuroscience

Àlex Gómez-Marín is a theoretical physicist and neuroscientist. He is Associate Professor at the Institute of Neuroscience, Alicante, and Director of the Pari Center in Italy.

0:00 Intro
2:00 Gómez-Marín: what I saw when I nearly died
4:35 What science can tell us about Gómez-Marín's vision
6:09 A history of the scientific study of consciousness
11:48 Materialism versus non-materialism
14:10 How the study of near-death experiences began