if NDEs are a product of evolution, what role do they play in natural selection?

do you think NDEs are a product of evolution? they'd have to be, considering how common they are if they are products of the brain only. how does an end of life hallucination improve one's ability to reproduce?

Insufficient data. I doubt there is any  evolutionary advantage to NDE. What many people don't understand are corollary epiphenomenon.

Like people thinking kittens are cute. Do you think taking care of kittens was specifically selected for? No.

There is a general instinct which evolved to identify children. Its dialed up to 10 because it's better that you never find your own offspring anything but deserving of all your coddling than to waste effort on the baby of another person or of another species.

Generalization of intelligence and instincts is itself a trait that was selected for. Generalize (or abstracted) systems are flexible and thus resilient  to changing conditions.

Near-death experiences are known from all parts of the world, various times and numerous cultural backgrounds. This universality suggests that near-death experiences may have a biological origin and purpose. Adhering to a preregistered protocol, we investigate the hypothesis that thanatosis, aka death-feigning, a last-resort defense mechanism in animals, is the evolutionary origin of near-death experiences. We first show that thanatosis is a highly preserved survival strategy occurring at all major nodes in a cladogram ranging from insects to humans. We then show that humans under attack by animal, human and ‘modern’ predators can experience both thanatosis and near-death experiences, and we further show that the phenomenology and the effects of the two overlap. In summary, we build a line of evidence suggesting that thanatosis is the evolutionary foundation of near-death experiences and that their shared biological purpose is the benefit of survival. We propose that the acquisition of language enabled humans to transform these events from relatively stereotyped death-feigning under predatory attacks into the rich perceptions that form near-death experiences and extend to non-predatory situations.

Commonality itself had no necessary tie to evolution. Evolution is a product of the existence of traits that help ensure a species survival, NDE's neither assist nor hinder that outcome.

I just think they are a product of wishful thinking, and of our brains using that which we know (or accept) about the world to make sense or of our experiences.

it looks like the article says 'some animals play dead. humans are animals and they might play dead. therefore NDEs are tied to playing dead'.  you see how weak the reasoning is dont you? it looks like they think using a bunch of pretense and jargon makes a good argument. 

reminds me of that calvin and hobbes piece. 'academia, here i come!"

Per my last post, the experiences r also elaborate afterlife stories. That's a specific theme, it doesn't sound like a random hallucination... so if there's a natural way to explain it, it's gotta be tied to natural selection 

It manifests in millions of people because we're all the same species so we share the same DNA. Why are you so surprised that our brains would work so similarly? And why are you so surprised that our brains would concoct an experience that gives us a way out of dealing with our own mortality?

it's just pulling teeth to get skeptics to provide any coherent 'whys' of why these things happen at all.

you just keep bare asserting that it seems likely to you that people would have these coherent elaborate afterlife stories, but you ignore that if it is that way, it should be tied to natural selection. yet, nothing coherently ties it to natural selection. the other poster posted about a study about 'playing dead' tied to near death experiences, but it's only vaguely connected and a leap of logic.  someone says it's tied to chemicals in some lose sense, even though drugs,dreams,and hallucinations in any other aspect of life dont cause elaborate afterlife stories that have those phenomenological common themes. i keep seeing these half thoughts for explaining why this happens that dont add up. if skeptics are so absent in the why's and logic department... why is it such a leap to think maybe they visited the afterlife? i realize you take as your premise that supernatural things dont occur, or things of that nature... but that's an assumption on your part, and if they are visiting the afterlife, it's staring you right in the face. even if you dont want to call it evidence, it indicates something, however you want to spin it, it points to something, and it's plain as day staring you right in the face. 

NDE's require specific nearly dead circumstances.

Which although relative to evolution by association, are nonetheless, seemingly random.

Not that I like using the word "random", because events have a tendency to be sequential.

Therefore, more of an unpredictable sequence of events, rather than a random event.

Which isn't to say that internal processing is not continuously evolving.

The explanation is very simple, once you recognize that DNA only has two drives, and they drive literally everything else in life: (1) survive so you can (2) reproduce. It's that stark. This happens not at a conscious level, it's at the cellular level. The drive to reproduce is so strong, so innate, that it can actually threaten the ability to survive in certain mutations. That's kind of how cancer works. Why's that important to NDE's? Your primal brain, the parts of it you cannot control, like your "startle response" reaction, ONLY wants these two things. When that part of your brain finds a mortal threat, a real problem with a vital sign that you can't control, the theory is that it begins to emphasize the first priority: survive, so your cells can continue reproducing. How does it try to convince the conscious part to keep fighting, not just quit, because your cells want to reproduce? It finds the touchstones you've stored in your brain over the entire course of your life, your most cherished shit, and says "HEY! REMEMBER THIS! WE CAN DO THIS AGAIN!" or "LOOK, HERE'S JESUS, FEEL BETTER?" or "HERE ARE YOUR CHILDREN, THE PRODUCT OF SUCCESSFUL REPRODUCTION [except they're usually as babies, not adults]! LET'S SURVIVE AND GO BACK TO TIMES LIKE THIS." It's a trick that DNA plays on the conscious brain to try one more time to move the needle. 

Does that help you understand? 

Brain activity relative to oxygen starvation seems quite a logical answer.

so NDEs help survival which help reproduction? i mean it's a little plausible. i dont understand how evolution would create such elaborate afterlife stories, with all those common themes like tunnels and light beings life reviews etc, that are more real than this life and they have no doubt about and no longer fear death. that's mighty specific and elbaorate. not only that philosophical point, but no one has refuted out of body experiences, vision to the blind, or some of the other evidences that can't be called anything but evidence. i'm not sure id say your argument is grasping at straws, but it does appear to be grasping. 

id need a source that astronauts have NDEs. pepole often say drugs dreams and other hallucinations cause NDEs, when it's nothing like those. plus there's the idea that maybe the astronaughts were dead or thereabouts. i know that thereabouts thing is wishy washy, but i do think we can visit the afterlife more than just at death. it is getting more tenuous, though, i agree with your point. 

Evolution doesn't create them. The tunnels and lights and all that, it's just the effect of oxygen deprivation on your brain. The stuff assigned to them ("It's heaven!" or "I saw my granma!") is not created by evolution, it's informed by the individual after the fact from notions and ideas in their brains at the time, INCLUDING what people think an NDE should have in it, same way we all basically think aliens are little green or gray humanoids with big eyes. That's so unlikely to be true it's insane, but our culture has memeified that image so that everyone who "encounters" aliens has the same description, and people think that's evidence that it's real. I get it, you really love this topic, you think for some reason some other dimension exists after people die, because like the vast majority of humanity before you, you want to be special, you value your life and don't want it to end, you think it has to "mean something." You don't want to hear the real arguments otherwise, which is why you think "Someone saying something" is evidence. It isn't, any more than me saying "That guy fucked a monkey" is evidence that you fucked a monkey. It's just assertion. 

i would think if this is just a hallucination, it would have to be caused by natural selection. i dont know how else to explain it. you at first seemed to be suggesting it was driven by natural selection but now are waffling on that point. if it is just suggestive thinking as the cause, how can that happen so elaborately with those themes? just asserting that it's possible isn't explaining it. plus you and all skeptics always choose to ignore the out of body experiences and other evidences, just conventiently ignore it. plus, on your 'suggestion' point.. these same themes, tunnels life reviews etc, happen at the same rate regardless of culture or age even young childen and to people who have never heard of these things before. this has been measured with science. so that is also a blow to your argument. i think all ya'll just have darkened minds and hearts, mostly on the logic and reason 'mind' part. aliens visitations dont have the same qualitative and quantifitative measures to them as NDEs but i see your point.  only vaguely or loosely can tunnels and light beings and life reviews be tied to dying brain... they sitll seem more real than this life and they have no question about, and they still cause elaborate afterlife strories, which 'tunnel vision' or other theories barely explain. 

I was searching for that citation and having a difficult time finding it.  I remember reading it about 20 years ago when I was studying NDEs. Basically they just put astronauts into this fast spinning machines to replicate the g force they will feel on lift off and many pass out and report symptoms similar to NDEs. 

I k ow this is true but there's no reason for you to believe me until I find a citation, so feel free to disregard