The Journal of Nervous and Mental Disease
October 29, 2014
Adriana Sleutjes, Alexander Moreira-Almeida, Bruce Greyson
38 citations
Most scholarly publications on near-death experiences (NDEs) are recent, often lack original empirical data, and are concentrated in North America and Western Europe. A review of 266 documents from 1945 to 2013 found a predominance of opinion articles, reviews, and phenomenological descriptions, with the oldest from 1977. Since 2000, longitudinal and cross-sectional studies have increased, along with diversification in publishing countries and discussions of mind-brain implications. Future research should aim for greater cultural diversity and test explanatory hypotheses with high-quality empirical data.
International review of psychiatry (Abingdon, England)
January 1, 2025
Marianna de Abreu Costa, Alexander Moreira-Almeida
7 citations
Dualism—the view that mind and brain are separate—remains common, even among mental health professionals, though it declines with age, likely due to generational shifts rather than personal maturation. Academic training often embeds physicalist, reductive views emphasizing biological causes such as gene expression and neurologic alterations. Radical determinism aligned with physicalism can diminish perceptions of responsibility, agency, and free will, affecting personal autonomy and legal systems by portraying individuals as less responsive to rehabilitation and more prone to repeat behaviors. In mental health, these views shape understanding of disorder origins, treatment approaches, patient self-agency, and stigma. Biogenetic models reduce blame but lower perceptions of self-control and increase perceptions of unpredictability.
International review of psychiatry (Abingdon, England)
January 1, 2025
Alexander Moreira-Almeida
4 citations
A 'Pragmatic interactionist' framework proposes that the mind exists and functions beyond the brain, survives bodily death, and the brain acts as a tool and filter for mind manifestation. Based on evidence from near-death, out-of-body, mediumistic experiences, and memories of previous lives, the framework expands naturalism and the empirical base to include anomalous experiences. Research proposals include studies of mind-over-brain phenomena, free will beyond extreme social and biological factors, enhanced mentation with a dysfunctional brain, veridical hallucinations, extracerebral memory, and early personality differences between monozygotic twins. This working hypothesis aims to enlarge observational and analytical capacities to better understand the human mind.
International review of psychiatry (Abingdon, England)
January 1, 2025
Marianna de Abreu Costa, Alexander Moreira-Almeida
2 citations
Mediums claim to communicate with the deceased or non-material beings. Controlled studies show they can provide accurate information that cannot be explained by normal sensory means or inference. This review examines conventional explanations—fraud, sitter gullibility, wishful thinking, chance, mental disorder, and unconscious personification—alongside the non-conventional hypothesis that the mind exists beyond the brain. The paper critically analyzes evidence from mediumship studies that supports a mind independent of the physical brain, aiming to inform the understanding of consciousness and the mind-brain problem.
Palliative & supportive care
December 26, 2025
Taís Oliveira Silva, Bruno Angeli-Faez, Lorena Cândida Ferreira Paixão et al.
Near death, end-of-life dreams and visions (ELDVs) and delirium often overlap, making them hard to tell apart. This case report describes an elderly Brazilian woman with metastatic cancer who experienced both. ELDVs involved vivid encounters with deceased relatives and biographical themes, but many were distressing and occurred alongside fluctuating attention typical of delirium. The Confusion Assessment Method (CAM) identified delirium but could not distinguish ELDVs within delirious states. ELDVs often emerged during lucid windows with preserved recall and insight. Distress alone did not differentiate the two. Supplementing CAM with qualitative criteria—content, vividness, biographical meaning, insight, cultural fit, and recall—may prevent misclassification and support holistic palliative care.