WHEN THE HEART STOPS: Near-Death Experiences: Medicine, Consciousness, and Mystery

What happens to consciousness when the heart stops? >Are near-death experiences entirely produced by a brain in crisis? Or do some cases point toward something our current understanding of consciousness cannot yet explain? When the Heart Stops investigates that question without demanding either belief or disbelief. >Inside, you will explore: - what really happens to the brain during cardiac arrest and resuscitation- out-of-body experiences and the neuroscience of self-location- tunnels, light, life reviews, encounters with the dead, and altered time- NDEs in children and across different cultures- hypoxia, carbon dioxide, REM intrusion, dissociation, ketamine, psychedelics, and the DMT hypothesis- the AWARE studies and attempts to test perceptions prospectively- the cases of Pam Reynolds, the man with the dentures, Al Sullivan, Maria's shoe, and other difficult evidence- why some explanations are scientifically strong, others merely plausible, and some questions remain genuinely open- how NDEs can permanently change a survivor's relationship with death, identity, spirituality, and everyday life This is neither a defense of the afterlife nor an attempt to explain every extraordinary experience away. It is an investigation into one of the hardest questions science can ask: is consciousness entirely reducible to the brain, or have we mistaken the limits of our current explanations for the limits of reality? For readers interested in near-death experiences, consciousness, neuroscience, medicine, philosophy of mind, and the unresolved territory where evidence meets mystery.