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The Hidden Image
A surgeon, a bestseller, and the distance between a brain scan and a soul
In twenty-five hospitals across Britain and the United States, a research team propped a tablet displaying a picture beside the beds of patients whose hearts had stopped and played a sound through headphones while the resuscitation team worked. Their purpose? So that anyone who later described floating above the bed and watching the room could be asked what had been on the screen.
Twenty-eight survivors completed the interview. One identified the sound. Nobody identified the image.
The result was published by the researchers who argue that something does happen during cardiac arrest, which is what makes it worth reading twice. Sam Parnia and colleagues followed 567 in-hospital arrests across the two countries, of whom 53 survived, a rate of 9.3 per cent, and 28 were well enough to be interviewed.
Eleven of those described recollections or perceptions suggestive of consciousness, 39.3 per cent, and six reported an experience they called transcendent. The striking finding was electroencephalographic, with normal-looking delta, theta and alpha activity emerging up to sixty minutes into resuscitation, at a mean cerebral oxygen saturation of 43 per cent.
