{"id":3368,"date":"2025-04-26T19:10:18","date_gmt":"2025-04-26T17:10:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dorotheeamelung.com\/?p=3368"},"modified":"2025-04-29T20:51:30","modified_gmt":"2025-04-29T18:51:30","slug":"ist-bewusstsein-endlos-forschung-verstaendnis-von-bewusstsein-auf-den-kopf-stellen","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dorotheeamelung.com\/en\/ist-bewusstsein-endlos-forschung-verstaendnis-von-bewusstsein-auf-den-kopf-stellen\/","title":{"rendered":"Is consciousness endless? Three research directions that turn our understanding of consciousness on its head"},"content":{"rendered":"

To this day, we cannot really explain consciousness. The philosopher David Chalmers calls it the \u201ehard problem of consciousness\u201d, 1996<\/em><\/strong><\/a>).<\/p>\n

The hard problem is why and how a physical objective process (i.e. what the brain does) can trigger a certain subjective experience (i.e. how we experience the world). We can measure all kinds of things in the brain, for example where our attention goes or where different sensory impressions are collected. But how does our individual experience or even our \u201cI\u201d come about?<\/p>\n

Of course, this is based on the assumption that our consciousness is the result of neuronal activity in our brain. In other words, this cluster of cells in our brain produces everything we call consciousness: how we process a car accident or the separation from a loved one; how we perceive the sun on our skin; or when we have an idea that we are so enthusiastic about that we want to implement it immediately. Somehow, our brain does it all.<\/p>\n

Anyone who says otherwise is either just not thinking \"scientifically enough\u201d, is naively religious or, in the worst case, is an extremely drifted esoteric crank. But what if impulses come from science itself that call this materialistic view of the world into question? What if there is scientific evidence that our dominant idea of a purely brain-made consciousness is wrong or should be reconsidered?<\/p>\n

So this blog article is going to be scientific: I have picked out three areas of research that I personally find totally exciting and that could well turn our image of consciousness on its head.<\/p>\n

Endless consciousness in near-death experiences<\/strong><\/h1>\n

Pim van Lommel is a Dutch cardiologist who was the first to really systematically try to find a scientific explanation for so-called near-death experiences: the phenomenon during which, patients describe having once been dead and returned to life after a cardiac arrest or car accident, and actually remember their period of being dead consciously<\/em><\/strong>. Survivors often describe such an experience in a similar way - for example, that they were able to see themselves from above as if they had left their body. That they experienced a kind of \u201cexpanded consciousness\u201d with positive feelings of peace or universal love, \u201ceven though\u201d they were aware that they were dead.<\/p>\n

Van Lommel systematically surveyed patients who required emergency resuscitation in several hospitals over a number of years and in several methodologically well-designed studies. He has published his results, for example, here (Van Lommel, 2013)<\/em><\/strong><\/a>,<\/em><\/strong> <\/strong>here (Van Lommel, 2011)<\/em><\/strong><\/a>, <\/em><\/strong> and <\/em><\/strong>here (Van Lommel et al., 2001)<\/em><\/strong><\/a> . His study, published in the Lancet in 2001, attracted worldwide attention.<\/p>\n

If you don't want to work your way through the scientific studies, I recommend his book Consciousness Beyond Life: The Science of the Near-Death Experience (German title: \"Endloses Bewusstsein\"; Van Lommel, 2014)<\/em><\/strong> in which he has summarized his findings in a way that is easy for laypeople to understand.<\/p>\n

But what did he find out?<\/p>\n