Near-Death Experiences in Central Asia

Copyright © 2013 Birk Engmann and Muyassar Turaeva. This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. The article deals with pilot data of a study of Uzbek people, mainly clinical- death survivors, in regard to possible near-death experiences (NDE). Evaluation of the first 13 cases showed that there is no regular sequel of experiences in NDE. In the thirteen cases there were no reports of tunnel phenomena or of film-clip-like experiences. Instead, acoustic phenomena, visions of light, feelings, and out-of-body experiences were most common. NDE are not stringently connected with clinical death, but also happened under a “normal ” operation. Nor do they always appear in cases of clinical death and resuscitation. Also, NDE are influenced by one’s memories and cultural background. In conclusion, pilot data support the criticism that the term NDE is too broad, and demonstrate neuropsychological phenomena of multiple realizations of the same mental functions