What Happens During Clinical Death? Dr. Eben Alexander’s Extraordinary Account

Clinical death is a condition in which the heart stops beating and both cardiac and respiratory activity cease. As a result, the brain no longer receives oxygen and blood, and brain activity stops. From a medical perspective, this means that normal brain functions such as memory, hallucination, and imagination are not possible.

There are many accounts from people who have experienced clinical death and later described what happened around them while they were in that state. They report seeing events from an elevated perspective, observing what people in the room were doing, what they were saying, and in some accounts even what they were thinking in those moments. In some cases, people have also described events taking place outside the room in which they were lying.

A Near Death Experience

Dr. Eben Alexander is an American brain surgeon and neurosurgeon who underwent a near death experience. He later described his experience in his book Proof of Heaven.

He writes: “During my eleven years of medical school and residency at Duke University, and later at Massachusetts General Hospital and Harvard, I specialized in neuroendocrinology, which is the study of the interaction between the nervous system and the endocrine system. I then spent fifteen years on the Harvard Medical School faculty as an associate professor of surgery, specializing in neurosurgery. During those years, I operated on countless patients, including many with severe and life threatening brain diseases.

On November 10, 2008, at the age of fifty four, I was struck by a severe bacterial infection that attacked my brain and left me in a coma for seven days. What happened during that period was that my neocortex, the outer surface of the brain, the part that makes us who we are, was completely shut down. It had ceased functioning. In effect, it was not there. I was in a deep coma. It was not that my brain was functioning poorly — it was not functioning at all.”

His Conclusion

Alexander writes that throughout decades in the rigorous scientific world of academic neurosurgery, he had been taught to believe that the physical brain alone fully constitutes human identity.

But after his experience, he reached a different conclusion:

“My experience proved to me that the death of the body and brain is not the end of consciousness. Human experience continues beyond the grave. More importantly, it continues under the gaze of God, who loves and cares for every one of us, and who oversees the universe itself.”

His Response to Scientific Explanations

Alexander addresses various scientific explanations commonly proposed for near death experiences and argues against them one by one.

Memory Reconstruction

Could it have been a distorted replay of deep emotional memories from the limbic system?

He argues no, because without a functioning neocortex, the limbic system cannot generate the structured and coherent scenes he experienced.

Drug Induced Hallucinations

Could the many medications he was given have produced a psychedelic vision?

Again, he argues no, because these medications act on receptors in the neocortex. Without a functioning neocortex, there would be no neurological substrate for them to act upon.

REM Sleep Intrusion

Could it have been dream activity from REM sleep?

He rejects this as well, explaining that REM intrusion depends on neurotransmitters and neocortical receptors, both of which require a functioning cortex.

DMT Surge

Another hypothesis is a DMT surge, in which the pineal gland releases dimethyltryptamine under extreme stress.

Alexander acknowledges that DMT can produce powerful psychedelic experiences, but again notes that the brain region affected by DMT is the neocortex — and in his case, that part of the brain was not functioning.

His Description of the Experience

He writes: “To think that this physical world is all that exists is like shutting yourself in a small closet and believing there is nothing beyond it. My journey deep into the coma, beyond this limited physical realm and into the highest dwelling place of the Creator, revealed the astonishing gulf between human knowledge and the vast, awe inspiring realm of God.”

A Balanced Perspective

Near death experiences remain a subject of ongoing scientific and philosophical debate. Some researchers interpret them neurologically, while others see them as evidence of consciousness beyond physical brain activity.

What is clear is that experiences like Dr. Alexander’s have had a profound impact on how many people think about consciousness, life, and what may lie beyond death.