Harvard Neurosurgeon Confirms The Afterlife Exists

[ronburgundy]

Keith&Co and Connick. You got it.

In psychotherapy it is known that patients telling dreams are reconstructing, not reporting. Its value is not because they are recounting an actual dream, but that they're disclosing a good part of their subjectivity, expectations about therapist wishes, etc. I'd classify this in dream-telling category.

Not only dreams, but all memories are reconstructions. The details of past experiences are not stored together in a file somewhere in a specific brain location. A memory is largely a reactivation of a particular complex pattern of neural activation involving many brain areas. Somewhat like "you can never step in the same river twice" idea, you can never really have the same pattern of brain activation twice. Everything from the time of day, to what you ate, to what you've been thinking about recently, to the color of the walls right now impacts the exact pattern of activation in a manner that makes all memories inaccurate reconstructions of past experiences. They vary in how inaccurate, but include things that weren't there, exclude things that were, rearrange orders, combine entities, and also misrepresent how we felt or thought about the experience at the time. In fact, our memories for our own subjective past feelings and thoughts are some of the most inaccurate.
In addition, how emotionally intense or "real" the recalled experience is has no correspondence to the accuracy of the memory, and might even be negatively related to accuracy since emotion triggers thoughts that go with that emotion, even when the thoughts have no actual relations to the events in question.

 

[4321lynx]

Keith&Co and Connick. You got it.

In psychotherapy it is known that patients telling dreams are reconstructing, not reporting. Its value is not because they are recounting an actual dream, but that they're disclosing a good part of their subjectivity, expectations about therapist wishes, etc. I'd classify this in dream-telling category.

Not only dreams, but all memories are reconstructions. The details of past experiences are not stored together in a file somewhere in a specific brain location. A memory is largely a reactivation of a particular complex pattern of neural activation involving many brain areas. Somewhat like "you can never step in the same river twice" idea, you can never really have the same pattern of brain activation twice. Everything from the time of day, to what you ate, to what you've been thinking about recently, to the color of the walls right now impacts the exact pattern of activation in a manner that makes all memories inaccurate reconstructions of past experiences. They vary in how inaccurate, but include things that weren't there, exclude things that were, rearrange orders, combine entities, and also misrepresent how we felt or thought about the experience at the time. In fact, our memories for our own subjective past feelings and thoughts are some of the most inaccurate.
In addition, how emotionally intense or "real" the recalled experience is has no correspondence to the accuracy of the memory, and might even be negatively related to accuracy since emotion triggers thoughts that go with that emotion, even when the thoughts have no actual relations to the events in question.

As Marcel Proust (and he should know) said long ago:

The images selected by memory are as arbitrary, as narrow, as elusive as those which the imagination had formed and reality has destroyed.

 

[barbos]

Does not reflects well on Harvard or doctors.

 

[Draconis]

It's possible to have heaven and hell (or whatever) without God.

 

[bilby]

It's possible to have heaven and hell (or whatever) without God.

I know what you mean; The two concepts are not necessarily connected.

But actually it isn't possible to have an afterlife. It is ruled out by our understanding of what brains are made from - there is no way for a brain to interact with an immortal soul, an afterlife, or a God, because brains are made of matter, matter is made from the particles described in the Standard Model, and the Standard Model is complete at temperatures and scales relevant to human life.

We know ALL of the particles and forces that can possibly interact with living brains; and none of them are able to communicate in any way with any unknown realm or entity. If we have a soul, it cannot possibly exert any influence on our brains or bodies; and nor can our brains or bodies exert any influence upon it - therefore it is nonsensical to say that we have such a thing. It would require the rejection of the best tested and most effective and accurate scientific theories in history; So it requires a LOT more than a hunch, a rumor, or some two thousand year old stories before it makes a shred of sense to even consider the possibility.

A perpetual motion machine is more plausible than an afterlife.