The <a href="http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/health/7621608.stm" target="_blank">BBC</a> reports on a new study into NDEs to take place at 25 hospitals, co-ordinated by Southampton University. An interesting part of the project will involve placing objects in positions whereby they can only be seen from a vantage point above the body.

<em>Dr Sam Parnia, who is heading the study, said: "If you can demonstrate that consciousness continues after the brain switches off, it allows for the possibility that the consciousness is a separate entity."</em>

The experiments may shed some light on accounts such as <a href="http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m2843/is_n4_v20/ai_18535414/pg_4?tag=artBody;col1" target="_blank">this famous story</a> of a tennis shoe on a window ledge observed by a heart-patient undergoing a near death out-of-body experience. It also partly recreates Stanley Krippner's famous 1966 dream experiments from the Maimonides Sleep Labs [read Krippner's account <a href="http://www.uri-geller.com/content/research/dreams.htm" target="_blank">here</a>].

Dr Parnia hopes to use 1500 heart-patients in the study and we look forward to hearing the results.

From the <a href="http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/health/7621608.stm" target="_blank">BBC</a>