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Comment by fnordsensei | Hacker News Reader

I've only been under once, and it was the strangest thing: I had an out-of-body experience. When I woke up, it was like I had two sets of "memories" (for lack of a better word): one was nothing (like you describe), and the other was the OBE. I presume that I wouldn't have been able to notice the span "nothing" (because it didn't contain any time or space references as I can tell) at all if there wasn't a sort of parallel overlay of the OBE.

By the way, this hasn't led to me drawing any particular conclusions about the nature of reality or consciousness. I didn't find it useful to hold a particular set of beliefs about these things before the event, and that didn't change afterwards. If anything, it just presents more questions.

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Early in residency, had a guy once that seemed “out” as normal during an operation. No abnormalities. In the recovery room claims he heard everything we were saying in the OR. We of course initially thought he was full of shit, but he quoted verbatim much of the chit chat the team was having (not that any of it was bad thankfully). This is very much not typical.

Reminds me when we had basic military medicine training and our officer told us to be extremely careful what we would say even while moving around people who seemed dead.

Hearing is the last sense that goes he said. The idea was to keep calm and not talk about how something was hopeless.

I'm not qualified to say if this is true but I keep getting reminded about it in different other settings.

I'm no neurologist, but I can picture a brain retconning the OBE as a reaction to the knowledge that time had passed when you didn't perceive that it did.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Retroactive_continuity

Reading your comment it occurs to me that all remembering is retconning. But I'm not a neurologist either!

Yep, very plausible. Also, some parts of the brain would still be active, I wasn't brain-dead after all.

The OBE itself had some dream-like qualities, though one thing I did notice was that the "resolution" was superb, unlike my normal dreams. We're talking next-gen graphics. The closest thing I can compare it to is as if the entire field of vision was center of focus.

Sometimes I dream like that. It's the oddest bthing to dream something with the fidelity of, or even above, ones default conscious experience.

Clear enough to afterwards, even years later, be able to recall the exact color and texture of the floor tile glazing, just how a doorway arched, and precisely how a distinctly non human entity looked and acted.

Curiously, at least to me, it's primarily a profoundly visual experience. Sound, touch, and smell is rarely, if ever, prominent in those dreams. Maybe the clarity of vision somehow drowns them out, or maybe I simply don't dream much in sound, but it only becomes apparent when the visual experience is almost jarringly clear.

If you study lucid dreaming, more of your dreams will become like that. Extra real. You'll have to use "reality checks" to know whether it's a dream. That's usually how you wake up inside a dream to begin with, though. You'll be able to control some, too.

Lucid dreaming resources will teach you about all that. You'll probably enjoy it.

Lightswitches and digital clocks are common tests, as are punching, jumping and most kinestetic tasks.

Incidentally, the brain retconning to fill in gaps is actually so mundane and common, you do it hundreds of thousands of times per day. See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chronostasis

I read a book that talked about the electrical activity around the posterior parietal lobe in people who have religous experiences. That lobe seems to orient your body in space. Shut off it's inputs and maybe it thinks your body is one with everything, or floating in the air. (Am not a neurologist)

How is this different from anesthesia? This pretty much sums up exactly my experience being under anesthesia, except it takes 3 seconds. They say count down from 10, and both times I thought, oh I'm gonna make it to zero for sure, and by 7, I'm gone. It feels like no time has passed and I'm waking up immediately.

Propofol is regularly used as a general anesthetic, or immediately before application of a stronger anesthetic/hypnotic.

Interestingly, you're probably awake for more than 3 seconds but experience propofol-amnesia. At least, I did: I spoke with my surgeon in post-op (and said embarrassing things) and he shared with me some other embarrassing things I'd said after I "blacked out" (count back from 10).

The amnesia was considered a benefit because it's not the case that you want to remember everything that happens immediately before surgery...

Both times I had surgery, I only remember counting down to maybe 7 while laying down, then waking up somewhere else entirely in a wheelchair, with no idea of how much time had passed in between. I wasn't told about things I might have said, embarrassing or not, either at the beginning or at the end. I hope I'll never get to ask for staff to make a mental note next time.

My ex, waking up from anesthesia, heard the surgeon chat to others about $chain (local supermarket), to which she yelled out of the blue, to their surprise and amusement, just "$chain sucks!". She had no recollection of that and only knows about it because they told her later. [The place is ridiculously expensive, worse than Whole Foods was before the Amazon acquisition.]

AFAIK going fully "under" is different from propofol sedation.

Correct. Going fully under would be general anesthesia, as opposed to deep sedation, which the paper describes. Propofol can be used for both purposes.

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