ArticlePeerJ2019
Migraine aura, a predictor of near-death experiences in a crowdsourced study.
Article in PeerJ, 2019. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 5 papers.
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Who cites it
5 citing papers in PubMed, 17 citations in OpenAlex.
- A neuroscientific model of near-death experiences.Nature reviews. Neurology · 2025Review
- Induced Coma, Death, and Organ Transplantation: A Physiologic, Genetic, and Theological Perspective.International journal of molecular sciences · 2023Review
- Incidence and prevalence of coma in the UK and the USA.Brain communications · 2022Article
- The evolutionary origin of near-death experiences: a systematic investigation.Brain communications · 2021Article
- The Neurology of Death and the Dying Brain: A Pictorial Essay.Frontiers in neurology · 2020Review
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
4 authors at 3 institutions in 2 countries.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
backgroundNear-death experiences (NDE) occur with imminent death and in situations of stress and danger but are poorly understood. Evidence suggests that NDE are associated with rapid eye movement (REM) sleep intrusion, a feature of narcolepsy. Previous studies further found REM abnormalities and an increased frequency of dream-enacting behavior in migraine patients, as well as an association between migraine with aura and narcolepsy. We therefore investigated if NDE are more common in people with migraine aura.
methodsWe recruited 1,037 laypeople from 35 countries and five continents, without any filters except for English language and age ≥18 years, via a crowdsourcing platform. Reports were validated using the Greyson NDE Scale.
resultsEighty-one of 1,037 participants had NDE (7.8%; CI [6.3-9.7%]). There were no significant associations between NDE and age (
conclusionsIn our sample, migraine aura was a predictor of NDE. This indirectly supports the association between NDE and REM intrusion and might have implications for the understanding of NDE, because a variant of spreading depolarization (SD), terminal SD, occurs in humans at the end of life, while a short-lasting variant of SD is considered the pathophysiological correlate of migraine aura.
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