Agrillo, Christian

Agrillo, Davide

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Near-death experiences as a tool for forming a broader comprehension of the link between consciousness and social perception: commentary on Graziano and Kastner (2011)

Christian Agrillo

Davide Agrillo

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Near-Death Experiences as a Tool for Forming a Broader Comprehension of the Link between Consciousness and Social Perception: Commentary on Graziano and Kastner (2011)

Near-death experiences as a tool for forming a broader 
comprehension of the link between consciousness and social 
perception: commentary on Graziano and Kastner (2011)
Christian Agrillo1* and Davide Agrillo 2
1 Department of General Psychology, University of Padova, Padova, Italy
2 Faculty of Medicine and Surgery, University of Padova, Padova, Italy
*Correspondence: christian.agrillo@unipd.it
A commentary on
Human consciousness and its relationship 
to social neuroscience: a novel hypothesis
by Graziano, M. S. A., and Kastner, S. (2011). 
Cogn. Neurosci. 2, 98–113.
The nature of human consciousness and 
its neuroanatomical correlates is one of the 
most profound issues in the field of neurosci-
ence today. Recently, Graziano and Kastner 
(2011) put forward the intriguing idea that 
consciousness is a perception, processed by 
the same neural network which is involved 
in social perception. The authors provided 
a number of interesting lines of evidence to 
support their view, including experiments 
on the neural correlates of social perception, 
on neglect, on mirror neurons, and on the 
mechanisms of decision-making. They also 
pointed to the involvement of the temporo-
parietal junction (TPJ) in “out-of-body” 
experiences. In their words: “given that the 
right TPJ has been implicated so strongly in 
the social perception of others, this evidence 
appears to support the hypothesis that the 
machinery for social perception also builds a 
perceptual model of one’s own mental experi-
ence” (p. 106).
Out-of-body experiences are only one of 
the recurring features commonly reported 
within the wider phenomenon known as 
“near-death experiences” (NDEs). NDEs 
have been defined as an altered state of 
consciousness which occurs during an 
episode of unconsciousness, as a result 
of a life-threatening condition (Greyson 
and Stevenson, 1980). Under these cir-
cumstances, patients sometimes report 
 perceiving a tunnel, a bright light, deceased 
relatives, a review of their lives, and out- of-
body experiences, in which they describe a 
feeling of separation from their bodies and 
the ability to watch themselves from above. 
Most patients have described NDEs as very 
pleasant. Extensive changes in personality 
are often found to occur after an NDE, such 
as decrease in the fear of death (Greyson, 
1983) and decrease of neurotic anxieties 
(Noyes and Kletti, 1977). However, some 
reports of unpleasant experiences similar 
to nightmares have been also described. 
Although people have wondered whether 
“good” people have pleasurable experiences 
and “bad” people have distressing ones, a 
lack of correlation between apparent life 
deeds and type of NDE has been reported 
(Greyson and Bush, 1992). Interestingly the 
content of NDEs seems similar worldwide, 
across cultures and all times: NDEs occur 
about equally to people of both genders and 
of all ages, educational and socioeconomic 
levels, spiritual beliefs, religious affiliations, 
and life experiences (Bush, 2002). The 
exact incidence of this phenomenon is not 
known. However, during the last decade, 
NDEs are likely to occur with increasing 
frequency because of the improved tech-
niques of resuscitation (van Lommel, 2011).
According to some authors, NDEs are 
a transcendental state of consciousness, in 
which the mind and the self-function work 
independently from the unconscious body 
(Greyson, 2000; van Lommel et al., 2001). 
Both biological and psychological interpre-
tations have been suggested, according to 
which NDEs would be explained by spe-
cific altered mental states related to critical 
healthy conditions (for recent reviews see 
Facco, 2010; Agrillo, 2011; Mobbs and Watt, 
2011; van Lommel, 2011). For instance, it is 
known that endorphins are released under 
stress and are known to block pain and 
to induce feelings of well-being and even 
intense pleasure. This might be responsi-
ble for the positive emotional tone of most 
NDEs. In addition, cortical disinhibition 
associated with anoxia has been consid-
ered responsible for the perception of a 
tunnel (Blackmore, 1996). Regardless of the 
exact reasons underlying these visions, it is 
undeniable that NDEs may play an impor-
tant role in the comprehension of human 
consciousness.
A large body of evidence has indicated 
that the temporal lobe is involved in mysti-
cal and religious experiences, and a recent 
study has also found altered temporal 
lobe functioning in patients who have 
reported NDEs (Britton and Bootzin, 2004). 
Temporolimbic epilepsy seems to activate 
elements of NDEs (Durwen and Linke, 
1987), with the involvement of the same 
neuroanatomical regions which Graziano 
and Kastner (2011) have suggested form an 
important neural network for conscious-
ness and social perception.
In addition to neuroanatomical cor-
relates, there is another important aspect 
that should be mentioned. Many stud-
ies have shown that patients sometimes 
report meeting deceased relatives, friends, 
or unknown human beings during the 
time in which they seem to be dying. 
This has been commonly attributed to 
the person’s expectations or wishes to be 
reunited with their deceased loved ones 
at the time of their death. However, if this 
expectation alone was driving the process, 
people would presumably recognize the 
human figures; conversely, most of them 
are unrecognizable. Several authors have 
tried to provide an explanation for this 
incongruence (Agrillo, 2011). It is worth 
noting that both kinds of vision (familiar 
and unfamiliar figures) belong to the same 
category: social stimuli, conspecifics. The 
deep alteration of consciousness reported 
in NDEs therefore involves the perception/
hallucination of social stimuli, suggesting a 
potential link between consciousness and 
social perception.
Interestingly, many people are emotion-
ally close to their pets and hope to be reu-
nited with them after death. Therefore, in 
www.frontiersin.org January 2012 | Volume 3 | Article 6 | 1
General Commentary
published: 23 January 2012
doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2012.00006
accordance with the expectation hypothesis, 
it would also be reasonable to find a large 
number of hallucinations of deceased pets 
(non-social stimuli from an  evolutionary 
perspective). However, Kelly (2001) 
reported that, among almost 300 cases of 
NDEs, only two people (∼0.7%) reported 
seeing their pets. Again, this is theoretically 
compatible with the idea of common cogni-
tive–neural systems between our conscious-
ness and the perception of social stimuli.
We believe that Graziano and Kastner 
(2011) have raised an interesting point, 
and that the machinery that computes 
information about other people may be the 
same machinery that computes informa-
tion about our own awareness: this would 
explain why the altered state of conscious-
ness which occurs during NDEs may lead to 
hallucinations of social stimuli, regardless 
of people’s expectations or wishes.
RefeRences
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Blackmore, S. J. (1996). Near-death experiences. J. R. Soc. 
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experiences and the temporal lobe. Psychol. Sci. 15, 
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Bush, N. E. (2002). Afterward: making meaning after 
a frightening near-death experience. J. Near Death 
Stud. 21, 99–133.
Durwen, H. F., and Linke, D. B. (1987). Neuropsychological 
evaluation of patients with temporolimbic epilepsy. 
Adv. Neurosurg. 15, 152–157.
Facco, E. (2010). Esperienze di premorte. Scienza e 
coscienza ai confini tra fisica e metafisica. Lungavilla: 
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Greyson, B. (1983). Near-death experiences and personal 
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van Lommel, P., van Wees, R., Meyers, V., and Elfferich, I. 
(2001). Near-death experience in survivors of cardiac 
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Received: 23 November 2011; accepted: 06 January 2012; 
published online: 23 January 2012.
Citation: Agrillo C and Agrillo D (2012) Near-death experi-
ences as a tool for forming a broader comprehension of the 
link between consciousness and social perception: commen-
tary on Graziano and Kastner (2011). Front. Psychology 
3:6. doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2012.00006
This article was submitted to Frontiers in Consciousness 
Research, a specialty of Frontiers in Psychology.
Copyright © 2012 Agrillo and Agrillo. This is an open-
access article distributed under the terms of the Creative 
Commons Attribution Non Commercial License, which 
permits non-commercial use, distribution, and reproduc-
tion in other forums, provided the original authors and 
source are credited.
Agrillo and Agrillo Near-death experiences and social perception
Frontiers in Psychology | Consciousness Research  January 2012 | Volume 3 | Article 6 | 2


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Near-death experiences as a tool for forming a broader comprehension of the link between consciousness and social perception: Commentary on Graziano and Kastner (2011)

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Near-Death Experiences as a Tool for Forming a Broader Comprehension of the Link between Consciousness and Social Perception: Commentary on Graziano and Kastner (2011)

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