Another possible source of evidence for the mind's surviving the brain is the occurrence of neardeath
experiences.People who have come close to death because of medical emergencies often report that they experience
going off into a tunnel with a bright light at the end, only somehow to be pulled back. Even the famous
atheistic philosopher A.J. Ayer reported a near-death experience that temporarily weakened his conviction
that death would be the end of him. However, reports of neardeath experiences are only very weak evidence
for the existence of souls, because science provides plausible alternative explanations. Heart attacks and
other medical conditions can cause shortage of oxygen in the brain with cognitive effects that are heightened by people's expectations: many people
have heard about walking down a tunnel toward a light. Out-of-body experiences can be induced by
laboratory experiments that produce confusion between the senses, and may be due to neural
disruptions at the boundary between the temporal and parietal regions. Hence reports of near-death
experiences are like reports of communications with the dead in that we can explain them without
supposing that minds survive death.