When people are claimed to have near death experiences when their brains are said to completely shut down, we have to look at this both ways. First off, these people claim that they are very real and vivid experiences far more real and vivid than their dreams. So it would have to take much more activity of the brain to yield these near death experiences than the activity that is needed to create dreams for these specific individuals. Why is that? It is because to create a mental experience or image that is much more vivid and realistic requires more brain activity to do so.
So there could be a surge of brain activity that the scientists just simply have not managed to pick up on for some reason. So the person might of never been truly dead. His/her brain might of not completely shut down. But the question is why is it that there is more brain activity during these near death experiences than the brain activity that yields our dreams? I think that would be an important clue for scientists to try and figure out what is the cause of these near death experiences and why they happen.
Now if you were to ask these people what these experiences were like and they told you that it was not like a dream and that it was like living in actual waking reality, then I can’t help but find that more than curious. The reason why our waking world seems so real to us would be because our brain activity is fully up and running. We do not have a loss of brain activity to yield an experience that is dream-like such as being asleep and dreaming. So in order to create a near death experience that is completely real, then the brain would have to be fully up and running in activity which would be impossible since those scientists clearly saw the activity of the brain. That being, it was nearly gone.
So that might imply the supernatural. Or it might not. I don’t know. But you also have to consider that these people might of never had near death experiences to begin with and that when they nearly died and woke back up, that they only thought they had one when they never did. They might of deluded themselves into thinking that they transcended to a spirit and experienced something when they didn’t.
Also, if these were dream like states for these people and since it takes a brain of little activity to produce a dream like state and a fully up and running brain to produce a full waking reality state, then I think this obviously says here that these near death experiences are nothing supernatural and can only be the result of the little brain activity that occurs when a person is nearly dead with their brain functions mostly all shut down.
I will also consider another thing. Maybe the brain just simply has a “jump start” function that brings an almost dead person back to life which creates hallucinations and whatnot. But all in all, I think we need to ask these people who had these near death experiences as to whether their experience was like them being in actual waking reality or if it was instead a dream like experience that was very real. Dream like states that are very real are not as real as full waking reality states. So that would imply less brain activity compared to a full waking reality state. Therefore, I think this would give us a very important clue as to figuring this whole thing out.
Furthermore, if these are all subjective various levels of dream like vividness and realism, then this would imply various levels of brain activity and nothing supernatural. If one person has a near death experience that didn’t seem all that real or vivid to him/her while another had another one which was quite real, then that would imply brain activity and nothing supernatural. But if it is the same experience for everyone such as it always being a fully waking reality state that is completely real, then that would appear quite curious to me.