When a person recounts a near-death experience (e.g., saying “I walked through a tunnel towards a light”), they are more likely to make gestures corresponding to their story than when describing everyday events (e.g., walking through a regular tunnel to a bus stop). Could this be another way to distinguish true stories from fictional ones?
An international group of researchers from China, Norway, and Germany, led by Omid Khatin-Zadeh, examined ten stories from the Persian TV series Life After Life, on which individuals shared their near-death experiences. Interestingly, when recounting their “adventures,” survivors generally made more gestures, both iconic (i.e., those that literally describe the situation, such as drawing a circle in the air when describing something round) and metaphorical, than people typically make when telling stories.
The authors proposed two hypotheses to explain this abundance of gestures:
1. During a near-death experience, all of a person’s sensations are amplified. For instance, one survivor mentioned that the light was like a thousand lamps, while another said they could distinguish microscopic objects.
2. Near-death experiences are so unusual that they are difficult to describe with words alone.
It’s worth adding that near-death experiences may be one of the phase states, like lucid dreams and out-of-body experiences. In one experiment, REMspace participants intentionally recreated a popular scenario experienced by survivors—flying through a tunnel towards a light—in a lucid dream.
Do you gesture more actively when describing your phase state experiences?
The article was published in October 2024 in Explore.
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