UVa hopes to participate in near-death experience

CHARLOTTESVILLE, Va. (AP) - File cabinets in Bruce Greyson’s Charlottesville office contain 30 years of interviews with people who say they’ve undergone near-death experiences.
    He has studied and written extensively on the subject.
    Yet the psychiatry professor and director of the University of Virginia’s Division of Perceptual Studies is still perplexed by the phenomenon.
    Greyson is not alone.
    The enigmatic phenomenon has prompted a group of international scientists and physicians to launch a large-scale scientific study of what happens when we die and the relationship between mind and brain during clinical death.
    The UVa Medical Center is one of numerous U.S. and European hospitals that will participate in the study.
    Greyson and UVa’s Dr. Robert O’Connor are running the research locally.
    Greyson is working on a proposal to present to the hospital’s Institutional Review Board, which has to sign off on the study. He hopes to submit the proposal by year’s end.