NYRB: "In a remarkably literal test of extracorporeal perception, the investigators placed a tablet above patients undergoing CPR and projected one of ten images for their disembodied consciousnesses to apprehend. The tablet was deliberately turned away from the direction of chest compressions so that it would be visible only from above. The investigators also palyed an audio recording of the names of three fruits through a pair of headphones (allowing for the possibility of consciousness lingering between a dead body's ears rather than drifting immediately toward the ceiling). Of the hundreds of cardiac arrest patients included in the study, only twenty-eight survivors were healthy enough to complete a post-resuscitation interview [!], the results of which didn't prove much: no respondents could recall their visual cure, and only one correctly identified the fruits as 'apple,' 'pear,' and 'banana.'"
However, "convergent details of survivors' testimonies [serve as] convincing evidence for the existence of near-death experiences"
in a study of "over one hundred cardiac arrest survivors," although "only one patient had verifiable sensory recollections of the arrest itself, and none remembered any of the visual stimuli planted by the study team [...], half of all interviewees endorsed some subjective recollection of their period of unconsciousness, and 9 percent of those reports were consistent with an archetypal near-death experience"