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Migraine aura, a predictor of near-death experiences in a crowdsourced study

BACKGROUND: Near-death experiences (NDE) occur with imminent death and in situations of stress and danger but are poorly understood. Evidence suggests that NDE are associated with rapid eye movement (REM) sleep intrusion, a feature of narcolepsy. Previous studies further found REM abnormalities and...

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Autores principales: Kondziella, Daniel, Olsen, Markus Harboe, Lemale, Coline L., Dreier, Jens P.
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: PeerJ Inc. 2019
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6898989/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/31824781
http://dx.doi.org/10.7717/peerj.8202
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author Kondziella, Daniel
Olsen, Markus Harboe
Lemale, Coline L.
Dreier, Jens P.
author_facet Kondziella, Daniel
Olsen, Markus Harboe
Lemale, Coline L.
Dreier, Jens P.
author_sort Kondziella, Daniel
collection PubMed
description BACKGROUND: Near-death experiences (NDE) occur with imminent death and in situations of stress and danger but are poorly understood. Evidence suggests that NDE are associated with rapid eye movement (REM) sleep intrusion, a feature of narcolepsy. Previous studies further found REM abnormalities and an increased frequency of dream-enacting behavior in migraine patients, as well as an association between migraine with aura and narcolepsy. We therefore investigated if NDE are more common in people with migraine aura. METHODS: We recruited 1,037 laypeople from 35 countries and five continents, without any filters except for English language and age ≥18 years, via a crowdsourcing platform. Reports were validated using the Greyson NDE Scale. RESULTS: Eighty-one of 1,037 participants had NDE (7.8%; CI [6.3–9.7%]). There were no significant associations between NDE and age (p > 0.6, t-test independent samples) or gender (p > 0.9, Chi-square test). The only significant association was between NDE and migraine aura: 48 (6.1%) of 783 subjects without migraine aura and 33 (13.0%) of 254 subjects with migraine aura had NDE (p < 0.001, odds ratio (OR) = 2.29). In multiple logistic regression analysis, migraine aura remained significant after adjustment for age (p < 0.001, OR = 2.31), gender (p < 0.001, OR = 2.33), or both (p < 0.001, OR = 2.33). CONCLUSIONS: In our sample, migraine aura was a predictor of NDE. This indirectly supports the association between NDE and REM intrusion and might have implications for the understanding of NDE, because a variant of spreading depolarization (SD), terminal SD, occurs in humans at the end of life, while a short-lasting variant of SD is considered the pathophysiological correlate of migraine aura.
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spelling pubmed-68989892019-12-10 Migraine aura, a predictor of near-death experiences in a crowdsourced study Kondziella, Daniel Olsen, Markus Harboe Lemale, Coline L. Dreier, Jens P. PeerJ Neuroscience BACKGROUND: Near-death experiences (NDE) occur with imminent death and in situations of stress and danger but are poorly understood. Evidence suggests that NDE are associated with rapid eye movement (REM) sleep intrusion, a feature of narcolepsy. Previous studies further found REM abnormalities and an increased frequency of dream-enacting behavior in migraine patients, as well as an association between migraine with aura and narcolepsy. We therefore investigated if NDE are more common in people with migraine aura. METHODS: We recruited 1,037 laypeople from 35 countries and five continents, without any filters except for English language and age ≥18 years, via a crowdsourcing platform. Reports were validated using the Greyson NDE Scale. RESULTS: Eighty-one of 1,037 participants had NDE (7.8%; CI [6.3–9.7%]). There were no significant associations between NDE and age (p > 0.6, t-test independent samples) or gender (p > 0.9, Chi-square test). The only significant association was between NDE and migraine aura: 48 (6.1%) of 783 subjects without migraine aura and 33 (13.0%) of 254 subjects with migraine aura had NDE (p < 0.001, odds ratio (OR) = 2.29). In multiple logistic regression analysis, migraine aura remained significant after adjustment for age (p < 0.001, OR = 2.31), gender (p < 0.001, OR = 2.33), or both (p < 0.001, OR = 2.33). CONCLUSIONS: In our sample, migraine aura was a predictor of NDE. This indirectly supports the association between NDE and REM intrusion and might have implications for the understanding of NDE, because a variant of spreading depolarization (SD), terminal SD, occurs in humans at the end of life, while a short-lasting variant of SD is considered the pathophysiological correlate of migraine aura. PeerJ Inc. 2019-12-04 /pmc/articles/PMC6898989/ /pubmed/31824781 http://dx.doi.org/10.7717/peerj.8202 Text en © 2019 Kondziella et al. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) , which permits unrestricted use, distribution, reproduction and adaptation in any medium and for any purpose provided that it is properly attributed. For attribution, the original author(s), title, publication source (PeerJ) and either DOI or URL of the article must be cited.
spellingShingle Neuroscience
Kondziella, Daniel
Olsen, Markus Harboe
Lemale, Coline L.
Dreier, Jens P.
Migraine aura, a predictor of near-death experiences in a crowdsourced study
title Migraine aura, a predictor of near-death experiences in a crowdsourced study
title_full Migraine aura, a predictor of near-death experiences in a crowdsourced study
title_fullStr Migraine aura, a predictor of near-death experiences in a crowdsourced study
title_full_unstemmed Migraine aura, a predictor of near-death experiences in a crowdsourced study
title_short Migraine aura, a predictor of near-death experiences in a crowdsourced study
title_sort migraine aura, a predictor of near-death experiences in a crowdsourced study
topic Neuroscience
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6898989/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/31824781
http://dx.doi.org/10.7717/peerj.8202
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