Outcomes, with their limits attached

The result: In 4,630 NDERF records, people answering YES to "was the experience difficult to express in words?" score higher on the standard depth scale than NO answerers (medians 16 vs 14, effect size 0.126, p=1.4e-13, confirmed independently twice). Present in both submission eras, stronger later. Cannot-describe language runs 17.6% in these narratives vs 0.77% in tinnitus patients describing their own hard-to-convey symptom (descriptive; survives length matching). This is a quantitative confirmation of a known feature of deep experiences, with receipts: preregistered rules, a sealed blind coding packet judged by a fresh isolated coder at 30/30 on every load-bearing category, and four adversarial review cycles, one of which caught and retracted an era-analysis error.

What it means: People are not sprinkling 'indescribable' around at random. The ones who say words fail are the ones whose experiences went deepest, and that pattern is strong enough to build on: it means the failure of language is itself a structured, studyable part of these experiences.

What it is NOT: Not proof the experiences are truly beyond language, because 'words cannot describe it' is also a phrase people learn from books and other tellers, and the questionnaire asks the question directly which nudges yes answers. Not a claim about verified persons, because the archive cannot confirm identities, so counts are distinct records.

Next test that could settle it: Recover NDERF questionnaire form history to test whether an instrument change explains the era strengthening

Open question: Does a documented NDERF questionnaire form change explain why the ineffability-depth association is stronger in later submissions?

The result: In 4,354 NDERF records, four questionnaire answers track depth scores in both the older and newer halves of the archive: saying you gained information about God, saying you gained special knowledge, reporting MORE consciousness than in normal life during the event, and still believing today the experience was real. And one clean near-zero: people who had heard of near-death experiences before their own score exactly as deep as people who never had (correlation +0.002 across 3,239 records). All of this is exploratory, not confirmed: the adversarial review found an ambiguity in one statistical control and a rule fix made after results were open, which caps every label until a repaired rerun on fresh records.

What it means: What people say they brought back from the experience tracks how deep it scored, and the cultural-script worry took a real hit: knowing the NDE story beforehand gives exactly zero extra depth. If people were retelling a script they had learned, the ones who knew it should score deeper, and they do not.

What it is NOT: Not confirmed findings, because the review caught an ambiguous control rule and an after-the-fact label fix, which by this lab's own rules caps everything at exploratory until a clean rerun. Not proof the experiences are real or accurate, because every measure is what one person says about themselves in one sitting. Not four independent discoveries, because two of the four answers partly overlap what the depth score already asks about.

Next test that could settle it: A repaired rerun with the control formula frozen exactly and decision rules tested on fake data first, judged on NDERF records submitted after 2026-08-15 that no one has seen yet

Open question: Do the four exploratory depth-linked answers survive a repaired frozen rerun judged on NDERF records submitted after 2026-08-15?

The result: Validated markers in 2,192 OBERF narratives follow a coarse order in the telling: onset/body markers early, tunnel and light mid-narrative, felt presence after them, return-to-body last; p=1e-4 in both corpus halves under an event-set-preserving null. Early-cluster internal order is not stable, so the supported claim is a coarse gradient, not a step-by-step sequence.

What it means: People telling out-of-body stories follow a shared coarse order: how it started comes early, tunnel and light land mid-story, a felt presence after them, and the return to the body last. Two thousand narratives beat shuffled versions of themselves at odds of one in ten thousand, in both halves of the archive.

What it is NOT: Not the order events were experienced in, because this measures how stories are told. Not a fine-grained sequence, because the early markers swap order freely and only the coarse gradient is supported.

Next test that could settle it: Frozen replication on the independently collected NDERF corpus with a second precision rater.

Open question: Does the coarse telling-order gradient replicate in the independently collected NDERF corpus?

The result: In the public 128-study ganzfeld compilation: pooled excess +376.2 hits over the ~5,459-trial chance expectation (p<1e-5), robust to greedy removal of 46 of 128 studies; decline over time absent at the frozen 0.01 threshold; small-study association suggestive only (p=0.019-0.047). Structure of the compiled file; upstream selection untested; no psi conclusion either way.

What it means: The public database of 128 telepathy-style ganzfeld studies really does contain more hits than chance predicts, and the excess survives removing a third of the studies and shows no fade over time. Whatever explains it, the compiled numbers themselves are not fragile.

What it is NOT: Not evidence for telepathy, because the audit tested only the structure of the compiled table and upstream publication selection remains untested. Not a final word, because the same frozen audit on an independent compilation is the named next step.

Next test that could settle it: Same frozen audit on the independent Tressoldi MA_GanzfeldESP compilation.

Open question: Does the database-level structure (robust pooled excess, no decline, weak small-study signal) hold in the independent Tressoldi compilation?

The result: Closed-set pseudonymous linkage within DreamBank after obvious content clues were removed.

What it means: Dream reports are individually distinctive enough that the same anonymous dreamer can be re-identified across time inside an archive even after obvious clues are removed. Anonymized dream text is not as anonymous as it looks.

What it is NOT: Not real-name identification, because the test only matched pseudonymous records to each other inside one closed archive. Not a privacy verdict on all dream data, because open-set testing with separated recorders is the named next step.

Next test that could settle it: Independent open-set cohort with recorder/transcriber separation.

Open question: Does dream-report linkage generalize to independent open-set contributors?

The result: Sleep-paralysis and NDE source-coded corpora support a trigger-specific Layer-1 body-boundary signature: sleep paralysis is led by paralysis/presence (7.209% / 8.909%), while NDE is led by vestibular separation/presence (17.76% / 14.269%).

What it means: The two experiences open differently in the telling: sleep-paralysis stories lead with being frozen and sensing a presence, while near-death stories lead with floating free of the body plus a presence. If that holds under validated labels, the trigger shapes the body story.

What it is NOT: Not usable as evidence yet, because the percentage contrasts rest on machine labels that must first pass a blinded human check. Not a mechanism claim, because word patterns in stories cannot show what the body did.

Next test that could settle it: Independently validate paralysis, presence, and vestibular labels on blinded rows, then recompute the corpus contrast.

Open question: Do G-LOC, syncope, coma, anesthesia, sleep-paralysis, and NDE data preserve trigger-specific body-boundary patterns?

The result: NDE life-review rows behave like a memory/social-affiliation subtype rather than a generic light/OBE subtype: within coded NDE life-review rows, deceased-relative co-occurrence is 58.14%, while bright-light co-occurrence is 16.279%.

What it means: Inside near-death stories that contain a life review, deceased relatives appear far more often than the famous bright light does. The life review may belong to a memory-and-family cluster of the experience rather than to the light-and-tunnel cluster.

What it is NOT: Not confirmed, because the coded rows behind the two percentages must be recovered and blindly re-validated before the contrast counts. Not a claim about real deceased persons, because these are story elements.

Next test that could settle it: Recover the coded rows, validate life-review/deceased-relative/light labels blindly, and reproduce both denominators.

Open question: Is the reported life-review/deceased-relative subtype reproducible from validated NDE rows?

The result: No shared brain signature appeared in the tested DMT EEG data; stronger test needs high-density paired data.

What it means: The tested brain recordings show no specific shared signature between DMT experiences and near-death states beyond what shared vocabulary and generic altered-state effects already explain. The popular "DMT model of the NDE" gets no support at this resolution.

What it is NOT: Not a disproof of any DMT-NDE connection, because the available recordings are low-density and a stronger test needs paired high-density data with validated NDE scoring. Not a claim about chemistry, because only electrical brain data was tested.

Next test that could settle it: High-density DMT/ketamine EEG with validated NDE scoring.

Open question: Do DMT and NDE reports share a specific signal beyond vocabulary and generic altered-state content?

The result: A reproducible slow-wave correlate appeared but is most consistent with arousal or sleep depth.

What it means: A brain-wave correlate of dream reporting does reproduce, but it behaves like ordinary arousal or sleep depth rather than a signature of the dream itself. A promising signal, most likely explained by the boring variable.

What it is NOT: Not a dead end, because absolute-power and source-localized replication with stage controls could still separate dreaming from depth. Not a confirmed dream marker, because the boring explanation currently fits.

Next test that could settle it: Absolute power and source-localized replication with stage/time controls.

Open question: Is the dream-report EEG correlate more than arousal or sleep depth?

The result: In two raw psychedelic-EEG datasets (ketamine and DMT), apparent increases in signal-diversity complexity (Lempel-Ziv) are largely explained by flattening of the 1/f aperiodic slope; after controlling for the aperiodic exponent, no separable complexity effect remains in these datasets.

What it means: In ketamine and DMT brain recordings, the celebrated rise in signal "complexity" mostly disappears once you account for a simple change in the overall shape of the frequency spectrum. The flagship complexity story largely reduces to a known, simpler measurement effect in these datasets.

What it is NOT: Not a claim that psychedelics do nothing to the brain, because the spectral change itself is real and large. Not universal, because two public datasets were tested and a person-level preregistered replication is the named next step.

Next test that could settle it: Replicate prospectively with person-level raw EEG and preregistered spectral controls.

Open question: Does the LZc effect remain absent after preregistered aperiodic control in new raw EEG?

The result: NDE and dream-report corpora show high visual-light/altered-state proxies while UAP report corpora show visual-light without the same internal-state framing; this suggests a separable altered-state imagery mechanism rather than a single generic light-reporting effect.

What it means: Bright-light imagery shows up in two different ways: near-death and dream stories wrap the light in language about their own inner state, while UFO sighting reports mention light without that inner framing. The light in a vision and the light in a sighting may be two different kinds of report.

What it is NOT: Not a confirmed mechanism, because the labels came from automated text matching that has not been independently validated. Not a claim about what anyone actually saw, because these are word patterns in stories.

Next test that could settle it: Re-run with source-locked human/LLM labels and matched report-purpose controls.

Open question: What survives when the exploratory light separation pattern is tested on validated held-out labels?

The result: Across NDE and dream-report corpora, sound, motion, and physiological proxies suggest a bounded sensory-reduction transition pattern: internally generated perception becomes more salient when ordinary sensory anchoring is reduced. Ganzfeld/protocol-experiment material is excluded from canonical support and retained only as experimental follow-up pending EP-PROTO controls.

What it means: Across near-death and dream stories, sound, motion, and body signals point the same direction: when ordinary sensory input drops away, internally generated perception takes over and becomes the story. This fits sleep onset, sensory deprivation, and near-death settings alike.

What it is NOT: Not proof of one shared mechanism, because the pattern comes from word proxies that have not passed a matched control test across settings. Not a statement about experiment data, because protocol studies were deliberately excluded here.

Next test that could settle it: Run the matched Ganzfeld/hypnosis/dream/sleep-paralysis control test.

Open question: Does a sensory-reduction pattern survive matched Ganzfeld, hypnosis, dream, and sleep-paralysis controls?

The result: Full-registry rows suggest NDE claims cluster death/afterlife, memory, and peace/love semantics differently from dream rows, implying that transition meaning rather than imagery alone may separate NDE-like material from ordinary dreams.

What it means: What separates near-death stories from ordinary dreams may not be the pictures but the meaning: death, afterlife, memory, and peace-and-love themes cluster differently in near-death material than in dream archives.

What it is NOT: Not a validated separator yet, because the meaning labels came from automated matching and the locked comparison test has not run. Not a claim that the experiences differ in nature, because this measures how they are told.

Next test that could settle it: Run the locked NDE/DreamBank meaning-communication contrast.

Open question: Do NDE and DreamBank meaning/communication contrasts survive source, length, and ontology controls?

The result: G-LOC and acute-hypoxia narratives suggest a recoverable transition subtype: sensory/motor fragments and dreamlets can occur without the full canonical NDE package, especially without prominent life review or deceased-relative encounter.

What it means: When fighter pilots black out from G-forces, they report dreamlets and sensory fragments but usually not the full near-death package with life review and deceased relatives. Brief oxygen loss alone seems to produce a lighter version, which makes the full package more interesting.

What it is NOT: Not a controlled comparison, because the blackout accounts come from scattered sources without matched denominators. Not proof the full package needs something beyond oxygen loss, because duration and context differ wildly between a centrifuge and a cardiac arrest.

Next test that could settle it: Acquire raw/prospective G-LOC or syncope reports with controls.

Open question: Do G-LOC, syncope, coma, anesthesia, sleep-paralysis, and NDE data preserve trigger-specific body-boundary patterns?