What if memory isn't stored entirely in the brain? Near-death experiences raise an intriguing question: if brain function is severely impaired, how can people remember who they are during the experience—and remember the experience afterward?
I had Kathy McDaniel, who had a near-death experience, on my podcast.
My engineering brain got stuck on a question.
Kathy described remembering who she was during her NDE. She remembered people from her life. She remembered what she experienced. And after she recovered, she remembered the experience.
That created a puzzle for me.
If consciousness and memory require a functioning brain, how could someone remember an experience that occurred while they were considered dead?
The idea that memory or consciousness may not be entirely localized to the brain has been explored scientifically. It isn't established as fact.
I decided to think about what that idea might mean.
Imagine all your memories are stored in a filing cabinet.
You experience something and put a file in the cabinet.
Later, you want to remember it, so you retrieve the file.
You remember your first car.
Open the filing cabinet.
You remember someone's face.
Open the filing cabinet.
You remember what you did yesterday.
Same filing cabinet.
Now suppose that filing cabinet isn't physically located in your body—it's in the cloud.
While you're alive, you access it from your body.
Then you have an NDE.
Your point of reference changes.
The filing cabinet doesn't.
You can still remember who you are, because you're accessing the filing cabinet.
You experience something during the NDE.
That experience goes into the filing cabinet.
Then you recover.
Your point of reference is once again your body.
You access the filing cabinet, and the memory of the NDE is there.
Same person. Different point of reference. Same filing cabinet.
I don't know if this is how memory works. What interests me is that changing one assumption gives us a different way to think about the question.
What if the filing cabinet isn't where we assume it to be?
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About the Author
Daniel Stih (danielstih.com) is an aerospace engineer, software engineer, indoor environmental consultant, and author of 12 books. For more 30 years, he has investigated complex problems spanning engineering, technology, the built environment, and human decision-making. His work explores how evidence, assumptions, and systems shape the conclusions we draw—and whether we're solving the right problem. Learn more about his approach in Why I Think This Way.