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To The Editor:
We read with interest the article by Nelson et al. suggesting an association between REM intrusion and near-death experience (NDE).1 We applaud their creative hypothesis about NDE, but caution against drawing premature etiologic conclusions from a correlational study.
Their NDE sample, drawn from volunteers who shared their NDE on the Internet, may be atypical of most NDE experiencers in their willingness to acknowledge unusual experiences publicly. Moreover, it is plausible that sleep paralysis questions embedded for the NDE sample in an Internet survey of unusual experiences would elicit more positive responses than identical questions presented solely in interviews to the control sample.
Furthermore, we suspect the control group, “recruited from medical center personnel or their contacts,” would have reservations about endorsing hallucinations and related symptoms they would likely identify as pathologic. This suspicion is bolstered …
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