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

View ORCID ProfileDaniel Kondziella, Markus Harboe Olsen, Coline L. Lemale, Jens P. Dreier
doi: https://doi.org/10.1101/811885
Daniel Kondziella
1Department of Neurology, Rigshospitalet, Copenhagen University Hospital, Copenhagen, Denmark
2Faculty of Health and Medical Sciences, Copenhagen University, Copenhagen, Denmark
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  • For correspondence: daniel_kondziella@yahoo.com
Markus Harboe Olsen
3Department of Neuroanesthesiology, Rigshospitalet, Copenhagen University Hospital, Copenhagen, Denmark
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Coline L. Lemale
4Department of Neurology, Charité - Universitätsmedizin Berlin, Freie Universität Berlin, Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, Berlin Institute of Health, Berlin, Germany
5Center for Stroke Research Berlin, Charité - Universitätsmedizin Berlin, Freie Universität Berlin, Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, Berlin Institute of Health, Berlin, Germany
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Jens P. Dreier
4Department of Neurology, Charité - Universitätsmedizin Berlin, Freie Universität Berlin, Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, Berlin Institute of Health, Berlin, Germany
5Center for Stroke Research Berlin, Charité - Universitätsmedizin Berlin, Freie Universität Berlin, Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, Berlin Institute of Health, Berlin, Germany
6Department of Experimental Neurology, Charité - Universitätsmedizin Berlin, Freie Universität Berlin, Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, Berlin Institute of Health, Berlin, Germany
7Bernstein Center for Computational Neuroscience Berlin, Berlin, Germany
8Einstein Center for Neurosciences Berlin, Berlin, Germany
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Abstract

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 1037 laypeople from 35 countries via a crowdsourcing platform. Reports were validated using the Greyson NDE Scale.

Results Eighty-one of 1037 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: Forty-eight (6.1%) of 783 subjects without migraine aura and 33 (13.0%) of 254 subjects with migraine aura had NDE (p<0.001, chi-square test, 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.

Copyright 
The copyright holder for this preprint is the author/funder, who has granted bioRxiv a license to display the preprint in perpetuity. It is made available under a CC-BY-ND 4.0 International license.
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Posted October 21, 2019.
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Migraine aura, a predictor of near-death experiences in a crowdsourced study
Daniel Kondziella, Markus Harboe Olsen, Coline L. Lemale, Jens P. Dreier
bioRxiv 811885; doi: https://doi.org/10.1101/811885
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Migraine aura, a predictor of near-death experiences in a crowdsourced study
Daniel Kondziella, Markus Harboe Olsen, Coline L. Lemale, Jens P. Dreier
bioRxiv 811885; doi: https://doi.org/10.1101/811885

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