Between life and death, the gray zone, we’ve all heard the stories, near death experiences, comatose patients come back to life. On this episode of The Halli Casser-Jayne Show we explore that mysterious place between life and death with two people who are experts on the subject, world renowned neuroscientist Dr. Adrian Owen the author of a riveting new book INTO THE GRAY ZONE: A NEUROSCIENTIST EXPLORES THE BORDER BETWEEN LIFE AND DEATH and Dr. Eban Alexander renowned academic neurosurgeon and author of PROOF OF HEAVEN, A NEUROSURGEON’S JOURNEY INTO THE AFTERLIFE.

In one of the most profound books of the year thus far, INTO THE GRAY ZONE, Dr. Adrian Owen takes his readers on a vivid, emotional, and thought-provoking journey in which he explores the little understood boundary between life and death. No cold scientific treatise this. INTO THE GRAY ZONE is a dazzling glimpse at a new frontier in our scientific understanding of the brain and the newly-discovered zones in the twilight region between full consciousness and brain death. His true-life characters and their tales of conscious or barely-conscious lives living on the border of life and death – and the heartbroken families having to make decisions about their care is at once fascinating, titillating and provocative. When Dr. Owen pushes forward the boundaries of science, he shockingly discovers that a sizeable number of patients previously thought to be vegetative or non-responsive – often victims of traumatic brain injuries, strokes, or degenerative diseases like Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s – are actually vibrantly alive, trapped in the gray zone.

Dr. Eban Alexander is a renowned academic neurosurgeon who has spent 54 years honing his scientific worldview. Having practiced fifteen years at the Brigham & Women’s and the Children’s Hospitals and Harvard Medical School in Boston, he thought he knew how the brain and mind worked. And then the doctor became the patient when Dr. Alexander’s own brain was attacked by a rare illness. The part of the brain that controls thought and emotion—and in essence makes us human—shut down completely. For seven days he lay in a coma. And just as his doctors considered stopping treatment, Dr. Alexander’s eyes popped open. He had come back to life, but only after he had experienced a transcendental Near-Death Experience … an NDE. He told his story in the controversial New York Times bestseller PROOF OF HEAVEN, A NEUROSURGEON’S JOURNEY INTO THE AFTERLIFE, which remained a bestseller for over sixty seven weeks, Alexander asserting his belief that there is an afterlife, and that consciousness is independent of the brain.

Between life and death, consciousness, life after death, medicine, the brain, ethics, religion, philosophy, science -- tune in to The Halli Casser-Jayne Show, the podcast posted at Halli Casser-Jayne dot com.