The AWARE (AWAreness during Resuscitation) study was announced at the UN Symposium Beyond the Mind-Body Problem: New Paradigms in the Science of Consciousness, on September 11, 2008. The symposium at the United Nations featured some of the leading NDE researchers and other experts in the field of near death experiences and mind-body science.

The AWARE study is the first NDE research study launched by the Human Consciousness Project, which is led by Dr. Sam Parnia, an expert in consciousness during clinical death.

In this team, Dr. Parnia has other renowned experts; Dr. Peter Fenwick and Professors Stephen Holgate and Robert Peveler of the University of Southampton, and the study will be the first multi-center study working together with over 25 major medical centers in Europe, Canada and the United States.

The NDE study will use the latest technologies available to study the brain and consciousness during cardiac arrest. One aim of the study is to gain greater insights into what happens to consciousness during clinical death and the relationship between mind and brain.  

Indisputable empirical evidence that the Near Death Experience does indeed happen during clinical death has long been an aim of NDE research, and the AWARE study will use hidden images that are only visible to the patients from outside the body. The study is predicting that people having NDEs during cardiac arrest will be able to identify the images from outside their bodies.