The researcher in Wolfgang's link makes an interesting, carefully tentative conclusion:

"With lack of evidence for any other theories for NDE, the thus far assumed, but never proven, concept that consciousness and memories are localised in the brain should be discussed. How could a clear consciousness outside one's body be experienced at the moment that the brain no longer functions during a period of clinical death with flat EEG?22 Also, in cardiac arrest the EEG usually becomes flat in most cases within about 10 s from onset of syncope.29,30 Furthermore, blind people have described veridical perception during out-of-body experiences at the time of this experience.31 NDE pushes at the limits of medical ideas about the range of human consciousness and the mind-brain relation.

Another theory holds that NDE might be a changing state of consciousness (transcendence), in which identity, cognition, and emotion function independently from the unconscious body, but retain the possibility of non-sensory perception.7,8,22,28,31

Research should be concentrated on the effort to explain scientifically the occurrence and content of NDE. Research should be focused on certain specific elements of NDE, such as out-of-body experiences and other verifiable aspects. Finally, the theory and background of transcendence should be included as a part of an explanatory framework for these experiences. "

I have pointed out this gap in models versus phenomena often when the subject comes up in threads. In Wolfgang's link alone there are two explicit (and a dozen implicit) documented cases of specific particulars being perceived and later verified, by a person who was clinically dead or completely comatose, but who reported an out of body capacity for accurate perception (at a time when the body had, apparently, NO capacity for perception as generally understood).

I have used the analogy in the past of believing that "all thought and perception is brain-generated" being akin to believing that your blue plastic cordless telephone, with its mysterious circuits and chips, actually contains the ability to generate all kinds of communications and opinions, if only you could figure out how the wiring worked.

The analogy gets extended in the present context: when one's phone gets broken and shattered, the owner is still quite capable of generating perceptions, opinions, and communications, if less able to deliver them over a distance because the phone is broken.

A