Division of Perceptual Studies — Publications
University of Virginia, Division of Perceptual Studies · ongoing · University of Virginia School of Medicine
This source is used as supports evidence across 5 linked claims and 7 related evidence hubs. Its citation record is marked verified; that verifies the source trail, not the truth of any linked claim.
Summary
Curated, regularly updated publications list from the academic group that runs the largest case database on children reporting past-life memories.
How this source is used on the map
The institutional home for serious empirical work on past-life memories and survival-related anomalies.
Citation record
- Authors
- University of Virginia, Division of Perceptual Studies
- Year
- ongoing
- Publication
- University of Virginia School of Medicine
- Source type
- University page
- Map role
- supports
- Credibility level
- primary
- Citation status
- Verified
- DOI
- Not recorded
- PubMed
- Not recorded
- Not recorded
Linked claims
A subset of past-life cases include birthmarks or birth defects whose location matches reported wounds — sometimes with autopsy verification.
Dying patients commonly report visits from deceased loved ones. Cross-cultural pattern with deep clinical familiarity.
A consistent core experience — peace, light, life review, OBE — reported across cultures and prospective hospital studies.
Decades of cases of young children making specific, verifiable claims about a deceased stranger's life — across many cultures, with reproducible sub-patterns (≈70% violent deaths, family-rebirth clusters).
Brief return of clear cognition shortly before death in patients with severe dementia or brain injury — observed across hospice care.
Related evidence hubs
Children's past-life memories, birthmark cases, and the rebirth interpretation.
Past-life memories, karma, soul contracts.
Evidence around dying, near-death experience, and what (if anything) continues.
Whether anything of mind continues.
Structured experiences during cardiac arrest and crisis.
The nature of subjective experience.
Brief return of clear cognition before death.
Related research reports
A comparative guide to the strongest survival-adjacent evidence: NDEs, terminal lucidity, deathbed visions, past-life memories, mediumship, and after-death communication.
A balanced synthesis of the strongest and weakest evidence across afterlife, consciousness, reincarnation, mystical, psi, and practice claims.
A source-linked synthesis of past-life memory cases, birthmark claims, reincarnation interpretations, and skeptical alternatives.
What NDE studies support, what they do not prove, and why the phenomenon remains one of the strongest spiritual-adjacent evidence clusters.
Related sources
Modern follow-up to AWARE that keeps the page current and helps distinguish reported awareness during resuscitation from stronger afterlife interpretations.
A strong clinical source for deathbed-vision pages because it studies the experience in hospice patients without requiring a survivalist interpretation.
Most-cited rigorous attempt at empirically testing claims of conscious awareness during clinical death.
The defining paper for terminal lucidity as a serious clinical phenomenon worth studying.
Exactly the sort of review the user-facing example refers to — written by the principal investigator at DOPS.
Adds a second medical-cohort anchor beside van Lommel and AWARE, useful for showing that NDE research is not based only on retrospective anecdote.