This new Greyson Scale provides a better overall picture, is easier to use, and makes it possible to distinguish between NDEs and experiences resulting from brain damage, from other stress responses, or from an altered state of mind caused, for example, by the use of drugs. Greyson uses a scale of 0 to 32, in which a score of 7 or higher marks the cutoff point for genuine NDEs in retrospective studies. The WCEI is best for determining the depth of an NDE while the Greyson Scale is useful for screening a population to identify NDEs.11
In both scoring systems, experiences with a score of 6 or lower in retrospective studies are not seen as real NDEs. I am convinced, however, that in the more recent prospective studies, in which all patients are monitored from the moment they regain consciousness or wake from their coma, each reported memory of the period of unconsciousness, even an experience with just a single element (that is, with an extremely low score), merits the label NDE. I say so because in the Dutch study all people with a low score—with a so-called superficial NDE—displayed in later interviews the classic personality changes associated with an NDE, which we will look at in more detail later.