Scientific Evidence for the Survival of Consciousness
Thu Feb 05 2026
In this episode I'm talking to Dr. Nicolas Rouleau, Ph.D. about his Essay An Immortal Stream of Consciousness: The scientific evidence for the survival of consciousness after permanent bodily death.
This Essay was a Bigelow Institute for Consciousness Studies Essay Competition Winner
Is experience possible after death? "An immortal stream of consciousness: The scientific evidence for the survival of consciousness after permanent bodily death" was the title of Nicolas Rouleau's award-winning 2021 submission for the Bigelow Institute for Consciousness Studies' international essay competition. Adapted here as a short book, the essay describes a transmissive theory of consciousness inspired by William James and supported by experimental evidence in the field of bioelectromagnetism including the works of the author (Rouleau) and his former doctoral mentor, Michael A. Persinger. It is one of few scientific theories that reconciles physicalism with survival of consciousness after bodily death.
Bio
Dr. Nicolas Rouleau is a neuroscientist, bioengineer, and Assistant Professor of Health Sciences at Wilfrid Laurier University. He is also an Adjunct Professor of Biomedical Engineering at Tufts University and Affiliate Scientist at the Allen Discovery Center at Tufts. Dr. Rouleau was the last PhD student of Michael Persinger of Laurentian University, whose work on the electromagnetic bases of consciousness inspired Rouleau to pursue his dissertation on the material-like properties of brain tissues, including their capacity to filter electromagnetic fields. In 2017, he joined the Allen Discovery Center at Tufts University as a Postdoctoral Researcher and was a founding member of David Kaplan's Initiative for Neural Science, Disease, & Engineering at Tufts, focusing on minimal cognitive responses in bioengineered brain models.
As a post-doc, Dr. Rouleau published several 3D tissue models of Alzheimer's Disease and traumatic brain injury. During the research freeze of the COVID pandemic, he wrote an award-winning essay on the topic of transmissive consciousness for the Bigelow Institute of Consciousness Studies, which garnered international attention. In 2023, Dr. Rouleau became a faculty member at Laurier and is now a PI of the Self-Organizing Units Lab (SOUL), which is supported by Tri-Council awards to investigate the mechanisms of embodied cognition and synthetic biological intelligences in customizable, bioengineered neural tissues. He also co-directs (with his colleague, Dr. Murugan) the Center for Tissue Plasticity and Biophysics (TPAB) at Laurier. He is most interested in the fundamental and scale-invariant properties of cognitive systems as well as the pursuit of unifying principles that reconcile organic neural function with analogous phenomena in cells, machines, and non-neural organisms.
https://www.bigelowinstitute.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/10/rouleau-immortal-consciousness.pdf
https://www.pastliveshypnosis.co.uk/
https://www.patreon.com/ourparanormalafterlife
My book 'Verified Near Death Experiences' https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0DXKRGDFP
Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.
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In this episode I'm talking to Dr. Nicolas Rouleau, Ph.D. about his Essay An Immortal Stream of Consciousness: The scientific evidence for the survival of consciousness after permanent bodily death. This Essay was a Bigelow Institute for Consciousness Studies Essay Competition Winner Is experience possible after death? "An immortal stream of consciousness: The scientific evidence for the survival of consciousness after permanent bodily death" was the title of Nicolas Rouleau's award-winning 2021 submission for the Bigelow Institute for Consciousness Studies' international essay competition. Adapted here as a short book, the essay describes a transmissive theory of consciousness inspired by William James and supported by experimental evidence in the field of bioelectromagnetism including the works of the author (Rouleau) and his former doctoral mentor, Michael A. Persinger. It is one of few scientific theories that reconciles physicalism with survival of consciousness after bodily death. Bio Dr. Nicolas Rouleau is a neuroscientist, bioengineer, and Assistant Professor of Health Sciences at Wilfrid Laurier University. He is also an Adjunct Professor of Biomedical Engineering at Tufts University and Affiliate Scientist at the Allen Discovery Center at Tufts. Dr. Rouleau was the last PhD student of Michael Persinger of Laurentian University, whose work on the electromagnetic bases of consciousness inspired Rouleau to pursue his dissertation on the material-like properties of brain tissues, including their capacity to filter electromagnetic fields. In 2017, he joined the Allen Discovery Center at Tufts University as a Postdoctoral Researcher and was a founding member of David Kaplan's Initiative for Neural Science, Disease, & Engineering at Tufts, focusing on minimal cognitive responses in bioengineered brain models. As a post-doc, Dr. Rouleau published several 3D tissue models of Alzheimer's Disease and traumatic brain injury. During the research freeze of the COVID pandemic, he wrote an award-winning essay on the topic of transmissive consciousness for the Bigelow Institute of Consciousness Studies, which garnered international attention. In 2023, Dr. Rouleau became a faculty member at Laurier and is now a PI of the Self-Organizing Units Lab (SOUL), which is supported by Tri-Council awards to investigate the mechanisms of embodied cognition and synthetic biological intelligences in customizable, bioengineered neural tissues. He also co-directs (with his colleague, Dr. Murugan) the Center for Tissue Plasticity and Biophysics (TPAB) at Laurier. He is most interested in the fundamental and scale-invariant properties of cognitive systems as well as the pursuit of unifying principles that reconcile organic neural function with analogous phenomena in cells, machines, and non-neural organisms. https://www.bigelowinstitute.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/10/rouleau-immortal-consciousness.pdf https://www.pastliveshypnosis.co.uk/ https://www.patreon.com/ourparanormalafterlife My book 'Verified Near Death Experiences' https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0DXKRGDFP Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.