Consciousness is the experience if processing information, there is no reason to believe its anything more than that There are also other studies besides the L

Consciousness is the experience if processing information, there is no reason to believe its anything more than that There are also other studies besides the Libet ones, more recent ones using things like fMRI and in vivo electrophysiology in awake human patients. If we think about how neurons and their networks function, there isn't a mechanism in the realm of biophysics that allows for nondeterminism. That alone precludes the possibility of what people classically think of as free will. I've had discussions with other neuroscientists about this and they came to the same conclusion. Just because something seems "weird" doesn't actually mean anything and its likely the person's perception of the situation that instills that feeling. Near death experiences are entirely subjective, again its perception and information processing. The brain is great at connecting concepts and generating ideas even while we're unconscious. Its not like we stop processing sensory information when we aren't active. As someone who studies behavioral neuroscience, I would never use an NDE itself as evidence of anything besides the fact that it is a phenomena that happens sometimes There is a decent overview on wikipedia, they do discuss criticisms as well: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neuroscience_of_free_will https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neuroscience_of_free_will As a side note, I don't think that paper on pnas concludes what you think it does. They state that a stochastic model could account for the buildup, in reality the stochastic model is simulating the chaotic environment of biochemistry. That environment is still deterministic and we absolutely could predict the entire system if we are able to simulate all of the variables. Neurons are complex, but no matter how you slice it they are still a deterministic system