http://www.usatoday.com/tech/science/discoveries/2007-08-23-out-of-body-experiences_N.htm
USA TODAY
Experts study out-of-body experiences
By Randolph E. Schmid, Associated Press
WASHINGTON — The stories seem strange but riveting. A heart attack victim recalls floating in the air, watching paramedics revive him. A surgical patient remembers hovering, watching the doctors operate.
Such widely reported out-of-body experiences have long been the territory of theology, philosophy and scary movies.
Now scientists have turned their attention to the topic.
Researchers in England and Switzerland have figured out ways to confuse the sensory signals received by the brain, allowing people to seem to be standing aside and watching themselves.
No, they're not using drugs, legal or otherwise.
FIND MORE STORIES IN: Researchers | Science | Blanke | Dr. Henrik Ehrsson
The research is described in Friday's edition of the journal Science.
Dr. Henrik Ehrsson of University College London's Institute of Neurology and the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm, explained that he was interested in a person's perception of the "self."
"I'm interested in the question of why I feel that my self is located inside my physical body. How does my brain know that I am standing right here," he said.
And what would happen to the self if a person could effectively move their eyes to another part of the room and observe themselves from an outside perspective? Would the self move with the eyes, or stay in the body, he wondered.
So seated volunteers were fitted with head-mounted video displays that allowed them to view themselves from behind, using a pair of video cameras, one for each eye.
A researcher would stand behind them and extend a plastic rod which they could see toward the area just below the cameras. At the same time another plastic rod, which they could not see, touched their chest.
The volunteers said they experienced the feeling of being behind their own body watching. Many found it "weird" and seemingly real, though not scary.
They felt "that their center of awareness 'self' is located outside their physical bodies and that they look at their bodies from the perspective of another person," he reported.
"The idea is to change the visual input and its relationship to the tactile information," he said. "The brain is always trying to interpret sensory information. The brain can trick itself."
In a second test, Ehrsson connected sensors to the skin to measure electrical conductance, which indicates emotional response.
He then allowed them to watch a hammer swing down to a point below the camera, as though it were going to hurt an unseen portion of the virtual body.
Their skin conductance registered emotional responses including fear, indicating they sensed their selves had left their physical bodies and moved to the virtual bodies where the hammer was swung.
The research has applications in neuroscience and also potentially in industrial applications involving virtual reality, he said.
Meanwhile, a team led by Olaf Blanke, a professor at the Laboratory of Cognitive Neuroscience at Ecole Polytechnique Federale in Lausanne, Switzerland, conducted a similar experiment using virtual reality goggles.
In these tests, the subjects could see a three-dimensional representation of their body, the body of a dummy, or a simple object directly in front of them. The subject then saw the back of the image being stroked with a paintbrush, either in or out of sync with someone stroking his own back.
Then the participants were blindfolded and backed up, and then asked to return to their original position.
Those whose backs were stroked synchronously with the virtual image of themselves or the human dummy consistently overshot their position in the direction of the image; but subjects who saw no virtual image or a simple object did not.
The study aimed at determining how senses play a role in self consciousness, Blanke said.
Ehrsson's research was funded by the Wellcome Trust, the Presence: Research Encompassing Sensory Enhancement, Neuroscience, Cerebral-Computer Interfaces and Applications Project, the Human Frontier Science Program, Swedish Medical Research Council and the Swedish Foundation for Strategic Research. Blanke's work was funded by the Cojito Foundation, Foundation de Familie Sandoz, the Foundation Odier and the Swiss National Science Foundation.
Experts study out-of-body experiences
by rebel8 7 Replies latest jw friends
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rebel8
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lfcviking
out-of-body experiences
i had one the other night but it might be something to do with the 4 cans of Carlsberg special brew i had
ooooooo floaty floaty
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the dreamer dreaming
the world we know is a virtual one, invented by our mind, playing a symbolic body at its center... the body you know is not your actual body.
when your brain pays too much attention to things outside the body, it can seem like you have left your body..but its only the symbolic body, you have never and will never know your true body's shape or form, which may have nothing to do with the human token you use to play this game called life.
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rebel8
Interesting.
I found a thread on this forum that was supporting belief in out of body experiences. It had 5x as many views as this one and about 5x as many posts. -
AlmostAtheist
I thought the article was quite interesting, and helped to explain how people have these experiences. After all, your mind is not your body, is not contained in your body, and has only its "sensors" to tell where the body is. Trick the sensors and the mind will believe anything.
I doubt it will sway anyone that feels they've had an out of body experience, or near-death experience. But it was very interesting.
Dave
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IP_SEC
over several years I've conditioned myself to have OBEs. Had them spontanously a lot when young.
It can feel so real/indistinguishable from life that I understand why someone might attach a supernatural meaning to them.
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brinjen
I've had one OBE, when my mother was in hospital about a week or so before she died. I was at home, having an afternoon nap when I felt like I was floating. It was weird as I was aware I was sleeping in my bed but at the same time I felt aware of the ceiling directly in front of me.
I could see my mother in her hospital bed with a hoard of doctors and medical staff working on her in a frenzy. I also became aware that I couldn't breath, no matter how much I tried my lungs just felt empty. I started to panic and try to work my way back down from the ceiling, then the floating sensation stopped and I just gulped in mouthfuls of air, I really wasn't able to breath...
Not long after, I was woken up by a phone call from the hospital, my mother had just had a heart attack...
Being a dub still at the time my first thought was demons, now I know different of course. But I still can't explain what happened...
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rebel8
I believe your brain creates these experiences.
I remember studying this in college and an experiment whereby brain surgeons found they could poke a certain specific spot in the brain and the subjects would say they smell oranges (or something like that).
Working with patients detoxing from an array of addictive substances, I heard them say what I learned in the textbooks--certain drugs produce certain types of hallucinations (alcohol-bugs, etc.). Sometimes they would lie about drinking, they'd complain about bugs crawling on their skin, and finally they'd admit to us that they had a drinking problem. The particular type of hallucination they were having was one way we'd determine what the problem was, along with any other type of physical symptom (i.e., elevated blood pressure for alcohol withdrawal).
I remember reading about a study of schizophrenics who were having auditory hallucinations and their ears were reacting to the imaginary sound waves as though they were actually hearing something.
It makes sense that things like psychological trauma, surgery/illness, or dream states could also produce certain experiences. We know those things affect the brain.
The people in rehab actually saw bugs and were shocked that no one else could see them. It was real to them. I have dreams too and they seem very real.
As Dave said, it's not as though this will change anyone's mind. Just thought the results of this recent study were fascinating.