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Out-Of-Body Experience
How can I have an
out-of-body experience?
BY JACOB SILVERMAN
You
may be familiar with out-of-body experiences (OBE) from
a TV show or news story, or perhaps you've experienced one yourself.
For
centuries these strange phenomena have fascinated doctors, scientists,
religious scholars and amateur theorists.
Generally,
OBEs are associated with illness or traumatic incidents, but on Aug. 24, 2007,
British and Swiss researchers published studies in the academic journal Science
describing how it may be possible to produce OBEs in healthy people.
The
experiments depended on figuring out what makes a person's brain know
that he is located within his physical body.
Is
it primarily the sense of sight, or do several senses and other processes have
to work together?
If
a person is able to step outside himself, look around a room and see his own
body as an outsider, what would happen?
Would
he still feel located in his physical body or would his sense of self shift to
where his point of view -- his "eyes" -- was positioned?
To
answer these questions, the British researchers at the University College
London Institute of Neurology conducted two tests.
In
the first test, volunteers sat in chairs and wore video displays over their eyes.
The display projected images from two cameras located about six feet
behind the test subject.
Each
camera served as an eye, with one projecting on the left side of the display
and the other on the right. The effect resulted in the participant seeing one
image from a point of view six feet behind his own back.
A
researcher then stood in front of the cameras so that he appeared to be next to
the participant's "virtual body."
From
that position he touched the chests of the subject's real and virtual bodies at
the same time with two plastic rods.
The
result was that the participants felt like they were in their virtual bodies,
even though they felt the touch of the rod. Many described the experience as
funny or strange.
The
second test used sweat sensors to gauge participants' emotional reactions.
In
view of the cameras, a researcher swung down a hammer at the participant's
virtual body. The sensors showed that the participants were afraid they were
actually going to be hit with the hammer.
Researchers
from Switzerland conducted the third test at the Laboratory of Cognitive
Neuroscience at the Ecole Polytechnique Federale.
Volunteers
were shown one of three 3-D projections: a block, a dummy or the volunteer's
own body. Someone then touched the volunteer's back while another person
touched the back of the projection with a brush -- simultaneously in some
cases.
The
researchers then blindfolded the volunteers, moved them backward and removed
the blindfold.
When
asked to return to where they stood before, people who had had their backs
touched simultaneously with the image of their body moved to where the
projection had been -- not where they originally stood.
Those
who had observed the dummy or block being touched returned to the proper
position.
Real and Artificial Out-of-Body Experiences
In
an out-of-body experience, a person sees his body from a vantage point outside
his physical self.
OBEs
are frequently associated with serious illness, accidents, seizures, near-death
experiences or other traumatic events.
As
much as 10 percent of the population may at some point have an OBE [source: UCL News], though one expert on the subject claims it's only 5
percent [source: Forbes.com].
In
any case, it's a phenomenon that's received attention in many different
scientific disciplines, religions and metaphysical discussions.
Several
possible explanations exist for why OBEs occur during physical injury, illness
or trauma:
· A lack of
oxygen alters brain activity.
· The brain
copes with trauma by "leaving" the body, helping a person to survive.
· Stress causes
various physical senses, including one's sense of physical self, known as proprioception,
to become confused.
Some
people believe in a spiritual cause or that OBEs can be achieved deliberately,
such as through hypnosis.
So
did the British and Swiss experiments produce genuine out-of-body experiences?
Both
experiments appeared to show that a sense of one's self depends on cooperation
between the senses and that experimentation can radically disrupt this linkage.
Past
experiments have shown that the physical body plays an important role in how a
person identifies his "self."
Dr.
Henrik Ehrsson, lead researcher on the UCL study, once conducted a study in
which the brains of participants were tricked into thinking that a rubber hand
was the participant's real hand.
One
of the researchers on the Swedish study, Dr. Olaf Blanke, said that their
efforts produced something close to an out-of-body experience "but not the
entire thing," adding that they were tricking people [Source: Baltimore Sun].
Unlike
in a genuine out-of-body experience where a person believes that he is actually
outside of his body, these participants still recognized the projected image as
something "other."
Still,
the study showed how the brain can be tricked and how sensing one's own body
can have a powerful influence on sense of self and physical location.
Dr.
Ehrsson believes his experiments produced authentic OBEs. He claimed that the
study was the first of its kind to produce OBEs in healthy people.
The
study was also particularly important, he said, for its use of multi-sensory
techniques and for establishing the physical self as a basis of consciousness [source: UCL News].
He
added that "projecting" oneself onto a virtual body could have
wide-ranging applications in producing more authentic virtual reality and video
game simulations or in improving remotely performed surgeries [source: UCL News].
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