Theos-Talk Archives (September 2002 Message tt00113)

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Science shows how out-of-body feelings occur
By Roger Highfield, Science Editor
(Filed: 20/09/2002) 

Electrical stimulation of the brain can summon up out-of-body 
experiences to order, according to a study published today.

Many people have reported leaving their body and watching it from 
above, notably when very seriously ill.

Today scientists report in the journal Nature that they have found 
out how to stimulate the brain to create the feeling of being 
detached from the body.

They believe that the discovery suggests that these experiences occur 
when the brain struggles to deal with contradictory information from 
the senses to create a mental idea of the body.

The team used electrodes to stimulate the brain of a 43-year-old 
woman who had had epilepsy for 11 years to find the origin of her 
seizures.

The brain centre was found an inch above and slightly behind the 
right ear by a neurologist, Dr Olaf Blanke, and colleagues at Geneva 
University Hospital, Switzerland. Exciting this spot - called the 
angular gyrus of her right cortex - repeatedly caused out-of-body 
experiences.

At low levels of stimulation, the patient felt as if she was sinking 
into the bed or falling. At high levels, "I see myself lying in bed, 
from above," she told them, adding that she felt as if she was 
levitating.

When asked to lift and look at her arm, she thought it was trying to 
punch her. And when her legs were bent, she thought they were moving 
towards her face and took evasive action, as if they did not belong 
to her.

Dr Blanke suspects that the angular gyrus may match information from 
the brain's visual system, which sees the body, and those that create 
the mind's representation of the body using touch and balance 
information. When the two become dissociated, an out-of-body 
experience might result, he said.

However, one puzzle is why patients who undergo such experiences can 
often look down on themselves, as if they have taken up position 
somewhere above the body.

Although he is unsure how patients can see themselves, given no such 
information is picked up by their eyes, he said his discovery might 
be related to analogous experiences, when a double is "felt".

"Many of these subjects have the absolutely real feeling that there 
is a person close by, which is actually themselves," said Dr Blanke.

Quoted from 
http://www.telegraph.co.uk