Out of Body Experience: OBE

6th

Two studies have claimed to induce "out-of-body" experiences in healthy volunteers and say there is a neurological basis for such happenings. The details of the studies appear in the August 24 issue of the journal Science.

An "out-of-body" experience is something of a mystery and has been reported by survivors of traumatic incidences who described their experiences when death neared. Basically this experience related to a feeling of detachment and surveying one's own body from a distance. This is possible because all the sensory apparatus become "disconnected during stress."

In one study researchers at the University College London's Institute of Neurology experimented on healthy volunteers by using high-tech 3-D goggles. Participants were able to see 3-D images of their own body as being some six feet away as it was filmed from behind.

Simultaneously a researcher took two plastic rods and stimulated the participant's chest as well as the same spot on the 3-D image. Participants said they were sitting behind and looking at their own body. "This was a bizarre, fascinating experience for the participants -- it felt absolutely real for them and was not scary," said a statement issued by the author the study, Dr. Henrik Ehrsson.

In the second experiment, researchers from the Ecole Polytechnique Federal de Lausanne, in Switzerland, were given the task of watching 3-D holographic projections. One projection was of their own body, the second was of a dummy, while the third was of a square block.

In each case researchers stroked the back of the projection with a brush. Sometimes the participant's back was also stroked simultaneously. After this the volunteers were blindfolded and asked to point to the exact spot where the brush was stroked.

Researchers said that those who watched the square block or dummy managed to accomplish this task accurately, but those who watched themselves were unable to do so.

Reacting to the studies, Dr. Kevin Nelson, a leading researcher on near-death phenomena said they showed "that the integration of various sensory modalities is important for retaining our sense of where our body is, of where our self is in that body."

Article HERE

6th

So this type of thing always makes me think the same thing: Just because you can recreat an experience or feeling does that take away from the original experience?

6th

More on BBC News: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/health/6960612.stm

Zillah

6th wrote:

So this type of thing always makes me think the same thing: Just because you can recreat an experience or feeling does that take away from the original experience?

Yes, according to occams razor. The less assumptions you have to make to reach an answer the more likely it is to be correct.

If we know there are natural explanations for why someone might experience an OBE-like event, then it is most logical to assume that OBE-like events are caused by those natural factors.

Its an extra assumption that there are supernatural forces causing the same outcome.

It doesn't mean that there is definately no such thing as a real OBE, but experiments like these tell us it is less and less likely.

Zillah

To use a comparison:

A person wakes up in the middle of the night and feels a pressure on their chest. They can't move, they can't scream and they can hear movement in the room around them and feel a palpable presence of evil.

You and I know damn right thats almost certainly Sleep Paralysis. Sure, perhaps they are actually being attacked by an evil ghost...but the very fact that we can explain that event perfectly with hard science makes it very very unlikely.

hiorta

Zillah, that may well be the case in some situations, but I had one once while under anaesthesia - a most marvellous and uplifting experience. Other similar operations have not produced its like.
The knowledge and understanding of who might make assumptions would have a bearing on the assumption, would it not? If a thing is deemed impossible, then the mind of someone experiencing the contrary would find 'an explanation', but would likely restrict it to its orbit of believable knowledge.

Zillah

hiorta wrote:

Zillah, that may well be the case in some situations, but I had one once while under anaesthesia - a most marvellous and uplifting experience. Other similar operations have not produced its like.

So? I can watch the same movie twice and feel great sadness one time and anger the second. Its the same movie but with a different result caused by other factors.

The knowledge and understanding of who might make assumptions would have a bearing on the assumption, would it not? If a thing is deemed impossible, then the mind of someone experiencing the contrary would find 'an explanation', but would likely restrict it to its orbit of believable knowledge.

Could you say all that again and explain much more please?

stevenmu

Zillah wrote:

Yes, according to occams razor. The less assumptions you have to make to reach an answer the more likely it is to be correct.

If we know there are natural explanations for why someone might experience an OBE-like event, then it is most logical to assume that OBE-like events are caused by those natural factors.

Its an extra assumption that there are supernatural forces causing the same outcome.

It doesn't mean that there is definately no such thing as a real OBE, but experiments like these tell us it is less and less likely.

I wouldn't think that this experiment makes 'genuine' OBEs any less likely. It doesn't show that OBE-like events are triggered by natural factors, unless you consider the VR setup to be 'natural'. To me it shows that the effect can be duplicated using artificial means. It has to be considered that most, if not all, 'genuine' OBEs reported would have taken place in vastly different circumstances, the artificial visual stimulus provided by the VR setup would have been absent.

If anything the fact that it required relatively complicated visual stimuli to be applied would suggest to me that some form of sensory input is required to trick the brain into this effect.

Of course the experiment doesn't reveal if this input could come from your 'soul' floating above your body, or by some other means. It merely seems to suggest that some form of input may be required.

Zillah

stevenmu wrote:

I wouldn't think that this experiment makes 'genuine' OBEs any less likely. It doesn't show that OBE-like events are triggered by natural factors, unless you consider the VR setup to be 'natural'.

Natural, in terms of the choices being supernatural and natural.

These experiments showed that the human mind has the ability to entirely confuse its sense of self, to believe it is looking at its own body when it is in fact not. This required no supernatural elements such as the soul.

Therefore, any experiences that involves the mind feeling like it is external to the body do not require a supernatural explanation.

Granted, the exact causes and neurological principles behind such skewed perceptions are not yet understood, but we now know it can happen without any supernatural involvement.

6th

But Zillah, they are recreating the effect in a setting and under conditions far removed from those where these things happen for most cases.

hiorta

Zillah, you can see yourself from a quite different perspective in an OBE.
These raise the questions of what exactly is 'natural' and is there a division between that and what some call 'supernatural'?

'Natural' could also be termed 'commonplace'. Something 'natural' such as the solar eclipse and two moons in the sky, must have been regarded as supernatural in earlier times, as must electricity and hypnosis.

If something can occur, even occasionally, then it must be 'natural'.

What I was trying to express earlier was that the (conditioned) mind can produce a solution or explanation, limited and influenced by the conditioning, especially in the internal landscape.

SkepticOne

What the experiment shows is that you don't necessarily need to be literally out of the body to have an out-of-body type experience. It does not prove that genuine literal out of body events don't occur. Logically, no experiment can prove that.

The value of the experiment is that it suggests that further research may lead to an understanding of the mechanisms at work when people have OBE's in more natural settings.

stevenmu

Zillah wrote:

Natural, in terms of the choices being supernatural and natural.

Well, those are two pretty limiting choices. I still think the fact that it requires a deliberate and conscious stimulus to be provided shows that it's not an entirely natural state to find oneself in, or at least doesn't prove that it can occur naturally.

Zillah

I'm not quite sure what all of your problems are here. The experiments set out to show that the mind could be made to think it was outside its body due to neurological principles, which it was. This puts doubt on people who forward explanations for OBEs involving a soul. Thats it. Whatever stimulus out in the real world could cause similar neurological phenomena I'm not sure, but I'd like to read the article in Science to find out.