Scientists recreate out-of-body experiences (no
drugs)
Thu Aug 23, 6:08 PM ET
For centuries, people have claimed to have had out-of-body
experiences but now scientists have recreated the sensation without
using drugs in the first experiments of their kind, a study said
Thursday.
As many as one in 10 people say they have experienced the sensation
of being awake and seeing their own body from another location,
according to the study published in the journal Science.
"Out-of-body experiences have fascinated mankind for millennia.
Their existence has raised fundamental questions about the
relationship between human consciousness and the body," said Henrik
Ehrsson, a neuroscientist formerly of University College London,
and now at the Karolinska Institute in Sweden.
Now neuroscientists have manipulated a group of perfectly healthy
volunteers into thinking they had moved outside their bodies by
distorting their perception of reality.
Using virtual reality goggles to mix up the sensory signals
reaching the brain, they induced the volunteers into projecting
their awareness into a virtual body. Participants confirmed they
had experienced sitting behind their physical body and looking at
it.
The illusion was so strong that the volunteers reacted with a
palpable sense of fear when their virtual selves were threatened
with physical force.
The findings suggest there may be a scientific explanation for
these types of out-of-body experiences, which are often thought of
as delusional or paranormal, and the scientists believe their
research could have important applications.
"The invention of this illusion is important because it reveals the
basic mechanism that produces the feeling of being inside the
physical body," said Ehrsson.
"This represents a significant advance because the experience of
one's own body as the center of awareness is a fundamental aspect
of self-consciousness."
And inducing people to have out-of-body experiences could have
wide-ranging uses, he believes.
"This is essentially a means of projecting yourself, a form of
teleportation. If we can project people into a virtual character,
so they feel and respond as if they were really in a virtual
version of themselves, just imagine the implications.
"The experience of video games could reach a whole new level, but
it could go much beyond that. For example, a surgeon could perform
remote surgery, by controlling their virtual self from a different
location."
But scientists still don't know exactly what causes such
experiences which have often been associated with traumatic
experiences such as car accidents and linked to compromised brain
function in epileptics, drug addicts and stroke victims.
"Brain dysfunctions that interfere with interpreting sensory
signals may be responsible for clinical cases of out-of-body
experiences," said Ehrsson.
"Though, whether all out-of-body experiences arise from the same
causes is still an open question."