Did you know that as many as one-in-ten people report having Out of Body Experiences? Even though OBEs are so common, it’s only recently that the medical community is taking notice. Check out this article from CNN. Reporter Matthew Knight meets with neuroscientist Dr. Henrik Ehrsson to find out about his experiments to induce the illusion of OBEs.
Scientists recreate out-of-body experience
By Matthew Knight for CNN
LONDON, England (CNN) — It has perplexed and amazed those who claim to have experienced it, been the subject of rigorous debate among theologians and philosophers for centuries, and provided satirists and magicians with a rich seam of material for decades. But recent scientific research may at last be moving towards a more concrete understanding of the curious phenomena of the out-of-body experience (OBE).
OBEs have been reported in clinical conditions as a result of brain malfunction — e.g. a stroke or epilepsy. Habitual users of recreational drugs sometimes report OBEs as do people who have experienced some form of life-threatening trauma — e.g. a car accident.
They are a surprisingly common occurrence with around one in ten people claiming to have had an experience at some point during their lives. Yet the neuro-scientific basis of the phenomenon remains unclear.
Two recent scientific studies, however, have successfully created the illusion of an OBE and pave the way for a vastly improved understanding on the nature of consciousness.
Neuroscientist Dr Henrik Ehrsson devised an experimental method to induce an OBE in healthy participants and published his results in the journal Science last month.
Dr Ehrsson, who tested a total of 42 people, conducted his study at the Institute of Neurology at University College London. He was able to create the illusion of an OBE by setting up a relatively simple experiment.
Participants were asked to sit in a chair wearing a pair of head-mounted video displays (virtual reality goggles). The goggles had two small screens — one for each eye — which showed live film recorded by two video cameras, placed side by side, two meters behind the participant’s head.
The image from the left video camera was presented on the left-eye display and images from the right camera fed to the right eye, allowing the person to see one stereoscopic (3D) image of their own image from behind.
In full view of the participant, Dr Ehrsson stood beside them and used two plastic rods to simultaneously touch the participant’s actual chest out-of-view and the chest of the illusory body, moving the second rod towards where the illusory chest would be located, just below the camera’s view.
“It was quite a vivid experience for most people,” Dr Ehrsson told CNN. “Many of them giggled and said ‘Wow, this is so weird!’. One of the people I tested had experienced an OBE before, and explained that the experiment had produced a very similar sensation.”
Click here to continue reading >>
