See other Science/Tech Articles
Title: Out-of-Body Experience? Your Brain Is to Blame
Source:
NYT
URL Source: http://www.nytimes.com/2006/10/03/h ... y/03shad.html?pagewanted=print
Published: Oct 3, 2006
Author: SANDRA BLAKESLEE
Post Date: 2006-10-03 02:41:23 by Morgana le Fay
Keywords: None
Views: 140
Comments: 9
They are eerie sensations, more common than one might think: A man describes feeling a shadowy figure standing behind him, then turning around to find no one there. A woman feels herself leaving her body and floating in space, looking down on her corporeal self. Such experiences are often attributed by those who have them to paranormal forces. But according to recent work by neuroscientists, they can be induced by delivering mild electric current to specific spots in the brain. In one woman, for example, a zap to a brain region called the angular gyrus resulted in a sensation that she was hanging from the ceiling, looking down at her body. In another woman, electrical current delivered to the angular gyrus produced an uncanny feeling that someone was behind her, intent on interfering with her actions. The two women were being evaluated for epilepsy surgery at University Hospital in Geneva, where doctors implanted dozens of electrodes into their brains to pinpoint the abnormal tissue causing the seizures and to identify adjacent areas involved in language, hearing or other essential functions that should be avoided in the surgery. As each electrode was activated, stimulating a different patch of brain tissue, the patient was asked to say what she was experiencing. Dr. Olaf Blanke, a neurologist at the École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne in Switzerland who carried out the procedures, said that the women had normal psychiatric histories and that they were stunned by the bizarre nature of their experiences. The Sept. 21 issue of Nature magazine includes an account by Dr. Blanke and his colleagues of the woman who sensed a shadow person behind her. They described the out-of-body experiences in the February 2004 issue of the journal Brain. There is nothing mystical about these ghostly experiences, said Peter Brugger, a neuroscientist at University Hospital in Zurich, who was not involved in the experiments but is an expert on phantom limbs, the sensation of still feeling a limb that has been amputated, and other mind-bending phenomena. “The research shows that the self can be detached from the body and can live a phantom existence on its own, as in an out-of-body experience, or it can be felt outside of personal space, as in a sense of a presence,” Dr. Brugger said. Scientists have gained new understanding of these odd bodily sensations as they have learned more about how the brain works, Dr. Blanke said. For example, researchers have discovered that some areas of the brain combine information from several senses. Vision, hearing and touch are initially processed in the primary sensory regions. But then they flow together, like tributaries into a river, to create the wholeness of a person’s perceptions. A dog is visually recognized far more quickly if it is simultaneously accompanied by the sound of its bark. These multisensory processing regions also build up perceptions of the body as it moves through the world, Dr. Blanke said. Sensors in the skin provide information about pressure, pain, heat, cold and similar sensations. Sensors in the joints, tendons and bones tell the brain where the body is positioned in space. Sensors in the ears track the sense of balance. And sensors in the internal organs, including the heart, liver and intestines, provide a readout of a person’s emotional state. Real-time information from the body, the space around the body and the subjective feelings from the body are also represented in multisensory regions, Dr. Blanke said. And if these regions are directly simulated by an electric current, as in the cases of the two women he studied, the integrity of the sense of body can be altered. As an example, Dr. Blanke described the case of a 22-year-old student who had electrodes implanted into the left side of her brain in 2004. “We were checking language areas,” Dr. Blanke said, when the woman turned her head to the right. That made no sense, he said, because the electrode was nowhere near areas involved in the control of movement. Instead, the current was stimulating a multisensory area called the angular gyrus. Dr. Blanke applied the current again. Again, the woman turned her head to the right. “Why are you doing this?” he asked. The woman replied that she had a weird sensation that another person was lying beneath her on the bed. The figure, she said, felt like a “shadow” that did not speak or move; it was young, more like a man than a woman, and it wanted to interfere with her. When Dr. Blanke turned off the current, the woman stopped looking to the right, and said the strange presence had gone away. Each time he reapplied the current, she once again turned her head to try to see the shadow figure. When the woman sat up, leaned forward and hugged her knees, she said that she felt as if the shadow man was also sitting and that he was clasping her in his arms. She said it felt unpleasant. When she held a card in her right hand, she reported that the shadow figure tried to take it from her. “He doesn’t want me to read,” she said. Because the presence closely mimicked the patient’s body posture and position, Dr. Blanke concluded that the patient was experiencing an unusual perception of her own body, as a double. But for reasons that scientists have not been able to explain, he said, she did not recognize that it was her own body she was sensing. The feeling of a shadowy presence can occur without electrical stimulation to the brain, Dr. Brugger said. It has been described by people who undergo sensory deprivation, as in mountaineers trekking at high altitude or sailors crossing the ocean alone, and by people who have suffered minor strokes or other disruptions in blood flow to the brain. Six years ago, another of Dr. Blanke’s patients underwent brain stimulation to a different multisensory area, the angular gyrus, which blends vision with the body sense. The patient experienced a complete out-of-body experience. When the current flowed, she said: “I am at the ceiling. I am looking down at my legs.” When the current ceased, she said: “I’m back on the table now. What happened?” Further applications of the current returned the woman to the ceiling, causing her to feel as if she were outside of her body, floating, her legs dangling below her. When she closed her eyes, she had the sensation of doing sit-ups, with her upper body approaching her legs. Because the woman’s felt position in space and her actual position in space did not match, her mind cast about for the best way to turn her confusion into a coherent experience, Dr. Blanke said. She concluded that she must be floating up and away while looking downward. Some schizophrenics, Dr. Blanke said, experience paranoid delusions and the sense that someone is following them. They also sometimes confuse their own actions with the actions of other people. While the cause of these symptoms is not known, he said, multisensory processing areas may be involved. When otherwise normal people experience bodily delusions, Dr. Blanke said, they are often flummoxed. The felt sensation of the body is so seamless, so familiar, that people do not realize it is a creation of the brain, even when something goes wrong and the brain is perturbed. Yet the sense of body integrity is rather easily duped, Dr. Blanke said. And while it may be tempting to invoke the supernatural when this body sense goes awry, he said the true explanation is a very natural one, the brain’s attempt to make sense of conflicting information.
Post Comment Private Reply Ignore Thread
Top • Page Up • Full Thread • Page Down • Bottom/Latest
#1. To: Morgana le Fay, Gengis Gandhi, Ferret Mike, christine (#0)
Great efforts are being made to deny the validity of OBEs and NDEs, even though people who have died and came back to life have proved it by reporting on events and conversations they saw and heard at the time while they were laying dead. We had a case here at the hospital of an elderly Eskimo woman who had died in her room, then floated around the hospital evesdropping on conversations and such, which were checked out and proven to have taken place during the few minutes that she was dead. A lot of people are terrified of things that can't be explained, it takes away some of their power, particularly those too concerned about their egos.
I have had more experiences than these research hacks could spin in a lifetime. I once met a person who bragged he got the highest score in some rinky dink lab at Stanford. I told him that those who really can do the amazing do not subject themselves to scrutiny by those who do not want what they have to offer.
The Truth of 911 Shall Set You Free From The Lie
I can vouch for the fact that an out of body is a real experience. I had mine before I fully awoke from my coma and saw my face with it's black eyes, the tubes and temporary casts on my body, and was shocked because I saw my face as others see it, not as I see it in a mirror. If the experience had been compiled from memories, I would have seen my mirror image as I do in my mind's eye when I dream.
its pretty amusing. these things are a natural part of existence, and are recorded throughout history. but the jokes on these 'researchers'. monroe, probably the godfather of obe research, reports in his obe travels of the 'valley of the heads'...countless rows of 'sleeping' entities, humans, etc, who in the afterlife simply exist in a comatose state, sleeping. these are they who are atheists, etc, or who have no belief in the afterlife. because their consciousness has set their rudder, so to speak, in that they don't believe that there is anything other than being a meat person, in the afterlife they got exactly what they believed it would be like. by believing that they doomed themselves to eternal sleep and coma. monroe also writes that whenever you have dreams of flight, or dreams of being in a vehicle, you are out of body...its merely a way the subconcious comports things in order for you to make sense of it. i've had some really cool flying ones myself lately. part of me is really ready to get out of this place. monroe states that most people do go out of body when asleep. there are dreams, and then there are out of body state dreaming, where it is incredibly detailed, as detailed as waking state reality, and one has the sense of really being there, interacting, etc. you can easily tell the difference between an ordinary dream and an obe dream. but of course, this 'research' is anything but. it is a darkside attempt at belief system management. consider how any power lusting entity, such as government, could be able to maintain power if people found out that they could learn anything at all non locally, simply by remote viewing or going out of body...this is the real motive here. these fools desperately fear the next evolutionary stage of consciousness, and it is indeed upon us, because with it will evaporate their ability to hold power. to learn more about bob monroe and an organization that teaches, regularly and rather now commonplace, students to go out of body, see http://www.monroeinstitute.com and http://www.hemi-sync.com. not only does monroe offer courses on out of body, but many others beyond that..including soul retrieval, called Lifelines, where the dead and lost are moved along, and many many others. monroe authored 'journeys out of the body' 'ultimate journeys' and another one that escapes me now. believe it: we are much more than our physical body, in fact, we are what is known as 'higher selves' and your person here, today, is but one tiny facet of this incredibly powerful, eternal higher self. we exist as one incarnation among thousands simultaneously occuring across many timelines...there is no death or end for the higher selves. we came to earth to learn, to gain experience, then to move along. monoroe even travelled to the 'belief system territories'...where all major religions are represented, and also a place called focus 27, which is akin to the akashic records, where all that is known is recorded. for more information that goes beyond what see the Matrix series at www.trufax.org
To believe the world is only as you think it is, is stupid. ~Don Juan Matos, Journey to Ixtlan, Carlos Casteneda
go back to sleep. you have no power. those experiences are simply hallucinations. back to sleep, back to sleep. you have no control over 'reality'. back to sleep.
Hey Mr. Electric-Current Man, play a song for me.
Good post, thanks for the URL; interesting site.
I have the weirdest and most realistic dreams of anyone I know. There is even a city I often dream of that I've never been too, I could draw a map of it and I know where certain stores and shops are, it's really bizarre. To the west of the town there is a green area where the elevation gets higher, and I'm always afraid to go past a certain point there. I have no idea what it means, but I often find myself in that damn town in my sleep. I've also had a lot of dreams come true. When I was still married, one evening I was exceptionally tired, so I went into the bedroom to take a nap. My husband was in the kitchen when I went into the bedroom. I fell asleep, when I found myself hovering above my husband who was now in a particular chair in the living room with a certain book open in his lap. He had one leg crossed over the other, and was making these breathing noises he used to make when he was really concentrating on something. Then I woke up, headed into the living room and there he was exactly as I had seen (?) while hovering over him. That was weird and the only time I had anything of that nature (like an OBE) happen.
Ha! I've got you beat. I once had a dream in which my mother's cat wrapped himself around my head, and I couldn't remove him, so I had to go to the ER. In another, I watched penguins slide down the giant slalom, shoot into the air, flap their feet and fly away.
"Anyone who has the power to make you believe absurdities also has the power to make you commit atrocities." — Voltaire (1694-1778)
#2. To: Diana, Morgana le Fay (#1)
#3. To: Diana (#1)
"We had a case here at the hospital of an elderly Eskimo woman who had died in her room, then floated around the hospital evesdropping on conversations and such, which were checked out and proven to have taken place during the few minutes that she was dead."
#4. To: Diana, horse, ferret mike (#1)
#5. To: Morgana le Fay, diana, gengis gandhi (#0)
(Edited)
these fools desperately fear the next evolutionary stage of consciousness, and it is indeed upon us, because with it will evaporate their ability to hold power
#6. To: Morgana le Fay (#0)
they can be induced by delivering mild electric current to specific spots in the brain.
I've already said too much.
#7. To: gengis gandhi (#4)
#8. To: gengis gandhi, Horse, ferret mike (#4)
#9. To: Diana (#8)
I have the weirdest and most realistic dreams of anyone I know.
Top • Page Up • Full Thread • Page Down • Bottom/Latest