Out-of-Body Experience (virtual, science)

[Jayhawker Soule]

From the New Your Times:

Studies Report Inducing Out-of-Body Experience

By SANDRA BLAKESLEE - Published: August 24, 2007

Using virtual-reality goggles, a camera and a stick, scientists have induced out-of-body experiences — the sensation of drifting outside of one’s own body — in ordinary, healthy people, according to studies being published today in the journal Science.

When people gazed at an illusory image of themselves through the goggles and were prodded in just the right way with the stick, they felt as if they had left their bodies.

The research reveals that “the sense of having a body, of being in a bodily self,” is actually constructed from multiple sensory streams, said one expert on body and mind, Dr. Matthew M. Botvinick, an assistant professor of neuroscience at Princeton University.

Usually these sensory streams, which include vision, touch, balance and the sense of where one’s body is positioned in space, work together seamlessly, Dr. Botvinick said. But when the information coming from the sensory sources does not match up, the sense of being embodied as a whole comes apart.

The brain, which abhors ambiguity, then forces a decision that can, as the new experiments show, involve the sense of being in a different body.

The research provides a physical explanation for phenomena usually ascribed to otherworldly influences, said Peter Brugger, a neurologist at University Hospital in Zurich, who, like Dr. Botvinick, had no role in the experiments. In what is popularly referred to as near-death experience, people who have been in the throes of severe and sudden injury or illness often report the sensation of floating over their body, looking down, hearing what is said and then, just as suddenly, finding themselves back inside their body. ...

Yet another success for methodological naturalism, and another diminution of the domain of the God-of-the-Gaps.

[joeboonda]

Many report with vivid detail what people said and did, describe surgical instruments they had never seen, and even conversations in other rooms while "out of body".

[Buttercup]

hehee. copy cat!

Scientists Recreate Out of Body Experiences....

[Ozzie]

[quote=Jay;920271]From the New Your Times:

Studies Report Inducing Out-of-Body Experience

By SANDRA BLAKESLEE - Published: August 24, 2007

Using virtual-reality goggles, a camera and a stick, scientists have induced out-of-body experiences — the sensation of drifting outside of one’s own body — in ordinary, healthy people, according to studies being published today in the journal Science.

When people gazed at an illusory image of themselves through the goggles and were prodded in just the right way with the stick, they felt as if they had left their bodies.

The research reveals that “the sense of having a body, of being in a bodily self,” is actually constructed from multiple sensory streams, said one expert on body and mind, Dr. Matthew M. Botvinick, an assistant professor of neuroscience at Princeton University.

Usually these sensory streams, which include vision, touch, balance and the sense of where one’s body is positioned in space, work together seamlessly, Dr. Botvinick said. But when the information coming from the sensory sources does not match up, the sense of being embodied as a whole comes apart.

The brain, which abhors ambiguity, then forces a decision that can, as the new experiments show, involve the sense of being in a different body.

The research provides a physical explanation for phenomena usually ascribed to otherworldly influences, said Peter Brugger, a neurologist at University Hospital in Zurich, who, like Dr. Botvinick, had no role in the experiments. In what is popularly referred to as near-death experience, people who have been in the throes of severe and sudden injury or illness often report the sensation of floating over their body, looking down, hearing what is said and then, just as suddenly, finding themselves back inside their body. ...

Yet another success for methodological naturalism, and another diminution of the domain of the God-of-the-Gaps.

This work shows the Gaps in consciousness. Likely to create more questions than it answers.

[Guitar's Cry]

The medium for the consciousness to view the body in this case was a camera. It is essentially looking in a mirror. What is the medium for other out-of-body experiences?

Is it the brain creating a model of the body and room through sensory information normally filtered out, and viewing it third-person?

[Jayhawker Soule]

Originally Posted by Buttercup

hehee. copy cat!

Scientists Recreate Out of Body Experiences....

Sorry, Buttercup; you're absolutely correct. Unfortunately I dod not notice the earlier post prior to posting this one. Fortunately, the point deserves reinforcing.

[Ozzie]

[quote]

Originally Posted by Guitar's Cry

The medium for the consciousness to view the body in this case was a camera. It is essentially looking in a mirror. What is the medium for other out-of-body experiences?

Good question. These studies do not cover those where normal visual reception would be disrupted through trauma.

Is it the brain creating a model of the body and room through sensory information normally filtered out, and viewing it third-person?

They changed the frame of reference for receiving visual input and stimulated the subject's tactile senses accomodated to their usual frame of reference introducing a dissociation between tactile and visual information that is normally correlated to create first person perspective. They introduced a false correlation.

[Buttercup]

Originally Posted by Jay

Sorry, Buttercup; you're absolutely correct. Unfortunately I dod not notice the earlier post prior to posting this one. Fortunately, the point deserves reinforcing.

It's alright, sweetie....no prob. I found the subject extremely fascinating, and if you looked at the questions I posited after the article, poignant for the same reasons as you.

[Buttercup]

Originally Posted by Ozzie

Good question. These studies do not cover those where normal visual reception would be disrupted through trauma.

No, the study does not take that into consideration. However, the experiment initiates a good premise in that our subconscious is capable of such an act. That's what's important in my mind.