What Is An Out of Body Experience?
Many other people have described having an out of body
experience. In fact surveys have shown that it can occur in around 10% of the
population. The out of body experience is described as a sensation of
separating from the body and being able to watch oneself and events that are
taking place from a point above. Once in an out of body state, people typically
describe feeling very 'light' and 'peaceful'. Interestingly often inadvertently
they describe themselves as the part that had separated from the body. For
example, they may say, 'I was at the corner of the ceiling, looking down at my
body. While at the ceiling I thought to myself, What is my body doing down
there?' The 'I' part was always the part at the ceiling and not the other way
round. Many people have recalled very specific details about events that had
actually taken place during their experience. One woman explained:
'...during my operation I was floating around the
operating theatre. I could see the surgeon and nurses working on my body,
although I cannot now remember how many people there were. I could also hear
their conversation . the surgeon said he would leave the wound open to let it
drain as the appendix had burst. He then visited me on the ward afterwards to
explain what he had done and I already knew as I had heard him. He said I
couldn't possibly have heard him and suggested that a nurse had been to my
bedside and told me. I did not tell him I had seen the operation being
performed...'
Although out of body experiences also occur during near
death experiences, they can also occur in isolation and under a variety of
stimuli.
Explanations For The Occurrence Of Out of Body
Experiences
In 2002, a group of Swiss doctors carried out a
procedure that is often performed on patients with intractable epilepsy.
Electrodes were implanted in the brain and used to stimulate different portions
of the brain. The aim was to find an abnormal brain circuit that may have been
causing the recurrent seizures. In this case, as the doctors had been doing
this, quite unexpectedly the patient had reported seeing herself 'lying in bed,
from above' and also 'floating' near the ceiling. However, she had not had a
full out of body experience, as she had only been able to see her legs and
lower trunk (for details see BBC report).
Despite the fact that this wasn't quite like other out
of body experiences that had been reported, it seemed that the Swiss doctors
had been able to induce an out of body-like experience in someone. This seemed
to suggest that the reported sensation of leaving the body during a brush with
death might simply be an illusion created by abnormal stimulation of a specific
area of the right side of the brain called the angular gyrus. The Swiss
researchers had concluded that out of body and near death experiences might be
influenced by a portion of the brain misfiring under stress. Although it is far
from clear whether this area of the brain actually mediates out of body
experiences, it is interesting to note. Although undoubtedly there is an area
of the brain that mediates out of body and near death experiences, discovering
that area will not necessarily mean whether the experience is real or not.
Many researchers have come across many cases of people
who have described in tremendous detail events that had taken place during a
critical illness or clinical death (cardiac arrest). Sometimes the details have
been astonishing. Despite this level of anecdotal evidence from a scientific
viewpoint, at this point most researchers still agree that these experiences may
simply be illusions. On the other hand it may be that people can somehow open
their eyes and recall things during clinical death and then a trickery of the
brain makes them think they were out of body. The other possibility is that
somehow the human mind can separate from the brain and continue to function
during clinical death. At this point we do not know, however, in order to be
objective we also need to test this alternative explanation - that maybe the
human mind and consciousness can somehow separate from the brain. Today, this
is something that is not considered possible through our current
neurobiological theories, however some physicists argue that if we consider
things at the subatomic level rather than the large scale molecular level of
the brain, this may be possible.
The current data from cardiac arrest, has shown that
in general the cortical brain (and most likely the other brain areas also)
cease electrical activity and that despite the best efforts of doctors at
resuscitation we are unable to per fuse the brain with blood adequately. Thus
there is a non functioning brain as far as doctors are able to measure.
Therefore the occurrence of lucid well structured thought processes and
consciousness is a paradox. The brain in such a disordered state cannot support
such lucid activity of the mind. There are of course other explanations (such
as do the thoughts occur just before or after the brain stops functioning
etc...) and therefore what is needed is to accurately time the experience and
attempt some objective measure of brain function to determine whether those who
have conscious awareness (i.e near death and out of body experiences) actually
somehow have a better functioning brain or do they have it despite little or no
brain activity. Either way the answers will be fascinating.
Looking again at the point regarding the conclusions
made by some researchers such as Professor Blanke and co workers that out of
body experiences are simply illusions brought about by an abnormally
functioning brain, it must be pointed out that at this point this exciting work
is very new. To many researchers, the cases that have been described actually
do not resemble out of body experiences and so they are still highly debatable.
In the case mentioned above (from the well known medical journal Nature in
2002, the lady actually described a sensation of seeing her herself up to the
trunk. During out of body experiences people actually describe floating at the
ceiling and being able to watch specific details of events that were taking
place below. In many times these cases have been confirmed (for one example see
Dr Van Lommel's published scientific article). There have also been another
series of studies carried out recently by Dr Ehrsson and also Professor Blanke
and his coworkers and the results of these studies were published in the well
known scientific journal Science (24 August 2007). The description was actually
not an out of body experience as has traditionally been described in the
literature. In these studies, the investigators simply recreated an illusion of
seeing a double of the self using video technology. This method is described in
a recent BBC report and simply highlighted the limitations of human visual
processing. Nevertheless, despite this most would agree that out of body
experiences are mediated by the brain and the exciting work by Professor Blanke
and others may help identify the areas of the brain that mediate it.
Nevertheless such a discovery says nothing of the
reality or nature of the experience. It cannot tell us if the experience is
real or not and so for this we still need an objective study to examine the
nature of the experience. For more information see the section about the Human
Consciousness Project.
Some people have also attempted to explain the 'out of
body experiences' as a psychological phenomenon. It has been suggested that the
brain may simply be constructing and creating the experience from previously
stored memories such as those obtained from medical programs on television.
Most people are now more familiar with what happens in hospitals through the
many medical programs on television and so it has been argued that although the
subject may appear unconscious to the doctors and nurses he or she may actually
only be partly unconscious. Therefore if this is the case they may still be
able to gather information through their ordinary senses such as hearing, while
actually appearing to be unconscious to the outside world. This is thought to
be similar to the well-recognized phenomenon called 'consciousness during
anesthesia' that has been extensively described in the surgical and anesthetic
literature. In this condition patients who have been inadequately anesthetized
have sometimes reported being aware of events that had occurred during surgical
operations as well as hearing conversations. The difference between this and
out of body experiences is, however that those with this condition have simply
not had adequate anesthesia, which is very different to people who have
reported being able to 'see' things that have been verified by medical and
nursing staff during a deep coma or even during times when the brain had not
been functioning.
As discussed above the main problem for science is
always going to be that even if the part of the brain that mediates out of body
experiences is discovered it still doesn't say anything about the nature of the
experience. For this an objective study is needed to test the claims of being
able to see from a vantage point above.
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