Lab setup creates out of body experiences
Scientific American reports on a simple lab setup involving a video camera and a head-mounted display to generate out of body experiences.
Link (Via Further: Strange Attractor & beyond)Last year, two research groups induced out-of-body experiences in healthy participants with virtual reality techniques. The experiments, described last August in studies by H. Henri Ehrsson and Olaf Blanke and colleagues in Science, demonstrate that out-of-body experiences, previously confined to the realms of psychiatry, fiction and the occult, occur when the normal processing of sensory information is disrupted. This research provides an important tool to understand how the feeling of self is generated by the brain.
The participants wore virtual reality goggles connected to video cameras that filmed the participants’ backs. Thus each participant saw his or her own body from the back ... To complete the illusion, the scientists used two plastic rods to stroke synchronously, for 1 or 2 minutes at a time, the participant’s back and the back of the virtual body. Next, the participants were asked to complete a questionnaire to evaluate their subjective perception of the illusion. Amazingly, they reported feeling as if they were being behind their physical bodies and looking at them from this location. The illusion failed when the stroking was asynchronous.
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This is an interesting study, and my only qualification would be to say that it perhaps doesn't cover the entire spectrum of scientific explanations for OOBs, for example those caused by sleep paralysis:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sleep_paralysis
yeah, that would really be of further interest
A very similar illusion is very easy to do at home. Have a look at the "Rubber Hand Illusion" (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TCQbygjG0RU). It uses a similar technique -- you watch a fake hand being stroked while your real hand is stroked -- to produce the feeling that the rubber hand is part of you.
There are more details about it and similar illusions on the New Scientist archive, e.g. http://www.newscientist.com/channel/being-human/mg19526221.300-mind-tricks-six-ways-to-explore-your-brain.html (subscription or Athens account required).
The hand doesn't need to look very convincing. Use one from a joke shop or get your friend to put his own hand on the table. I've found that you can use the same technique to make people feel that other objects, like the table itself, are part of their body. This takes a few minutes longer and won't work for everyone, but it's a weird enough sensation to be worth the time!
Still, the experiment falls short of the OOB experiences I often have while visiting Boing Boing.
It must be something like playing grand theft auto, seeing yourserlf in a kinda third person game.
This reminds me of a YouTube video I saw about a year ago.
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"the scientists used two plastic rods to stroke synchronously"
In the photo the "plastic rods" look surprisingly like your run-o-the-mill Magic Markers. I love how science makes everyday objects sound... scientific.
Also, I think we can all agree that Synchronously Stroking Plastic Rods would be a good name for a rock band.
Interesting links, thanks people.
Neuroscientist VS VS Ramachandran has done interesting work on body perception and phantom limbs. He came up with a similar trick to the hand one described by #3 whereby you feel as if your nose is a foot long!
I've had an idea to do this a long time ago. Only I would set up an entire house with cameras in the corners of each room that would auto-detect the presence of the person when they were in that room. So one would wear the goggles and watch themselves move around the house doing whatever. It'd be like you're playing yourself in a video games.
I'd be even cooler to have a video filmed of your back being stroked at a younger age... Like view a ten year old version of yourself having the same thing happen and the guy just moving along with the tape as he stroked your back or whatever... i wonder if you'd feel like an OB experience from the past.
A deliberate illusion that simulates two or three aspects of an OBE does not provide an explanation for OBEs in general, any more than a synthetic flavoring provides an explanation of the plant that produces the natural flavor.
It would be more interesting to ascertain the neurophysiology that accompanies "OBEs with objective correlates" (the ones where individuals accurately describe remote targets). My guess is that the mechanism involves subcellular structures in the neurons, as per Hameroff & Penrose (keyword search those names and read their papers; Hameroff also correctly predicted that the glial cells in the brain have an active role in information processing).
This reminds me of a fantastic Radio Lab podcast I listened to last year. Highly recommended.
http://www.wnyc.org/shows/radiolab/episodes/2006/05/05
It seems, according to the program, that pilots who sustain high G-forces in succession will have out-of-body experiences. Fascinating.