Brain Scanned During An Out-Of-Body Experience — And What They Found Was Amazing!

A psychology grad at the University of Ottawa says she can voluntarily enter an out-of-body experience at will. This gave scientists the opportunity and the ability to scan her brain while she took a leap outside. What they found surprised them.

Usually out-of-body experiences are a part of, say, a near-death experience. A patient may float above their own body as surgeons work on them. These experiences are usually attributed to the drugs in a patient's system, or the hormones released into their system by trauma.
A unique experience
The study — which only involved this one person — was published Feb. 10 in the journal Frontiers of Human Neuroscience, a peer-reviewed open access publication. The researchers are members of the School Of Psychology at the University of Ottawa.

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Lucky for those who are really interested in this experiance, she goes into the details of how it started and how she's able to make it happen in great detail.

The participant spontaneously reported after class that she could have a similar “out of body” experience. She appeared surprised that not everyone could experience this. The participant described her experience as one she began performing as a child when bored with “sleep time” at preschool. She discovered she could elicit the experience of moving above her body and used this as a distraction during the time kids were asked to nap. She continued to perform this experience as she grew up assuming, as mentioned, that “everyone could do it.” This was often done before sleep onset as an aid to enter sleep. She described the experience as variable depending on her frame of mind. She was able to see herself rotating in the air above her body, lying flat, and rolling along with the horizontal plane. She reported sometimes watching herself move from above but remained aware of her unmoving “real” body. The participant reported no particular emotions linked to the experience. As an adult, the participant only infrequently “practiced” the experience; the experience does not occur spontaneously but is induced wilfully. The participant describes the experience in the following terms: “I feel myself moving, or, more accurately, can make myself feel as if I am moving. I know perfectly well that I am not actually moving. There is no duality of body and mind when this happens, not really. In fact, I am hyper-sensitive to my body at that point, because I am concentrating so hard on the sensation of moving. I am the one moving – me – my body. For example, if I ‘spin’ for long enough, I get dizzy. I do not see myself above my body. Rather, my whole body has moved up. I feel it as being above where I know it actually is. I usually also picture myself as moving up in my mind’s eye, but the mind is not substantive. It does not move unless the body does.”

Original Research ARTICLE

The took image scans of her brain before and after to compare. Strangely enough, what she said she was experiencing, her brain seemed to agree.

The brain out of the body
The researchers did a fMRI before and after asking her to enter her out-of-body state to find out what that looked like in the brain. They compared these to when she was imagining, but not actually entering, the state.

Interestingly, the pathway that seemed to be activated during her out-of-body experience is also involved in the mental representation of movements.

Brain regions activated by the out-of-body experience include the supplementary motor area, the cerebellum, the supramarginal gyrus, the inferior temporal gyrus, the middle and superior orbitofrontal gyri.

Some parts of her brain involved in interpreting vision were turned down in activity, as shown below:

Unfortunately, scientist didn't delve into the unknown and came out with a mystic or paranormal explination. I guess we'll have to wait some for an otherworldly version. They explain it as something no different than a simple hallucination of sorts. Something that happens to people all around the world.

Brain regions inhibited by the out-of-body experience include the visual cortex.

She didn't have any specific emotions surrounding this experience, and i t seems to be a kind of hallucination she can turn on at will.
What's happening?
Even if there is no soul stuck in our bodies, this woman isn't making this up. There's obviously something happening in her brain that is making her experience the world in a different way — but researchers can't yet say exactly what it is. Plus, this study was about one woman's out-of-body experience, not all out-of-body experiences.

Still, the changes they observed could be similar to how the brain can be trained using meditation. The researchers even suggested that this could be something many kids can do, but that with practice could be carried into adulthood.

Interestingly, the researchers suggested that this kind of experience may be much more common than we thought. The woman in question actually "appeared surprised that not everyone could experience this," the researchers wrote.

They compared it to synesthesia — the condition in which people hear colors or smell sounds — which was thought of as "out there" but has become widely accepted in the last few decades.

I'm sorry I could not bring to my beloved ATS, a more facinating tale of otherworldly wonders but unfortunately, this time, it's all simple science.

Very cool story, and you presented it well... unfortunately there is already an active thread on this:
www.abovetopsecret.com...

reply to post by VegHead


Oh damn! And you know... I even searched out-of-body and it didn't bring up anything. And here I am laughing at those that say this same thing, when I go behind them and type in key words and there it pops...

Damn you ATS search feature!!! Mahhhhhh!


Thanks for bringing it to my attention.

MODS please close! I have been foiled! Drats!

Existing thread here:
www.abovetopsecret.com...


Please add further comments to the ongoing discussion.
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