Scientists Scanned A Woman's Brain During An Out-Of-Body Experience And What They Found Was Amazing

This is from the article:

It may sound like the plot of the Twilight Zone, but a psychology graduate student at the University of Ottawa says she can voluntarily enter an out-of-body experience. This was a lucky break for scientists, who were able to scan her brain during the episode.

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.

According to the paper, this woman enters her out-of-body state right before sleeping, visualizing herself from above. She started doing so during naptime in preschool, they write. She currently only does it sometimes.

The researchers wrote in the paper:

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...

She told the researchers:

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.

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The paper shows brain scans and they're very interesting.

I have had several out of body experiences and they actually scare me a little. I hope I get used to them and maybe I could leave my apartment.

My first one occurred and it felt like I was walking through a thick liquid. I walked around my apartment and I was standing in the living room and I got scared. Next thing you know I was standing at the door of my bedroom looking at my body lying on the bed. I remember trying to wake up but I couldn't open my eyes. I have had a couple of these experiences and I think it's important that they be studied without prejudice.

reply to post by neoholographic


They should put her on a weighing scale and see if there is any change when she "leaves".

Interesting. Why don't you summarise the findings of the article so we can get a sense of what the physiological markers are in a body that does not contain conciousness? A body without a concious soul could give indicators of where the actual soul seats.

This was very interesting to read, OP. My experience of this was different than what she described, as though I was totally aware of my body below me and could see it, I felt totally disconnected with it, though was experiencing the "present" feeling of floating above, but also the physical presence of me below and what it was feeling and experiencing, as well. It was quite disconcerting and confusing, at first….

They should experiment with this further, by moving things around the room while she is in her out of body state and see if she could accurately figure out what items were rearranged/removed. This sounds very interesting and the potential for experimentation are endless.

reply to post by intrptr


Was that a subtle nod to Duncan MacDougall?

Dr. Duncan "Om" MacDougall (c. 1866 – October 15, 1920) was an early 20th-century physician in Haverhill, Massachusetts who sought to measure the mass lost by a human when the soul departed the body at death. MacDougall attempted to measure the mass change of six patients at the moment of death. His first subject, the results from which MacDougall felt were most accurate, lost "three-fourths of an ounce", which has since been popularized as "21 grams". Of the four successful measurements he obtained an average weight loss at the moment of death of 15 grams. The total average unaccounted for weight loss in these four subjects was found to be approximately 29 grams.

reply to post by Bilky

The scans shown in the article show that regions of the brain were active during the experience. Which shows that...regions of the brain were active during the experience. www.businessinsider.com...

Those regions are the same which are active when the body actually moves. Interesting in connection to other findings that our brains also become active when we observe other people engaging in physical activities, almost as if we were doing those activities ourselves.
journal.frontiersin.org...

Pistoche
They should experiment with this further, by moving things around the room while she is in her out of body state and see if she could accurately figure out what items were rearranged/removed. This sounds very interesting and the potential for experimentation are endless.

I agree. I would like to see some experiments like this. They need to do one where a message is placed in the room and see if she could read it while she's having this experience and her eyes are covered.

Is she really having an out of body experience or is it just a dream? Can she accurately report exactly whats going on in the room as she leaves her body?

If not then its just an intense dream state.

reply to post by Pistoche

Taking brain scans is cool and all but a simple test like that would say much more, for instance if she trained herself to do this and is aware of her surroundings, introduce a focus point. She says she can see herself over herself, why didn't somebody come in the room when all that was happening, and even a simple thing as caring a triangle, or and apple or a box and put it on her or next to the bed or a random object which she would not know about, and then take that object away before she wakes.

And see what happens and what she says was happening then while she had her out of body experience, yet was still in body as she says. The mind can play many tricks and if you suspect that you will just be laying on the bed it can come up with scenarios which you do exactly that from what they know, but if her scenarios match to others or unexpected suddenly thrown in variables of the people conducting this test, then there may be something to it.

Taking brain snapshots does not do much like phage said you get all that firing up even when thinking of about it, or dreaming about it, would still fire off those same areas, but if she is so candid and says she can see herself or her surroundings when in that state were that would technically and physically be impossible, then there doing there tests all wrong and can introduce a bit more elements into it.

reply to post by PhoenixOD



It's not a dream. You can tell by the brain scans. This is why they compared her just imagining something to her brain scan during her out of body experience.

If it was a dream state they could just match the brain scan when she had this experience to someone dreaming.

This is why I think they need to test her with a message on the wall. Pick a random address from the phone book, then put that address on a wall in a room. Bring her in with her eyes tightly covered. Tell her to look for a message on the wall when she has her OBE and then uncover the message on the wall. Take her out of the room after the OBE and ask her to say or write down what she saw.

This way you can begin to know is some part of her outside of her body or is this an ability of the brain to make you feel like your outside of the body.

This will also be great for full immersion simulations. If the brain can give you a real experience outside of your body then maybe technology could control the environment that you experience.

reply to post by neoholographic

It's not a dream. You can tell by the brain scans. This is why they compared her just imagining something to her brain scan during her out of body experience.

Are you saying that conscious imagination is the same as dreaming?
My experience is slightly different.

reply to post by Phage


No, I'm saying it would be easy to compare the brain scan to someone in a dream state. I have done sleep studies where they scan your brain.

It would be easy to compare the scan to someone's scan when dreaming and say when she's having this experience it's just like dreaming. Unless the researchers are idiots, I'm sure they thought of this among other things. I don't think this would be news if her scans when she had her OBE were no different than the scans of her or someone else dreaming. They would just say she was daydreaming and thought she was having an OBE.

reply to post by neoholographic

Unless the researchers are idiots

The fact that no one has attempted to test if she is really having an out of body experience is not very encouraging.

reply to post by neoholographic

Unless the researchers are idiots, I'm sure they thought of this among other things.

It would have been a good thing to check on but there is no mention of EEG monitoring so it seems they didn't. Pretty hard to do so in an MRI machine.

I don't think that the researchers were looking at it as a "real" experience though so I wouldn't call them idiots for not including that sort of data.

The results suggest that the ECE reported here represents an unusual type of kinesthetic imagery.

journal.frontiersin.org...

reply to post by Phage


The fact is, there's no reason to say that she's having an OBE if her brain scans are the same as someone daydreaming. If you have evidence that her brain scan when she has an OBE is the same as someone daydreaming, then I would like to see it. They explain some of the things that happened during the OBE.

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

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

Again, this is why you compare the two. When she was imagining, these same areas weren't activated or some of the areas that were inhibited during her OBE weren't inhibited while she was imagining.

My point is, if you have some evidence that her brain scan during her OBE is the same as her dreaming present it. The Researches covered this in the experiment.

reply to post by Phage


Also, your quote from the paper proves my point.

The results suggest that the ECE reported here represents an unusual type of kinesthetic imagery.

If it wasn't UNUSUAL and no different than scans when someone is dreaming, then there's nothing here but a person saying that they're having an OBE but they're really daydreaming.

reply to post by neoholographic

The fact is, there's no reason to say that she's having an OBE if her brain scans are the same as someone daydreaming.

Imagining doing something is not the same as a dream state any more than meditation is the same as imagination or a dream state.

What the research found, the only thing that the research found, is that while the subject was in what she described as an out of body experience her brain activity was similar to what a person actually going through those motions may have been. There was no analysis of "brainwave" activity to examine her actual mental state at the time so it cannot be determined what her actual state of consciousness was at the time. Was she fully awake? Don't know. Lucid dream? Don't know. Meditative? Don't know.


In addition to other "controls" mentioned. Another experiment which might prove interesting would be to have her actually perform the motions described rather than just imagine them.

reply to post by neoholographic

If it wasn't UNUSUAL and no different than scans when someone is dreaming, then there's nothing here but a person saying that they're having an OBE but they're really daydreaming.

Can you provide examples of brain scans during kinesthetic dreams?

reply to post by neoholographic


Story was already posted twice earlier today

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