[GocartMozart]

no really, it really is falling :;p


http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20070823...ttI57.gO.s0NUE

CHICAGO (AFP) - For centuries, people have claimed to have had out-of-body experiences but now scientists have recreated the sensation without using drugs in the first experiments of their kind, a study said Thursday. ADVERTISEMENT



As many as one in 10 people say they have experienced the sensation of being awake and seeing their own body from another location, according to the study published in the journal Science.

"Out-of-body experiences have fascinated mankind for millennia. Their existence has raised fundamental questions about the relationship between human consciousness and the body," said Henrik Ehrsson, a neuroscientist formerly of University College London, and now at the Karolinska Institute in Sweden.

Now neuroscientists have manipulated a group of perfectly healthy volunteers into thinking they had moved outside their bodies by distorting their perception of reality.

Using virtual reality goggles to mix up the sensory signals reaching the brain, they induced the volunteers into projecting their awareness into a virtual body. Participants confirmed they had experienced sitting behind their physical body and looking at it.

The illusion was so strong that the volunteers reacted with a palpable sense of fear when their virtual selves were threatened with physical force.

The findings suggest there may be a scientific explanation for these types of out-of-body experiences, which are often thought of as delusional or paranormal, and the scientists believe their research could have important applications.

"The invention of this illusion is important because it reveals the basic mechanism that produces the feeling of being inside the physical body," said Ehrsson.

"This represents a significant advance because the experience of one's own body as the center of awareness is a fundamental aspect of self-consciousness."

And inducing people to have out-of-body experiences could have wide-ranging uses, he believes.

"This is essentially a means of projecting yourself, a form of teleportation. If we can project people into a virtual character, so they feel and respond as if they were really in a virtual version of themselves, just imagine the implications.

"The experience of video games could reach a whole new level, but it could go much beyond that. For example, a surgeon could perform remote surgery, by controlling their virtual self from a different location."

But scientists still don't know exactly what causes such experiences which have often been associated with traumatic experiences such as car accidents and linked to compromised brain function in epileptics, drug addicts and stroke victims.

"Brain dysfunctions that interfere with interpreting sensory signals may be responsible for clinical cases of out-of-body experiences," said Ehrsson.

"Though, whether all out-of-body experiences arise from the same causes is still an open question."

[mrsirjojo]

Unsuprising. Science will eventually map the entire brain, and this sort of personal evidence BS thing will be laughed at.

[tettehsrafalution]

Originally Posted by mrsirjojo

Unsuprising. Science will eventually map the entire brain, and this sort of personal evidence BS thing will be laughed at.

Not sure I know what you mean by "personal evidence BS".

I also doubt that science will eventually map the entire brain in a meaningful way that explains HOW the brain works. Knowing that part (a) does something to part (b) is just replacing one black-box with another.

[tettehsrafalution]

"The experience of video games could reach a whole new level, but it could go much beyond that. For example, a surgeon could perform remote surgery, by controlling their virtual self from a different location."

The video game bit sounds pretty cool.
Not to mention the potential to commit crimes remotely... err, I don't mean that sounds pretty cool - I mean that's another possibility that would need consideration.

What I find intriguing about this is:

"The invention of this illusion is important because it reveals the basic mechanism that produces the feeling of being inside the physical body," said Ehrsson.

If we can really understand what creates the feeling of being inside the body and how the illusion of being outside the body works, we might get some insight into how the illusion of being inside the body is also created. The mind-body problem of philosophy could reach a whole new level if we are able to show that our "normal" state of mind (i.e. feeling like we're inside the body) is no more normal than the state of mind that would arise if we were born and raised with the illusion that we were outside the body.
If both states of mind could arise just as "naturally" then there'd be nothing so "normal" about feeling like we're inside the body.
It could just be an illusion.

That would raise a lot of questions about identity.
What exactly is it that's being deluded into thinking it is inside or outside a body? What is it, and where is it while it's being deluded?
And does it make sense to ask where it is?