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Out-of-body experiences are a common phenomenon people experience, especially in near-death scenarios. Many people in the past have claimed that they are genuine experiences of the paranormal. However, scientists have recently managed to recreate such feelings in a group of volunteers and are now able to provide explanations for this common phenomenon which affects a staggering one in ten people.

The experiments, conducted by two teams, one from University College London in the UK and the other from the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Lausanne, consisted of using virtual reality goggles on each volunteer. These work by tricking the brain to think that it is somewhere else. When the volunteer’s body was touched, they genuinely felt that they were outside the body as the sensation detached from their visual experience. From these studies, the scientists believe they have found a neurological explanation for such weird feelings. Indeed, they say that those who are depressed or not in tune with their own bodies are more likely to have such experiences. As Dr Henrik Ehrsson who led the team from London explains:

“This experiment suggests that the first-person visual perspective is critically important for the in-body experience. In other words, we feel that our self is located where the eyes are.”

Many have regarded out-of-body experiences with great suspicion before, not believing their apparent supernatural nature, and now finally scientists are showing that they were correct, by recreating the phenomenon themselves. As psychologist Dr Susan Blackmore from the University of the West of England says:

“Scientists have long suspected that the clue to these extraordinary, and sometimes life-changing, experiences lies in disrupting our normal illusion of being a self behind our eyes, and replacing it with a new viewpoint from above or behind.”

The results are fascinating and show great promise for science - the researchers say that with such technology in future we may we eventually be able to create computer games which accurately make you feel like you are part of the game. Not only this but the findings are finally shedding light on a mysterious phenomenon, often described by religious people, that may actually have a very ordinary explanation.

This entry was posted on Friday, August 24th, 2007 at 6:56 pm and is filed under Technology, Science. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.