This guys brain is sorta having an out of body experience...
In any case, The March 6 issue of the journal Neurology has an article in it entitled, Out-of-body experience and arousal. where they found
that some people's brains already may be predisposed to these sorts of experiences. They found that an out-of-body experience is statistically as likely to occur during a near death experience as it is to occur during the transition between wakefulness and sleep. Nelson suggests that phenomena in the brain's arousal system, which regulates different states of consciousness including REM sleep and wakefulness, may be the cause for these types of out-of-body displays.
Of course this research was done by surveying people who had out of body experiences, so who really knows.
Here's a more in depth article
More like this
Here's a juicy one from the Aug 24 Science.
This article is reposted from the old Wordpress incarnation of Not Exactly Rocket Science.
I received an email earlier today from one Nelson Abreu, who offered a criticism of the experimentally-induced out-of-body experiences that were reported recently, in the hope that I migh
Allow me to present to you the after effects of Evolution which did not anticipate video cameras and head-mounted projection.
>Of course this research was done by surveying people who had out of body experiences, so who really knows.
Meaning that these people are inherently untrustworthy? I don't quite understand this comment...
Meaning conclusions drawn from survey research are inherently limited. One of the reasons (among many others) being people are not trustworthy
Fair enough - I couldn't figure out if you were saying that or whether people claiming to have had OBEs were especially untrustworthy.
The thought had crossed my mind - but that's only a gut reaction ;)