Experiment gives hint of brain's role in out-of-body sensation

The Boston Globe ^ | 9/19/2002 | By Gareth Cook, Globe Staff

[vannrox]

A tiny part of the brain behind the right ear can cause out-of-body experiences and could explain the many stories of near-death patients who say they have looked down at their own bodies, a team of Swiss scientists announced yesterday.

[vannrox]

WOW.

[nevergore]

I get that same feeling after a case of Bud......

Here...Hold muh beer and watch me float near the ceiling....

NeverGore

[E. Pluribus Unum]

Wait till the fume-sniffers hear about this. They will be inserting electrodes into their brains instead of snorting gasoline in no time.

[hopespringseternal]

Well, they have been boring holes in their heads to "raise their consciousness" for quite a while now. I imagine we will find a few miscreants electrocuted with wires taped to their heads.

[E. Pluribus Unum]

Boring holes in their heads, eh? Sounds about right. They should bore them a little deeper.

[Ready2go]

Hi vannrox

DON'T STOP

Chattanooga cardiologist Maurice Rawlings, M.D., tells of a patient who had a cardiac arrest in Dr. Rawlings' office. Throughout the attempted resuscitation, the patient faded in and out.

Each time the doctor interrupted the heart massage, the patient appeared to die again.

When the man came to, he screamed, "I am in hell!" A look of sheer terror clouded his face. "Don't stop!" he begged. "Don't you understand? I am in hell. Each time you quit I go back to hell! Don't let me go back to hell!"

The patient survived and put his faith in Christ to take away his sins and secure his place in heaven.{8}The place the Bible calls hell, or hades, is the current home of those who do not accept Jesus' gift of forgiveness. It is a place of constant, conscious torment.{9}Hades is not the final dwelling place of those who die without a personal relationship with Christ.

John says these will be judged at the "great white throne" judgment. Since no one's deeds are sufficient to earn eternal life, those without Christ's pardon will be cast into the "lake of fire."{10}Jesus said that "the eternal fire...has been prepared for the devil and his angels" (Matthew 25:41).

Not a pleasant subject. But remember, God does not want you to perish in hell. He loves you and wants you to spend eternity with Him. Not without Him.{11}Paul wrote that God our Savior wants all people to be saved (or made safe from the consequences of sin, which is separation from God).

He wants us to know Him because He is truth.{12}God sent Jesus Christ, His Son, to pay the penalty for our sins (attitudes and actions that fall short of God's perfection).

Jesus literally went through hell for us. We simply need to receive His free gift of forgiveness--we can never earn it--to be guaranteed eternal life. "Whoever hears my word, Jesus says, "and believes him who sent me has eternal life and will not be condemned; he has crossed over from death to life" (John 5:24).

If you'd like to watch a movie about this: Dr. Maurice Rawlings, MD, a heart surgeon, has written a number of books on the near death experience and clearly shows from his own practice and the experiences of his patients, that not everyone goes to the light when they die, where there is total love.

He has written of many patients being resuscitated on the operating table and speaking about being in hell, where there was a real devil and demons, and where the inhabitants were tormented with fire.

Dr. Rawlings writes that these people are a lot more reluctant to talk about it than those who went to the good place. This film (1:28 min.), hosted by Dr. Rawlings, looks at the experiences of people who have literally gone 'To Hell and Back'. [ Both links to view the Real Video should work, try the alternate if your first choice fails.]

http://amightywind.com/hell/testimonies.htm

[D-fendr]

I'm waiting for them to announce they've found the chemical formula for truth, goodness and beauty.

It's just in the brain after all.

[sheik yerbouty]

They are trying to produce an out of mind experience!

[Dave S]

Except doesnt explain how the patient can sometimes see in minute detail what is being done and said in the operating room when unconscious. Also some report seeing things that can only be seen from a position other than the operating table. So much for the big explanation. Hell, I have dreams where Im floating in air so what the big deal about triggering similar sensation in unconscious person.

My dad had a near death experience during a heart operation and he was able to recall many details that could not be explained.

[Nathan Jr.]

reminds me of the movie "Total Recall"

[vannrox]

Swiss doctors found that it's possible to trigger out-of-body experiences by using electrodes to stimulate a portion of the right side of the brain. (ABCNEWS.com)

Mind Over Body Neurologist Finds Way to Trigger Out-of-Body Experiences By Amanda Onion Sept. 19 — At one point she felt she was "sinking into the bed." Later she said, "I see myself lying in bed, from above …"

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Reports of out-of-body sensations have been common throughout history. The Greek philosopher Plato was among the first to suggest that when the body dies and disintegrates, the soul migrates outside the body and continues to live. Characters in countless paranormal dramas have been resuscitated back to life and then speak about how they rose above their own bodies and watched others working feverishly to save them.

But rarely has the sensation been captured in the controlled setting of a laboratory — until now.

In a new study released today in the journal Nature, Swiss scientists describe how they were able to trigger bizarre, out-of-body experiences in a 43-year-old female epileptic patient while analyzing her brain with electrodes.

Accidental Discovery

Olaf Blanke, a neurosurgeon at University Hospitals of Geneva and Lausanne, wasn't trying to set off the sensations in his patient but was using electrical stimulation to map the activity of her brain in preparation for surgical treatment. But by recording the patient's reactions and matching them with specific electrodes, Blanke was able to pinpoint the region where out-of-body experiences seem to originate.

"We wanted [and needed] to be sure that what the patient experienced and told us was related to the actual stimulation," says Blanke.

When Blanke and colleagues activated electrodes placed just above the patient's right ear — a region known as the right angular gyrus — the woman began to have the strange sensations. Depending on the amplitude of the stimulation and the current position of the patient's body, her experience varied. Each of the patient's four episodes lasted about two seconds.

After one stimulation, the patient said she felt as though she were sinking into her bed and then she felt as though she were "falling from a height." After another stimulation she said felt like she was "floating" about 6½ feet above her bed, close to the ceiling. When she was asked to watch her legs during the stimulation, the patient said she saw her legs "becoming shorter."

Scientists have long tried to explain how people might have such sensations. Last December a British journal described a Dutch study that estimated 12 percent of cardiac patients resuscitated from clinical death experience out-of-body sensations such as seeing a bright light or their own dead bodies. In 1995, Michael Persinger, a psychologist at Laurentian University in Sudbury, Ontario, found he was able to trigger out-of-body and other paranormal experiences in people by exposing the right sides of their brains to a series of electromagnetic pulses.

Severe migraines, small strokes and epilepsy have also been known to trigger the condition and previous work has located the cause to the brain's right lobe.

Right Brain Condition

Blanke says his study shows the right angular gyrus has a specific role in triggering the feeling. This region is the part of the brain that scientists believe integrates visual information, including how the body is seen, and touch and balance sensations that all work together to create the mind's representation of the body.

He says out-of-body experiences "may reflect a failure by the angular gyrus" to integrate these different channels of information. Physical stress, or a lack of oxygen to the brain, he says, might trigger the kind of brain misfiring he induced in his patient.

Vilayanur Ramachandran, a professor of neurosciences and psychology at the University of California in San Diego, says Blanke's study makes sense since damage to the same region of the brain has been known to cause a confused physical sense of the body. But, he adds, it's rare to be able to induce the sensation.

"This is exciting because it shows this technology can be used to produce reversible lesions," he says. "This can be a powerful tool to study the condition."

But Robert Peterson, a person who regularly experiences out-of-body experiences and who has written about them in two books, argues no study can prove the sensations are just the result of a quirk in the brain.

"People who have these experiences are nearly always extremely firm in their convictions," he says. "No amount of evidence can convince the subjects that it wasn't 'real.'"

Persinger of Laurentian University argues it only illuminates how much is left to learn about the human brain.

"This is more evidence," he says, "that that great raveled knot — our brain — still has a lot of mysteries to unfold."

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[hove]

"Except doesnt explain how the patient can sometimes see in minute detail what is being done and said in the operating room when unconscious."

Right on Dave! Sometimes scientists just need to think outside the box and accept that some things are in the realm of metaphysics. I'm sure someday the distinction between science and metaphysics will become blurred to the point where they are one in the same.

[forsnax5]

The part of the brain involved in the out-of-body experience is the Right Angular Gyrus...

Hmmmmm. Gives new meaning to the term "RAGhead," doesn't it...

[SupplySider]

Does sincerity count in one's affirmation? And how is it measured? This is a serious question I don't see dicussed much. One man may think the thought "I accept Jesus" in passing. Another man may have strong emotions with that thought. Are both sufficient? Is a man with a huge heart and mind, like a saint, required to commit more fully than a man of very limited feelings or even a mentally retarded man? What if a man sincerely turns to Christ, but then never thinks of it again?

It seems to me that "belief" can mean very different things and that those differences should have importance. I wonder, too, if the original words for "belief in the Lord" in the scripture might have been better translated as "knowledge of the Lord".

Sorry to get so theological on you, you are not my pastor of course :) But you raised the point, as many bible oriented Christians will, so I thought I'd take you up on it.

[Diamond]

she had an intense out-of-body experience, including visits to France and New York City's Fifth Avenue.

hmmmm....

Cordially,

[PoisedWoman]

Drilling holes in skulls is old news.

Many web pages discuss trepanning, which has been practiced since ancient days.

"Skulls with signs of trepanning were found practically in all parts of the world where man has lived. Trepanning is probably the oldest surgical operation known to man: evidence for it goes back as far as in 40,000 year-old Cro-Magnon sites. "

For more, see http://www.epub.org.br/cm/n02/historia/trepan.htm