Out-of-body Research Articles

Enhancing motor imagery in the third-person perspective by manipulating sense of body ownership with virtual reality.

Virtual reality (VR)-guided motor imagery (MI) is a widely used approach for motor rehabilitation, especially for patients with severe motor impairments. Most approaches provide visual guidance from the first-person perspective (1PP). MI training with visual guidance from the third-person perspective (3PP) remains largely unexplored. We argue that 3PP MI training has its own advantages and can supplement 1PP MI. For some movements beyond the view of 1PP, such as shoulder shrugging and other axial movements, MI are suitable performed under 3PP. However, the efficiency of existing paradigms for 3PP MI is unsatisfactory. We speculate that the absence of sense of body ownership (SOO) from 3PP could be one possible factor and hypothesize that 3PP MI could be enhanced by eliciting SOO over a 3PP avatar. Based on our hypothesis, a novel paradigm was proposed to enhance 3PP MI by inducing full-body illusion (FBI) from 3PP, which is similar to the so-called out-of-body experience (OBE), using synchronous visuo-tactile stimulus with VR. The event-related Electroencephalograph (EEG) desynchronization (ERD) at motor-related regions from 31 healthy participants were calculated and compared with a control paradigm without "OBE" FBI induction. This study attempts to enhance 3PP MI with FBI induction. It offers an opportunity to perform MI guided by action observation from 3PP with elicited SOO to the observed avatar. We believe that 3PP MI could provide more possibilities for effective rehabilitation training, when SOO could be elicited to a virtual avatar and the present work demonstrates its viability and effectiveness.

Event-Related EEG Desynchronization Reveals Enhanced Motor Imagery From the Third Person Perspective by Manipulating Sense of Body Ownership With Virtual Reality for Stroke Patients.

Virtual reality (VR)-based rehabilitation training holds great potential for post-stroke motor recovery. Existing VR-based motor imagery (MI) paradigms mostly focus on the first-person perspective, and the benefit of the third-person perspective (3PP) remains to be further exploited. The 3PP is advantageous for movements involving the back or those with a large range because of its field coverage. Some movements are easier to imagine from the 3PP. However, the 3PP training efficiency may be unsatisfactory, which may be attributed to the difficulty encountered when generating a strong sense of ownership (SOO). In this work, we attempt to enhance a visual-guided 3PP MI in stroke patients by eliciting the SOO over a virtual avatar with VR. We propose to achieve this by inducing the so-called out-of-body experience (OBE), which is a full-body illusion (FBI) that people misperceive a 3PP virtual body as his/her own (i.e., generating the SOO to the virtual body). Electroencephalography signals of 13 stroke patients are recorded while MI of the affected upper limb is being performed. The proposed paradigm is evaluated by comparing event-related desynchronization (ERD) with a control paradigm without FBI induction. The results show that the proposed paradigm leads to a significantly larger ERD during MI, indicating a bilateral activation pattern consistent with that in previous studies. In conclusion, 3PP MI can be enhanced in stroke patients by eliciting the SOO through induction of the "OBE" FBI. This study offers more possibilities for virtual rehabilitation in stroke patients and can further facilitate VR application in rehabilitation.

Structural differences between non-lucid dreams, lucid dreams and out-of-body experience reports assessed by graph analysis

Dreaming is a complex phenomenon that occurs during sleep, involving various conscious dream experiences. Lucid dreams (LDs) involve heightened awareness within the dream environment, while out-of-body experiences (OBEs) involve the sensation of being outside one’s physical body. OBEs occur during sleep paralysis (SP), where voluntary movements are inhibited during sleep/wake transitions while remaining aware of the surroundings. The relationship between LDs and OBEs is debated, with some viewing them as distinct phenomena and others considering them different manifestations of the same underlying experience. This study aimed to characterize non-lucid dreams, LDs, and OBEs by analyzing dream reports’ structural properties. OBE reports displayed a condensed and interconnected network structure compared to non-lucid dreams and LDs. Additionally, OBE reports exhibited a specialized network structure, with specific nodes playing a more central role. These findings suggest that OBE dreams may have a more coherent and unified narrative, with certain nodes being pivotal in the network structure.

Influence of Virtual Out-of-Body Experiences on Fear of Death

Virtual reality (VR) has a demonstrated capacity to embody participants in a virtual avatar and induce body ownership illusions. Previous research has leveraged avatar embodiment to create virtual out-of-body experiences (OBEs) for participants. These induced experiences have subsequently been linked to influencing participants’ fear of death (FOD). Because perceptions of mortality have important clinical implications for palliative and hospice care, there has been growing research interest in the efficacy of utilizing VR technologies to influence FOD. This exploratory study extends this line of research by examining the impact of VR OBEs on FOD in a between-groups experiment with three conditions: (1) a control condition where participants remained in control of the avatar body; (2) an out-of-body (OBE) experimental condition in which participants drifted out of the avatar body and lost visuotactile contact with their avatar; and (3) a “drifting body” (DBE) experimental condition in which participants drifted out of the avatar body but retained visuotactile contact with their avatar. Preliminary data analysis revealed non-significant reductions in FOD in the OBE and DBE experimental conditions. Furthermore, qualitative measures indicated that participants were more disturbed by the OBE condition than by the DBE condition. We provide a discussion of these results, as well as study limitations and future continuation of research under ideal conditions.

The SOREM-Led Induction Method (SLIM): A Novel and Theoretically Grounded Approach to Eliciting Out-Of-Body Experiences

In parapsychological literature, out-of-body experiences (OBEs) appear closely correlatedto the phenomenon of sleep paralysis (SP), with some authors referring to the SP stateas a “gate” or “launching pad” for OBEs. Given the notorious difficulty of eliciting OBEsvoluntarily using conventional methods, this paper proposes a novel methodology foreliciting OBEs, involving the induction of SP as a precursor condition. The relationshipbetween sleep onset rapid eye movement (SOREM) sleep, SP, and OBEs are discussed, asis the work of earlier researchers who first elicited SOREM and sleep paralysis in the sleeplaboratory. The results of preliminary testing of this methodology are briefly described.

Transformative effects of spontaneous out of body experiences in healthy individuals: An interpretative phenomenological analysis.

Transformative effects of spontaneous out of body experiences in healthy individuals: An interpretative phenomenological analysis.

Riding against the Past

Riding against the Past

Neuro-functional modeling of near-death experiences in contexts of altered states of consciousness.

Near-death experiences (NDEs) including out-of-body experiences (OBEs) have been fascinating phenomena of perception both for affected persons and for communities in science and medicine. Modern progress in the recording of changing brain functions during the time between clinical death and brain death opened the perspective to address and understand the generation of NDEs in brain states of altered consciousness. Changes of consciousness can experimentally be induced in well-controlled clinical or laboratory settings. Reports of the persons having experienced the changes can inform about the similarity of the experiences with those from original NDEs. Thus, we collected neuro-functional models of NDEs including OBEs with experimental backgrounds of drug consumption, epilepsy, brain stimulation, and ischemic stress, and included so far largely unappreciated data from fighter pilot tests under gravitational stress generating cephalic nervous system ischemia. Since we found a large overlap of NDE themes or topics from original NDE reports with those from neuro-functional NDE models, we can state that, collectively, the models offer scientifically appropriate causal explanations for the occurrence of NDEs. The generation of OBEs, one of the NDE themes, can be localized in the temporo-parietal junction (TPJ) of the brain, a multimodal association area. The evaluated literature suggests that NDEs may emerge as hallucination-like phenomena from a brain in altered states of consciousness (ASCs).

Sacred squares? A non-representational study of James Smetham's (1821–1889) everyday artistic experiences of religion, faith, and spirituality

This paper develops new ways of approaching representations to understand individuals' everyday experiences of religion, faith, and spirituality in the past. Drawing on non-representational theories' emphasis on practice and affect, it focuses on processes of making representations within religious, faithful, and spiritual practices. Contribuing to ongoing dialogues between art history and geography, it explores the material spaces such representations were made in and the spiritual spaces they created, arguing that this approach overcomes the difficulties faced by historical geographers trying to explore embodied and out of body experiences of religion, faith, and spirituality in the past. To demonstrate the potential of this approach, this paper focuses on miniature squares made by the Methodist and Pre-Raphaelite associate James Smetham between 1848 and the late 1870s. Approaching them as spaces that Smetham made and inhabited, it explores where and when he made them and how making and inhabiting them affected his body, mind, and spirit. By taking this approach, this paper simultaneously gains specific insights into Smetham's embodied experiences of religion, faith, and spirituality and out of body experiences of the spiritual realm. It also reveals his complicated relationship with the Wesleyan Church, particularly its impact on his mental health.

The impact of interoceptive accuracy and stimulation type on the out-of-body experience.

People tend to perceive a virtual body standing in front of them as their own if it is either stroked or moving synchronously with their own real body-the out-of-body experience (OBE). We combined synchrony manipulation with two other factors of theoretical interest: the kind of stimulation, visuotactile stimuli or visuomotor correlations, being synchronised and the interoceptive accuracy (IA) of participants, assessed by means of the heartbeat counting task. Results showed that explicit measures of embodiment were systematically affected by synchrony, and this synchrony effect was more pronounced for visuomotor than for visuotactile conditions. The walking drift was affected by IA: In visuotactile conditions, the synchrony effect was pronounced in individuals with low IA, presumably reflecting a stronger impact of the visual information. In visuomotor conditions, however, the synchrony effect was stronger in individuals with high IA, presumably reflecting a stronger impact of re-afferent information generated by the participants' own movements.

Bosworth Field

Bosworth Field M. Cynthia Cheung (bio) Centuries of winter ploughingand continuous progress have leveledthe ground—no casual observer now wouldthink about how much iron our ancestors laid down.Iron, having lives of its own, moves cyclicallyin and out of bodies, like rain. It's true, if you combedthe land, you'd find old Romancoins, Tudor hat pins—just thingspeople lost. But iron returns to the earth invisibly—nobody abandons steel to the aftermathof crows and foxes slinking afield, countingthe dead. No, blood seeps through the soiluntil it's swallowed. It's like breathing, almost,how we've forgotten that this rusted marsh stillexists everywhere—an endless ice-limnedsurface, ripening its crop of faces. [End Page 237] M. Cynthia Cheung M. Cynthia Cheung is a physician whose writing can be found in The Baltimore Review, RHINO, Salamander, SWWIM, Tupelo Quarterly and others. Currently, she serves as a judge for Baylor College of Medicine's annual Michael E. DeBakey Medical Student Poetry Awards. Find out more at www.mcynthiacheung.com. Copyright © 2022-2023 Pleiades and Pleiades Press

On Subtle Bodies, Out-of-Body Experiences, and Apparitions of the Living: A Review of Ernesto Bozzano's Study of "Bilocation"

For many years there have been phenomena such as apparitions of the living, photographs of the living at a distance, near-death experiences, emanations of light from the dying, fog, or incorporeal “doubles,” which have suggested the existence of a spirit, or “subtle body,” able to separate itself from the physical body, sometimes bringing consciousness with it. This idea also underpins the projection model for Out-of-Body Experience (OBE) cases, which has an interesting history (Alvarado, 2009, 2011, 2019). Here I briefly review that concept through the analysis of a work written by the Italian student of psychic phenomena Ernesto Bozzano, published for the first time in 1934 (Bozzano, 2020) and recently re-edited in the original language by Golem Libri, a young publishing house specializing in “psychic” topics.
 In discussing this book my approach is mainly historical. I hope both to help modern readers to get more acquainted with Bozzano’s work, and to highlight those passages that deepen our understanding of specific aspects of the topic, especially with reference to the ideas on OBEs published before the 1930s. I am convinced that while the issues discussed by Bozzano have a limited value today, they can stimulate further discussions.

Contributions of Body-Orientation to Mental Ball Dropping Task During Out-of-Body Experiences.

Out-of-body experiences (OBEs) provide fascinating insights into our understanding of bodily self-consciousness and the workings of the brain. Studies that examined individuals with brain lesions reported that OBEs are generally characterized by participants experiencing themselves outside their physical body (i.e., disembodied feeling) (Blanke and Arzy, 2005). Based on such a characterization, it has been shown that it is possible to create virtual OBEs in immersive virtual environments (Ehrsson, 2007; Ionta et al., 2011b; Bourdin et al., 2017). However, the extent to which body-orientation influences virtual OBEs is not well-understood. Thus, in the present study, 30 participants (within group design) experienced a full-body ownership illusion (synchronous visuo-tactile stimulation only) induced with a gender-matched full-body virtual avatar seen from the first-person perspective (1PP). At the beginning of the experiment, participants performed a mental ball dropping (MBD) task, seen from the location of their virtual avatar, to provide a baseline measurement. After this, a full-body ownership illusion (embodiment phase) was induced in all participants. This was followed by the virtual OBE illusion phase of the experiment (disembodiment phase) in which the first-person viewpoint was switched to a third-person perspective (3PP), and participants' disembodied viewpoint was gradually raised to 14 m above the virtual avatar, from which altitude they repeated the MBD task. During the experiment, this procedure was conducted twice, and the participants were allocated first to the supine or the standing body position at random. Results of the MBD task showed that the participants experienced increased MBD durations during the supine condition compared to the standing condition. Furthermore, although the findings from the subjective reports confirmed the previous findings of virtual OBEs, no significant difference between the two postures was found for body ownership. Taken together, the findings of the current study make further contributions to our understanding of both the vestibular system and time perception during OBEs.

I orient myself through touching at distance: A case of a frequent out-of-body experiencer

This paper presents a case of anomalous perception, mainly in the form of out-of-body experiences (OBEs), of a healthy individual. The individual has been experiencing massive out-of-body experiences, spontaneously or at will, on a daily basis, since birth, which is more than 45 years.The paper further presents some characteristics of phenomenology as well as semiology of OBEs of the above mentioned subject based on anecdotal as well as first hand evidence.

Perceived Out-of-Body Experiences (OBEs) and the Mysterious Silver Cord

Perceived Out-of-Body Experiences (OBEs) and the Mysterious Silver Cord

The Dilemma of the Physician, Going Back to The Clinician, Back to Basics

Background: Technology has allowed the scientific side of medicine to evolve more rapidly causing the “modern” physicians to greatly rely on laboratory values and imaging studies thereby leading to the loss of clinician abilities and skills. Case: A 52-year-old female with multiple cardiovascular co-morbidities including ischemic heart disease, presented to the emergency department in the morning with diffuse body pain associated with malaise, numbness and paresthesias of the right upper and lower extremity. This was followed by an “out of body” sensation. She then experienced transient sharp left-sided chest discomfort described as moderate to severe in intensity with a duration of approximately 2 minutes slowly subsiding on its own. Subsequently, she reported difficulty lifting the right hand and leg as well as slurred speech. The strength in her limbs returned within the hour but numbness and paresthesias persisted and continued to bother her. At the time of presentation, she was hypertensive but no other abnormalities were found on the physical examination. An elevated troponin level was noted but acute coronary syndrome (ACS) was unsuspected in the 12-lead electrocardiogram (ECG). A noncontrast computed tomography (CT) of the head was unremarkable. A subsequent 12-lead ECG revealed new T wave inversions in the lateral leads. This provoked a repeat neurological exam in greater detail, and there was objective weakness of the distal muscle groups of the right upper and lower limbs. The NIH score was now 6 (prior was 0). Brain magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) the following day showed an acute infarct of the left internal capsule. Approximately 72 hours after the initial presentation, the patient remarkably improved and was planned for discharge by the 5th admission day. Conclusion: Clinical skills are crucial in the technological era; it could definitely prevent mistakes or time matter diagnosis. Hence, a reason why in times of dilemma, a return to the basics promoting these skills will always be helpful.

Review of the book Out-of-Body and Near-Death Experiences: Brain-State phenomena or glimpses of immortality? by M. N. Marsh

Review of the book Out-of-Body and Near-Death Experiences: Brain-State phenomena or glimpses of immortality? by M. N. Marsh

“Men Fear Most What They Cannot See.” sleep paralysis “Ghost Intruders” and faceless “Shadow-People”—The role of the right hemisphere and economizing nature of vision

Sleep paralysis is a curious condition where the paralyzed person may hallucinate terrifying ghosts. These hypnogogic and hypnopompic visions are common worldwide. They often entail seeing and sensing shadow beings; although hallucinating full-fledged figures (e.g., cat-like creatures and witches) are not uncommon. In this paper, I propose a neuroscientific account (building on previous work) for why people see ghosts during sleep paralysis and why these tend to manifest as faceless shadows. This novel venture considers the distinct computational styles of the right and left hemisphere and their functional specializations vis-à-vis florid intruder hallucinations and out-of-body experiences (OBEs) during these dream-like states. Additionally, I provide a brain-based explanation for dissociative phenomena common during sleep paralysis. Specifically, I posit that these ghost hallucinations and OBEs are chiefly mediated by activity in key regions in the right hemisphere; and outline how the functional organization of the visual system (evoking concepts like surface interpolation) and its economizing nature (i.e., proclivity to minimize computational load and take short-cuts) can explain faceless humanoid-shadows and sensed presence hallucinations during sleep paralysis; and how the hypothalamus and anterior cingulate may be implicated during related dissociative states. Ultimately empirical research must shed light on the validity of this account. If this hypothesis is correct, patients with right hemisphere damage (i.e., in implicated areas) should be less likely to hallucinate ghosts during sleep paralysis; i.e., compared to those with intact hemispheres or damage to the left only. It may also be possible to temporarily disable right hemisphere functions during sleep paralysis using transcranial magnetic stimulation. Accordingly, this procedure should eradicate sleep paralysis ghost hallucinations.

Migraine with multiple visual symptoms and out-of-body experience may mimic epilepsy

The patient was an 18-year-old man who had suffered from various visual symptoms as follows since he was 17 years old: 1) a diagonal line appeared in his visual field, shifting his upper field of view to the right and his lower field of view to the left; 2) his whole vision seemed distorted with ripples; and 3) black spots covered parts of his visual field and moved up and down. These visual symptoms were followed by out-of-body experience (OBE), which he felt as seeing his own body apart from his left back. Headache attacks followed these symptoms. On brain MRI, bilateral occipital atrophy was suspected. An electroencephalogram showed intermittent irregular delta in the bilateral occipital area. No epileptiform discharges were observed. We finally diagnosed him as having migraine with multiple visual auras and OBE. He was very well treated with a small dose of valproic acid which he tolerated well. OBE rarely occurs in migraine and should be distinguished from epilepsy.

Common and distinct brain networks of autoscopic phenomena

ObjectiveAutoscopic phenomena (AP) are illusory own body reduplications characterized by the visual perception of a second own body in extrapersonal space, and include three main forms: autoscopic hallucination (AH), heautoscopy (HAS) and out-of-body-experience (OBE). Past research showed that lesions were heterogeneously distributed and affected many different brain regions within and across patients, while small case series suggested that AP lesions converge in temporo-parietal and parieto-occipital cortex. As only few studies investigated each form of AP separately, it remains unknown whether the three AP are characterized by common and distinct brain mechanisms. MethodsHere, we applied lesion network analysis in 26 neurological AP patients and determined their common and distinct functional connectivity patterns. ResultsWe report that all localize to a single common brain network at the bilateral temporo-parietal junction, further associated with specific patterns of functional connectivity, defining each type of AP. OBE resulted from a brain network connected to bilateral angular gyrus, right precuneus, and right inferior frontal gyrus, differing from AH with a brain network connected to bilateral precuneus, inferior temporal gyrus, and cerebellum. HAS resulted from a brain network connected to left inferior frontal gyrus, left insula and left parahippocampus. ConclusionThe present data identify the temporo-parietal junction as the common core region for AP and show that each form of AP recruits additional specific networks, associated with different sensorimotor and self-related sub-networks.