Inducing out-of-body experiences
Olaf Blanke, Gregor Thut · Oxford University Press eBooks · 2007
In an out-of-body experience (OBE), people seem to be awake and feel that their ‘self ’, or centre of awareness, is located outside of the physical body. This chapter focuses on recent neurological and neuroimaging findings with respect to OBEs as well as on experimental techniques that have been used to induce OBEs artificially. This was done in order to investigate OBEs scientifically and to induce them experimentally in the research laboratory for the understanding of corporeal and self-awareness. The evidence from neurological patients experiencing OBEs and thus the striking dissociation between self and body suggests that OBEs are culturally invariant phenomena, which can be investigated scientifically. The neuroscientific study of the self is in its infancy and there are currently no established models, very few data and often not even the vocabulary to describe neuroscientific notions of the self.