[Buddha-l] Re: Inducing Out-of-Body Experience

[curt]

The circular logic involved here is so blatant that I wonder why it 
needs to be pointed out. The assumption is that OBE's are the result of 
a "mistake" that the brain makes - then researchers try to reproduce 
this "mistake". The underlying assumption is never examined. Does anyone 
doubt that the senses and the brain can be "fooled"? That is the only 
thing that this study "proves".

There is absolutely no reason to assume that the experience being 
induced in the experimental subjects has any relationship to the 
phenomenon that the study claims to be investigating.

- Curt

Stuart Lachs wrote:
>> From today's NY Times.
> Studies Report Inducing Out-of-Body Experience
> By SANDRA BLAKESLEE
> Published: August 24, 2007
> Using virtual-reality goggles, a camera and a stick, scientists have 
> induced out-of-body experiences — the sensation of drifting outside of 
> one’s own body — in ordinary, healthy people, according to studies 
> being published today in the journal Science.
>
> A representation of one of the scenarios that scientists used to study 
> out-of-body experiences.
>
> When people gazed at an illusory image of themselves through the 
> goggles and were prodded in just the right way with the stick, they 
> felt as if they had left their bodies.
>
> The research reveals that “the sense of having a body, of being in a 
> bodily self,” is actually constructed from multiple sensory streams, 
> said one expert on body and mind, Dr. Matthew M. Botvinick, an 
> assistant professor of neuroscience at Princeton University.
>
> Usually these sensory streams, which include vision, touch, balance 
> and the sense of where one’s body is positioned in space, work 
> together seamlessly, Dr. Botvinick said. But when the information 
> coming from the sensory sources does not match up, the sense of being 
> embodied as a whole comes apart.
>
> The brain, which abhors ambiguity, then forces a decision that can, as 
> the new experiments show, involve the sense of being in a different body.
>
> The research provides a physical explanation for phenomena usually 
> ascribed to otherworldly influences, said Peter Brugger, a neurologist 
> at University Hospital in Zurich, who, like Dr. Botvinick, had no role 
> in the experiments. In what is popularly referred to as near-death 
> experience, people who have been in the throes of severe and sudden 
> injury or illness often report the sensation of floating over their 
> body, looking down, hearing what is said and then, just as suddenly, 
> finding themselves back inside their body.
>
> Out-of-body experiences have also been reported to occur during sleep 
> paralysis, the exertion of extreme sports and intense meditation 
> practices.
>
> The complete article can be read at
>
> http://www.nytimes.com/2007/08/24/science/24body.html?ref=science
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