As many as one in 10 people say they have experienced the sensation of being awake and seeing their own body from another location, according to the study published in the journal Science.
"Out-of-body experiences have fascinated mankind for millennia. Their existence has raised fundamental questions about the relationship between human consciousness and the body," said Henrik Ehrsson, a neuroscientist formerly of University College London, and now at the Karolinska Institute in Sweden.
Now neuroscientists have manipulated a group of perfectly healthy volunteers into thinking they had moved outside their bodies by distorting their perception of reality.
Using virtual reality goggles to mix up the sensory signals reaching the brain, they induced the volunteers into projecting their awareness into a virtual body. Participants confirmed they had experienced sitting behind their physical body and looking at it.
The illusion was so strong that the volunteers reacted with a palpable sense of fear when their virtual selves were threatened with physical force.
The findings suggest there may be a scientific explanation for these types of out-of-body experiences, which are often thought of as delusional or paranormal, and the scientists believe their research could have important applications.
"The invention of this illusion is important because it reveals the basic mechanism that produces the feeling of being inside the physical body," said Ehrsson.
See here.
