From: joedees@bellsouth.net
Date: Tue Sep 24 2002 - 12:50:08 MDT
On 19 Sep 2002 at 22:32, Joshua Tinnin wrote:
> Mostly on-topic ...
>
> - jt
>
> --
> http://www.nature.com/nsu/020916/020916-8.html
>
> Electrodes trigger out-of-body experience
> Stimulating brain region elicits illusion often attributed to the
> paranormal. 19 September 2002 HELEN PEARSON
>
> Activity in one region of the brain could explain out-of-body
> experiences. Researchers in Switzerland have triggered the phenomenon
> using electrodes.[1]
>
> People describe out-of-body experiences as feeling that their
> consciousness becomes detached from their body, often floating above
> it. Because these lucid states are popularly linked to the paranormal,
> "a lot of people are reluctant to talk about them", says neurologist
> Olaf Blanke of Geneva University Hospital in Switzerland.
>
> Blanke found that electrically stimulating one brain region - the
> right angular gyrus - repeatedly triggers out-of-body experiences.
> Blanke and his team were using electrodes to excite the brain of a
> woman being treated for epilepsy.
>
> The right angular gyrus integrates visual information - the sight of
> your body - and information that creates the mind's representation of
> your body. This is based on balance and feedback from your limbs about
> their position in space.
>
> "It makes perfect sense," agrees Peter Brugger of University Hospital,
> Zurich, in Switzerland, who studies the phenomenon. "We have
> representations of our entire body that can be dissociated from our
> real body," he says. But this is an isolated case, he points out.
>
> With gentle stimulation, the woman, who could speak during the
> operation, felt she was falling or growing lighter. As the intensity
> increased she told them: "I see myself lying in bed, from above."
>
> When asked to look at her raised arm, she thought it was coming to
> punch her. This observation suggests that 'alien hand syndrome' - when
> people feel that a limb is foreign - or 'phantom' limbs that people
> can feel after amputations could be related to out-of-body
> experiences, says Blanke.
>
> Weird science
>
> Out-of-body experiences are incredibly common, says clinical
> neurologist John Marshall of the Radcliffe Infirmary in Oxford, UK.
> Some are part of near-death experiences.
>
> Some believe that the events have religious or spiritual causes, or
> that a person really leaves their physical body behind. They may, for
> example, interpret them as evidence that the physical and spiritual
> body can separate again after death.
>
> The new experiments cannot disprove such ideas, says Marshall: "It
> doesn't show that people with paranormal beliefs are wrong" - it
> simply demonstrates one way that the experience can be stimulated.
> Nevertheless, "I think it would give great comfort to patients" who,
> he says, frequently question their own sanity.
>
> Thrill-seekers will be hard-pushed to artificially create their own
> out-of-body experiences, adds Brugger. "You can't stimulate that
> precisely without opening up the skull," he says.
>
>
> References
> 1. Blanke, O., Ortigue, S., Landis, T., Seeck, M. Stimulating own-body
> perceptions. Nature, 419, 269 - 270, (2002). |Article|
>
>
> ----------------
> MAPS-Forum@maps.org, a member service of the Multidisciplinary
> Association
> for Psychedelic Studies (see www.maps.org/cgi-bin/thatsanorder_LE ).
> To [un]subscribe, email the message text, [un]subscribe maps-forum
> youraddress to majordomo@maps.org List archives: www.cerebral.org/Maps
> Guidelines for authors: www.maps.org/guidelines.txt MAPS Forum is
> supported by a generous grant from the Promind Foundation.
>
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.5 : Wed Sep 25 2002 - 13:28:59 MDT