Out-of-Body Experiences: Brainy Clues

Scientists may be one step closer to understanding what
happens in the brain when someone has an out-of-body experience.

A certain spot in the brain shows increased activity during out-of-body
experiences, Belgian researchers report in The New England Journal of
Medicine.

That part of the brain is where the angular gyrus, a brain region involved
in self-awareness, meets the supramarginal gyrus, a brain area that affects the
body's spatial orientation.

The Belgian scientists studied a 63-year-old man who had had an electrode
implanted in his brain to treat tinnitus ,
in which people experience ringing or other unusual sounds in their ears.

Before getting the electrode implanted in his brain, the man had tried other
tinnitus treatments, with no success.

The implant was supposed to use electrical stimulation to suppress tinnitus.
But that didn't work.

Besides still having tinnitus, the man had out-of-body experiences during
the electrical stimulation.

"His perception of disembodiment always involved a location about 50 cm
behind his body and off to the left," write the scientists, who included
Dirk De Ridder, MD, PhD, of University Hospital Antwerp.

The man didn't have near-death experiences and he couldn't "see"
himself from outside his body during his out-of-body experiences, which lasted
for an average of 17 seconds.

De Ridder's team stimulated the man's brain via the implanted electrode.

The man pressed a button with his right hand to indicate when his
out-of-body experience began. Meanwhile, he got a brain scan using positron
emission tomography (PET).

The scientists noticed a spike in activity in the junction of the
angular gyrus and the supramarginal gyrus during the man's out-of-body
experiences. But the researchers don't claim to understand everything
about out-of-body experiences.

For instance, they don't know if the brain behaves differently when people
when people have out-of-body sensations during near-death experiences or in
other cases that aren't induced by electrical stimulation. And the findings are
just a window on brain activity, not what people feel during
out-of-body-experiences.

By Miranda Hitti
Reviewed by Louise Chang
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