Study Paper

[Louise43]

Have to say this thread has made me laugh...nothing like a good old squabble over semantics

So, Enoch...when I'm in the house at night alone and I feel like someone is following me up the stairs, or standing behind me in the bathroom I shouldn't tell myself to stop being such a scaredy cat and I shouldn't ask who is there but who is tweaking my brain...cheeky devils, they could at least ask first!

Louise

[enoch]

we all need our brains tweaked once in a while.

[CFTraveler]

I'm going to ignore the witty banter between you two and will give my opinion on this paper. I did read every word, to my credit, and understood some of it, and looked up what I didn't. So here's my critique:
OBE as physical phenomenon:
First off, I want to say that this is the first neurological study of OBE <or what the scientists considered OBE, which is my first problem with this paper>. Of course, it’s really not their fault, because they only had people with epilepsy to study (no healthy people with OBE symptoms), so their findings had to correlate OBE with epilepsy. And yet, if I were going to look at their symptoms, I would conclude that only patient #1 had a classic OBE, at least as we in the community define OBE. I will try to break down how I interpreted the study and what I found problematic:
The first problem: The scientist, (which I will call he for laziness, since I didn’t look closely at his/her name) lumps OBE and AS together, when they’re very different experiences. AS is the effect of seeing your own body in front of you, a visual hallucination, while OBE moves the sensory perspective away from your body, and often bilocation is experienced, which wasn’t covered in the study, since all patients were suffering AS and interpreted their combined visual effects as seeing themselves out of body. Since ‘floating’ is a side effect of OBE, but not necessarily phasing, it was then considered a vestibular symptom, and was equated to feeling dizzy and out of balance, which to me is a great big assumption by the study. And for whomever wanted to know, vestibular means the balance system found in the middle ear and brain sections. Anyone who has punctured an eardrum knows the feeling of falling while sitting and other weird experiences- and that is not the same for someone who has experienced OBE or AP.
Now in detail:
“The present study describes phenomenological, neuropsychological and neuroimaging correlates of OBE and AS in six neurological patients. We provide neurological evidence that both experiences share important central mechanisms. We show that OBE and AS are frequently associated with pathological sensations of position, movement and perceived completeness of one’s own body.” But we’ll see later that there are very big differences in both.“Based on our findings, we speculate that ambiguous input from these different sensory systems is an important mechanism of OBE and AS, and thus the intriguing experience of seeing one’s body in a position that does not coincide with its felt position.” Once again, this is a symptom of AS, not OBE. In an OBE you see the physical body where it is, not in front of you floating or above you floating. The point of view is reversed, as opposed to AS.
“We suggest that OBE and AS are related to a failure to integrate proprioceptive, tactile and visual information with respect to one’s own body (disintegration in personal space) and by a vestibular dysfunction leading to an additional disintegration between personal (vestibular) space and extrapersonal (visual) space.
We argue that both disintegrations (personal; personal–extrapersonal) are necessary for the occurrence of OBE and AS, and that they are due to a paroxysmal cerebral dysfunction of the TPJ in a state of partially and briefly impaired consciousness.” That could be true, but the study doesn’t demonstrate this.
“…some authors postulated a dysfunction of proprioception and kinesthesia, others a dysfunction of visual or vestibular processing, as well as combinatory dysfunctions between these different sensory systems (Menninger-Lerchenthal, 1935 ; Hécaen and Ajuriaguerra, 1952 ; Leischner, 1961 ; Frederiks, 1969 ; Devinsky et al., 1989 ; Brugger et al., 1997 ; Grüsser and Landis, 1991 ).
The regions as suggested by the individual overlap analysis for the five patients (all patients except Patient 4) were used to determine the region of overlap overall patients (mean overlap analysis). This was performed by transposing the MRI (including the location of individual lesion overlap) of each patient onto Patient 5’s MRI (left hemisphere).” In other words, all 6 patients had temporoparietaljoint lesions, but only patient one had OBE symptoms.Patient 1 had legitimate OBE symptoms. I’ll give them that one.
Patient 2
Patient 2 “suffered from complex partial seizures that were characterized initially by the hearing of a humming sound in her right backspace. On other occasions, she had the visual impression (while lying down) that her legs were elevated and bent (at the knees) followed by stretching, in rhythmic alternation. If she asked another person whether they saw her legs moving, they always responded negatively. Pharmacoresistrant epilepsy was diagnosed.” This is not an OBE symptom, and the fact that she asked someone else what they were seeing shows that she was fully conscious (if impaired) while she was having the seizure.
Patient 3
”Patient 3 suffered from complex partial seizures that started with an epigastric aura followed by the sensation of globally diminished hearing. Patient 3 never experienced OBE/AS during or outside her seizures”. So why was she lumped in the combination? Read on:
“Because OBEs were induced repeatedly by electrical stimulation during invasive presurgical epilepsy evaluation. At the same electrode site, vestibular sensations and visual body part illusions were induced (supplementary material). Figure 2C depicts the electrode sites (turquoise dots) at the parieto-temporal junction where OBEs and other responses were obtained” The problem with this is that visual body part illusions are not OBE symptoms- they were visual hallucinations. Seeing a ghostly image of your legs or arms are not classic OBE symptoms, and they were induced on purpose.
Patient 4
”Patient 4 was known for arterial hypertension, smoking and moderate recurrent migraine headaches. No precise diagnosis could be given (migraine, transitory ischaemic attack, epilepsy).
He then experienced being "doubled" and saw "a second own body" that came "out of the elevated body" sitting in the chair (Fig. 3B). This ‘second body’ was seen from behind with all body parts in the sitting position (from his elevated physical visuo-spatial perspective). It continued to float and ascend without any body movements. This experience was associated with feelings of lightness and floating. In rapid alternation, he heard and saw his wife from above (Fig 3C) and from immediately in front of him (as if still sitting in his chair on the ground). The experience was described as a moment of elation and great happiness”.- Once again, these are not OBE symptoms. Seeing a double of yourself is not the same as having an OBE. And the guy had high blood pressure! My mother saw my dead father in one high blood pressure incident, but I digess...
AS. Patient 5-“ There, he suddenly saw himself standing behind the nurse. He stated that: "He looked like myself, but ten years younger and was dressed differently than I was at that moment". Patient 5 saw only the upper part of himself, including the trunk, head, shoulders, arms and hands. Then he had the impression of being examined by a physician. This was interrupted by the intervention of his second body, who was seen to start a fight with the physician and nurses.”- This also is not OBE- this is AS and there is a big difference in symptoms.Patient 6
”Patient 6 suffered from complex partial seizures that were characterized initially by AS or by simple visual hallucinations. Pharmacoresistant epilepsy was diagnosed. She had the feeling that she was "looking into a mirror or at a picture of myself". She described the image of herself as flat and two-dimensional. Her face was motionless and expressionless with eyes open and mouth closed. The image was localized centrally and 1 m from the patient’s physical body. She could not detail much of the remaining visual scene, as the area surrounding her seen upper body was dark. AS was mainly experienced when she was sitting, but also occurred rarely in lying and standing positions.”
Their conclusions: “ In all patients, self-recognition was immediate even if their face was not seen (Patient 3) or their body was seen from behind (Patients 2a and 4). Two OBE-patients saw their entire body [Patient 3 saw only the lower part of her body (legs, feet and lower trunk)]. Among the AS-patients, only one patient saw his body completely, yet perceived it as thinner, glowing and without much detail (Patient 4). The three remaining AS-patients, only saw their upper body parts (always including head, upper trunk and shoulders;…None of these patients felt ‘out of their body’, but also experienced ‘seeing’ the world from a parasomatic visuo-spatial perspective. It might be relevant that this parasomatic visuo-spatial perspective was experienced in rapid alternation with the habitual physical visuo-spatial perspective. A similar case has been described by Brugger et al. (1994 ) and called he-autoscopy.
If we assume that both electrically induced responses in Patient 3 (vestibular sensations, OBE) result from interference with neurons under the stimulating electrode, this finding suggests that OBE and vestibular sensations are caused by functionally and anatomically related neuronal populations.” That is one heck of an assumption, if you ask me.“Finally, room tilt illusion, inversion illusion and OBE share characteristics that suggest their related origin: they are paroxysmal, can be aborted by bodily action and eye closure, and are mostly characterized by exact 180° inversion between the extrapersonal space and the observer.”- Eye closure stop OBE? Where did this completely wrong assumption come from? Reallly!
“Thus, during an OBE our patients were in a supine position as was found by Green (1968 ) in 75% of OBEs”. –Yet clearly in the individual examples one of the patients had the AS when sitting, and another when walking. “
Well, if you ask me, since most of the population sleeps in the supine position around 100% of the time (ok, I made up this statistic) I would surmise that most OBEs are caused by the supine position, since they are occurring mostly in supine persons. Of course, there is the mostly reclined position that I personally favor, but that’s just a small detail.
Nice try, guys, but I’m not convinced. Next time they should go to a place like the Monroe institute where people are healthy (mostly, anyway) and test them against AS patients, and see how they correlate.
But seriously, all this study shows me is that:
1) You can cause all kinds of cool effects in the brain with a pair of cattleprods, and
2) Possibly one out of 6 people who see themselves out of their body (as opposed to have the experience of an external point of view) may have epilepsy or a brain tumor in the TPJ or the vestibular system.
3) These guys have to educate themselves in what the OBE community classifies an OBE experience, instead of classifying AS as OBE because there is a visual hallucination taking place.
Other than that, it was fascinating reading.
I wonder if I have a brain tumor?

[enoch]

lol...I'm sure you don't, cf. So, to summarise, you object to AS and OBE being clumped together under the same banner, and you believe that the OBE's that these people experience are in no way similar to the ones that you experience? I mean, they do experience "obe" don't they. Are we venturing into semantics again? But you're professing that the quality of the experience you have is different in some way?


I did note the similarities in distorted body image, the feeling that a presence was on their back, or behind them, the feeling of well-being, elevation, falling sensation and the 'dual consiousness' (being in two places at once). That's all covered in AD.

So - I suppose the question would be, in your experience, what differs? Obviously I can't comment because I have yet to experience it.

Phew! cf - credit to ya! You're a bright spark.

[CFTraveler]

enoch wrote:

I did note the similarities in distorted body image, the feeling that a presence was on their back, or behind them, the feeling of well-being, elevation, falling sensation and the 'dual consiousness' (being in two places at once). That's all covered in AD.

My main problem with this is that what these people experienced were visions of their own bodies, without the shift in perspective that comes with an OBE. They were in essence observing their bodies floating in front of them, not experiencing being that body, if I read it correctly- this is not what an OBE feels like. Like I said before, the first subject (IMO) was the only one that had 'typical OBE experience' and all that goes with it. The rest of them experienced seeing themselves (like a reflection) somewhere else, like looking in the mirror or something like that- which is not an OBE symptom.
When you have a 'separation' and you look at your body (and not everyone does) what you see is the body, (sometimes distorted, sometimes not) in the spot where you 'left' it. What these people experienced was seeing themselves floating away, and the elevation feelings were accompanied by seizurelike symptoms, not just the experience of floating away as an extracorporal consciousness.
I'm not saying that you can't create an OBE experience with the right stimulation, I'm just saying that the examples in that specific study weren't close enough for me to identify with their cases.
In fact, the makers of binaural beats have proven that you can facilitate an OBE by stimulating the right 'buttons' in the brain- IMO a serious scientific study that isn't necessarily looking to find pathology should study the folks that demonstrably have the phenomenon and see what part of their brains light up when they report OBE symptoms (at least those that I can relate to). I think that would be very interesting.
If they found out what to stimulate I'd be the first one to volunteer.
Bring on the cattleprods!

[Senheiser]

Hm. I have a certain type of epilepsy diagnosed. Never tought that it can be linked with OBE or anything else. Not the one with occasional attacks (the one that makes you shake and gets that white foam out of your mouth), but some very insignificant version of it (inducts feeling like you are not present in the real world, somethimes situations feel like you are watching them from third person).

[CFTraveler]

Thanks, Senheiser. Just the right person to provide info on this.
Just to educate us, could you describe your seizures with a bit more details? And the diagnosis (if it's ok with you- If I'm being too invasive I'll back off.)

Godangit, I just spent the last 20 minutes googling "temporoparietal junction" and all I can find is scientific papers that won't give a defintion. Enoch, will you supply me with one? It's been, hmmm. over two decades since I took Anatomy & Physiology and me brain hurts. I know that "temporal" and "parietal" are structures (rather, areas) in the brain, but I don't recall the entire phrase. With "junction" it sounds like the place where the two meet. So, I'm going to take your word for it that this isn't a location in the brain, but where is it? The foot?

Ok, back to the situation at hand. I got about halfway through CF's discourse and this Gawdawful headache is starting up again. Thanks, CF. Now, I can't remember anything she wrote except that OBE's are not experienced from the perspective of being in front of yourself. (Or did I get that wrong?) I don't know, my head is killing me. From my experience, they can be perceived from just about any perspective, including mind-splits that are more than 2. If you have an OverSoul experience, you can be in the perspective of being in your own energy body, your OverSouls' energy body, and multiple incarnation bodies. Depending on how advanced the experience is, I would imagine that you could "see" and "be in" thousands of bodies at once. I'm not sure I would want that experience, I would probably go bonkers. Bear in mind, I may be way off the mark on interpreting what CF said.

Ok, so would the rest of you please stop using improper terminology? It's not "tweaking" with the brain, it's "tinkering!" If we've learned anything here, it's that we need to keep our terminology correct.

Speaking of "tinkering", I still fail to see how any scientific advances in brainology preclude the ability of the soul (and the doctor) to manipulate experiences by tinkering with the anatomy of the brain to produce OBE's or similar experiences? In the case of the former (soul), it would be through energetic (vibrational) manipulations, and the latter (neurologist or neurosurgeon) through the use of physical probes. In the tinkering, who is to say that they aren't doing exactly the same thing, albeit through different means?

Uh, CF, I wouldn't volunteer my brain so easily. In neurosurgery, they use a drill to remove bits of your bone to get to the suspected parts of the brain to use a mechanical probe on. Blach!

Back to my comment about tinkering, in the case of neurological damage (as in seizure disorder), there could be a miswiring of the brain due to multiple reasons...direct injury to the brain, heredity, pathology, etc. Through the miswiring, OBE symptoms could come about because of chemical manipulation, which isn't that different from mechanical probe manipulation. The synapses are just going a different route to the same area of the brain.

Now, Enoch, where's my definition? I can't go upstairs to get my Anatomy and Physiology book out of hiding because I'm stuck downstairs with a post surgery cast. Help me, help me...wait!!!! Maybe I'll just OBE on up there!