"Out-of-Body Experiences Simulated" - with link in

[LightMan]

http://www.livescience.com/health/07...t_of_body.html

The "egg heads," as Jack O'Niell from Stargate SG-1 would put it , are at it again !

So this proves that OOBE's can now be simulated but that doesn't mean that what we experience IS a trick of the mind, does it ?

Well, nope - but the research is interesting anyway .

[Korpo]

Somehow this story in a German news magazine made me angry. They wrote "They reproduce the illusion"... ha, right!

I know some of the experiences I had cannot be explained away, simply because I received information about other people that was simply true.

Oliver

[CFTraveler]

They wrote "They reproduce the illusion"... ha, right!
...
Oliver

This shows that the reporting agency is coming from a preconceived notion, and not objective.

It is interesting to note that:

"We've shown the body and self is somehow separate in the brain, even though we didn't invoke a completely realistic [out-of-body experience],"

One thing that I have in looking at these brain studies is that they can usually reproduce known anomalies, like autoscopy, (which is what this sounds like to me) and other things we experience like the arm trick, which is a cruder form of the same thing they're doing with this vr orientation thing.
Once again, I still say that we already know that the brain is associated in the OBE, it has to be 'tuned' to a certain frequency, and it works better when both hemispheres are synchronized. All this experiment shows to me is that they hemi-synched their brain hemispheres visually instead of using auditory inputs.
So,

[LightMan]

Somehow this story in a German news magazine made me angry. They wrote "They reproduce the illusion"... ha, right!

I know some of the experiences I had cannot be explained away, simply because I received information about other people that was simply true.

Oliver

It got me fuming as well, I mean I can respect the results of the experiment and think ok - so you can simulate certain things that happen with OOBE's but that doesn't automatically mean that it's an illusion that we experience.We all have our own experiences with OBE's and that is what matters. We may not be able to prove it by writing a scientific thesis on the experience at this present time but at least we have our own evidence locked away in our minds eh ? . . . there is that, not to mention how good it feels knowing that there is so much more to the mind ( and the universe around us ) than what we know of presently of course .

[journyman161]

Unless there's information they aren't sharing in the article, all they've shown is that the brain will link sight perceptions with similar body perceptions. ie. the camera showed a hand about to touch & then the real body reported a touch & the two got linked as one event. *shrugs* not even eggheads - just people trying to prove a pre-decided point. Linking is what brain do - it's basically a switchbox or like a complex telephone exchange.

Now if they had done a bit of work to convince the subjects that the camera location was them, & then shown a hand moving to touch & the subjects felt a touch (ie. without a touch on the real body) that would be significant. This is just the hot/cold trick expanded out.

(hot/cold) 3 bowls of water, one hot, one cold, one at room temperature; hand in hot then neutral, the brain says the luke warm one is freezing. Hand in cold the luke warm, brain says it's hot, even though the temp of the room temp one never changed.

It's easy to fool the brain. It is, after all, getting extremely limited information through a set of filters - alter the filters in any way & the brain has no choice but to do strange things.

[Willowy]

I think their assumptions about the whole thing are a little frustrating but what if they actually are learning how to stimulate an obe with technology? If they are, they just opened Pandora's box and they'll end up throwing all those assumptions out the window as they experience.

[journyman161]

I don't think they have much chance unless they throw out the most important assumption - that the brain is what matters. Almost all of this kind of experimenting starts with the assumption that we are just body & brain.

[Korpo]

Yeah, it's a fairly big assumption to start with.

As long as you follow the "brain paradigm" for example we have no free will, because changes in the brain do not occur early enough to allow for them to travel to our extremities and explain their activities as willing them to do something.

However, when you read the "Holographic Universe" an interesting fact is presented: Changes in the human aura occur before both the changes in the brain and to the extremities, so it seems we "channel ourselves", and the brain is maybe a receiver and a storage, but not the seat of the free will.

This may also explain why brain damage impairs our ability even when the brain is not the seat of consciousness. With a partially damaged receiver you can no longer channel your full consciousness into the physical world.

It would be nice to see some openminded researchers going out and doing some researchs outside the standard paradigms to see if those hold true.

Oliver

[CFTraveler]

Some have. Dr. Candace Pert had discovered that sometimes, the chemical peptide pathways go from the body part towards the brain when a movement happens and then the brain sends out the neuronal pathways back to the body part, making the decision to do it originate in the body part. I'm not sure what her ideas about why this are, but she is one of the scientists that has studied the 'alternative' health fields, and has mapped peptide pathways along the body that correspond with classic meridians in chinese medicine. In Molecules of Emotion, by Dr. Candace Pert.

[Korpo]

Sadly, a friend of mine hogs my copy of "Holo-Universe", but I think the book is referenced in the bibliography... I somehow remember the title.

Oliver