Nature gets religion.
excerpt:
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."
What I'd like to know is how our brains manage to do this without electrodes. And, of course, I'd like to know how to do this with a home-made transcranial magnetic stimulation device. |
