Post by nuukaprotector on Aug 23, 2007 12:57:28 GMT -5
Source: Daily Mail (science & technology)
www.dailymail.co.uk/pages/live/articles/technology/technology.html?in_article_id=477320&in_page_id=1965&ito=1490
To some, they are evidence of life after death. To others they are merely the ramblings of a drug-addled mind.
But now scientists have come up with a rational explanation for out-of-body experiences - and say there is no reason why everybody can't have one.
Using equipment no more sophisticated than goggles, a video camera, and a couple of sticks, they found a way of tricking people into thinking they had left their bodies.
The findings, reported in the respected journal Science, suggest that the mind relies on the senses of sight and touch to know it is located inside the body.
When the connection between the two senses is disrupted - by illness, drugs or scientific experiments - things go awry, leading to the sensation that the mind has left the body.
In one of two studies into the science of out-of-body experiences, neuroscientist Dr Henrik Ehrsson used goggles, a video camera and sticks or rods to confuse the brain.
A volunteer was asked to sit on a chair and wear goggles that were linked to a video camera trained on his back.
Looking through the goggles, the person saw an image of his back, from the perspective of someone sitting around six feet behind him.
During the experiments at University College London, Dr Ehrsson then touched both the person's chest and the 'chest' of the imaginary onlooker with a plastic rod.
Unable to see Dr Ehrsson touching his actual chest because of the goggles, the volunteer was left with the sensation that he was sitting in the position of the onlooker and looking at his back from behind.
Dr Ehrsson, who tried his experiment out on himself. said: "You really feel that you are sitting in a different place in the room, and you're looking at this thing in front of you that looks like yourself, and you know it's yourself, but it doesn't feel like yourself.
"It's almost like you're looking at a dummy."
He added: "This experiment suggests that the first-person visual perspective is critically important for the in-body experience.
"In other words, we feel our self is located where our eyes are."
The researcher, who is now based at the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm, Sweden, believes the technique could be day be refined to allow people to feel as if they are part of video games or even allow surgeons to direct robots to carry out operations hundreds of miles away.
He said: "This is essentially a means of projecting yourself, a form of teleportation.
"If we can project people into a virtual character, so they feel and respond as if they were really in a virtual version of themselves, just imagine the implications.
"The experience of playing video games could reach a whole new level but it could go much beyond that.
"For example, a surgeon could perform remote surgery, by controlling their virtual self from a different location."
The other experiment by researchers at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Lausanne also employed "virtual reality" goggles.
In this case, volunteers stood in front of a camera that projected computer-enhanced 3D images of their own bodies in front of them.
When their backs and the 'backs' of the projections were stroked with a highlighter pen, the volunteers were fooled into thinking that the computer image was in fact their own body.
Moreover, when the volunteers were blindfolded and doctors took them away from the spot where they'd been standing and told to walk back to it, they overshot it and walked on towards the site of the projection.
www.dailymail.co.uk/pages/live/articles/technology/technology.html?in_article_id=477320&in_page_id=1965&ito=1490
To some, they are evidence of life after death. To others they are merely the ramblings of a drug-addled mind.
But now scientists have come up with a rational explanation for out-of-body experiences - and say there is no reason why everybody can't have one.
Using equipment no more sophisticated than goggles, a video camera, and a couple of sticks, they found a way of tricking people into thinking they had left their bodies.
The findings, reported in the respected journal Science, suggest that the mind relies on the senses of sight and touch to know it is located inside the body.
When the connection between the two senses is disrupted - by illness, drugs or scientific experiments - things go awry, leading to the sensation that the mind has left the body.
In one of two studies into the science of out-of-body experiences, neuroscientist Dr Henrik Ehrsson used goggles, a video camera and sticks or rods to confuse the brain.
A volunteer was asked to sit on a chair and wear goggles that were linked to a video camera trained on his back.
Looking through the goggles, the person saw an image of his back, from the perspective of someone sitting around six feet behind him.
During the experiments at University College London, Dr Ehrsson then touched both the person's chest and the 'chest' of the imaginary onlooker with a plastic rod.
Unable to see Dr Ehrsson touching his actual chest because of the goggles, the volunteer was left with the sensation that he was sitting in the position of the onlooker and looking at his back from behind.
Dr Ehrsson, who tried his experiment out on himself. said: "You really feel that you are sitting in a different place in the room, and you're looking at this thing in front of you that looks like yourself, and you know it's yourself, but it doesn't feel like yourself.
"It's almost like you're looking at a dummy."
He added: "This experiment suggests that the first-person visual perspective is critically important for the in-body experience.
"In other words, we feel our self is located where our eyes are."
The researcher, who is now based at the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm, Sweden, believes the technique could be day be refined to allow people to feel as if they are part of video games or even allow surgeons to direct robots to carry out operations hundreds of miles away.
He said: "This is essentially a means of projecting yourself, a form of teleportation.
"If we can project people into a virtual character, so they feel and respond as if they were really in a virtual version of themselves, just imagine the implications.
"The experience of playing video games could reach a whole new level but it could go much beyond that.
"For example, a surgeon could perform remote surgery, by controlling their virtual self from a different location."
The other experiment by researchers at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Lausanne also employed "virtual reality" goggles.
In this case, volunteers stood in front of a camera that projected computer-enhanced 3D images of their own bodies in front of them.
When their backs and the 'backs' of the projections were stroked with a highlighter pen, the volunteers were fooled into thinking that the computer image was in fact their own body.
Moreover, when the volunteers were blindfolded and doctors took them away from the spot where they'd been standing and told to walk back to it, they overshot it and walked on towards the site of the projection.
