Randolph E. Schmid, Associated Press
Aug. 23, 2007 — The stories seem strange but riveting. A heart attack victim recalls floating in the air, watching paramedics revive him. A surgical patient remembers hovering, watching the doctors operate.
Such widely reported out-of-body experiences have long been the territory of theology, philosophy and scary movies.
Now scientists have turned their attention to the topic.
Researchers in England and Switzerland have figured out ways to confuse the sensory signals received by the brain, allowing people to seem to be standing aside and watching themselves.
No, they're not using drugs, legal or otherwise.
The research is described in Friday's edition of the journal Science.
Henrik Ehrsson of University College London's Institute of Neurology and the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm, explained that he was interested in a person's perception of the "self."
Hills that seem to go uphill when they go down? Strange. James Williams unravels the physics behind spooky hills.
Get more Discovery News video here.
"I'm interested in the question of why I feel that my self is located inside my physical body. How does my brain know that I am standing right here," he said.
And what would happen to the self if a person could effectively move their eyes to another part of the room and observe themselves from an outside perspective? Would the self move with the eyes, or stay in the body, he wondered.
So seated volunteers were fitted with head-mounted video displays that allowed them to view themselves from behind, using a pair of video cameras, one for each eye.
A researcher would stand behind them and extend a plastic rod which they could see toward the area just below the cameras. At the same time another plastic rod, which they could not see, touched their chest.
