Out of Body Experiment

[bindeweede]

Interesting YouTube video - I hope I haven't duplicated.

Michael Shermer travels to Laurentian University in Sudbury, Canada, to strap on the "God Helmet" in neuroscientist Michael Persinger's lab that duplicates out-of-body experiences, near-death experiences, alien abductions, and other paranormal phenomena.

[Pebble]

Nice link, should be compulsory viewing in all schools.

[polomint38]

I'd love to try this

But I don't think I'll try it at home

Don't try this at home kids

[Allo Allo]

I'd love to try this

But I don't think I'll try it at home

Don't try this at home kids

I think we've found the 'how' it happens - but not the 'why' it happens. Say you were sitting at home and you had such an experience, without the helpful magnetic fields of the god helmet, the question is, why? Did your brain have a sudden epileptic interlude? Did your bedside radio produce an effect on you? Did you forget to breathe so your brain was starved of oxygen? What produced similar fields to the god helmet so that you spontaneously had 'an experience'? God experiences, Alien experiences, out of the body experiences etc are reasonably common, without a god helmet.

I dunno really....but an explanation would be nice...

[Pebble]

I think we've found the 'how' it happens - but not the 'why' it happens. Say you were sitting at home and you had such an experience, without the helpful magnetic fields of the god helmet, the question is, why? Did your brain have a sudden epileptic interlude? Did your bedside radio produce an effect on you? Did you forget to breathe so your brain was starved of oxygen? What produced similar fields to the god helmet so that you spontaneously had 'an experience'? God experiences, Alien experiences, out of the body experiences etc are reasonably common, without a god helmet.

I dunno really....but an explanation would be nice...

Step 1 is to demonstrate how. Step 2 to show that at least the majority of reported 'paranormal' events can be recreated. Step 3 to get to the point of being able to reliably induce specific hallucinations. Step 4 is extensive studies of those who experience 'paranormal' events, those with other types of hallucinations and normal people to understand what differences are observable with a high degree of consistency among these groups. Step 5 is to investigate maneuvers that reduce the ease of induction of such experiences. Once you get to this point one can begin to address why this occurs in specific types of people and in specific situations.

So your question will remain unanswered for years, however the method of addressing such questions is now available.

[Allo Allo]

Step 1 is to demonstrate how. Step 2 to show that at least the majority of reported 'paranormal' events can be recreated. Step 3 to get to the point of being able to reliably induce specific hallucinations. Step 4 is extensive studies of those who experience 'paranormal' events, those with other types of hallucinations and normal people to understand what differences are observable with a high degree of consistency among these groups. Step 5 is to investigate maneuvers that reduce the ease of induction of such experiences. Once you get to this point one can begin to address why this occurs in specific types of people and in specific situations.

So your question will remain unanswered for years, however the method of addressing such questions is now available.

I haven't GOT 'years' - would twenty years be enough? I might just be able to hang on that long. Problem is - I want to know NOW!

[Mulder]

So your question will remain unanswered for years, however the method of addressing such questions is now available.

Or maybe not. Try here and here.

[Dr B]

Well, some of the experiences described at the start are not OBEs but more to do with aliens and NDEs. So its a bit confusing at the start.

Now, Sue Blackmore and Richard Dawkins have had a go at this already - Blackmore reports a striking and vivid OBE and Dawkins nothing much (but a strong headache later that evening). With Shermer - that makes the stats a 66% hit rate amongst skeptics.

What is never explained in these TV programmes is whether they were also given the sham condition (no fields) or whether they were just put in the main condition only. Suggestion and expectation would be much stronger if only one condition was used. While this may not be a complete explanation, I think its better science to run the skeptics under the same conditions as the typical participants.

Maybe they did - but its not reported if that was the case

[Allo Allo]

Or maybe not. Try here and here.

Thanks - I remember reading this site and have read some of it again - I am reasonably close to Muncaster so it interests me a lot. Do you think twenty years is long enough to know something definite - otherwise I am going to have to re-incarnate out of sheer curiosity - or will the Skeptics Conference satisfy it?

We lived in a haunted house once - but only one end of it was haunted. I said nothing to the new tenant who took over from us, but about three weeks after we left, she phoned to ask me if we'd found anything 'funny' about the house, like one end being haunted.....

So, the next question is......is it magnetic disturbances that trigger the brain to percieve something inter-dimensional (for want of a better word) that exists but cannot be seen, or is it just hallucinating? (It didn't happen, but what if the new tenant and I had both seen the same apparition, say) Do people at Muncaster experience the same experience - or different ones?

I have been very interested in the quality of visions seen by shamans and hallucinogenic plant imbibers - whatever their culture, they 'see' similar things. If the hallucinations were the product of the subconcious mind, do we all have the same one?! or are the visions 'packed' in the chemical so to speak..or does the chemical trigger an expanded perception of an inhabited complex universe?

Again - I dunno - but I'm thinking...

Hi Dr B - you have a good point there!

[Mulder]

So, the next question is......is it magnetic disturbances that trigger the brain to percieve something inter-dimensional (for want of a better word) that exists but cannot be seen, or is it just hallucinating? (It didn't happen, but what if the new tenant and I had both seen the same apparition, say) Do people at Muncaster experience the same experience - or different ones?

The main experience associated with the haunted bed is always the same - the sound of a child crying. If it's a magnetically stimulated hallucination, the consistent content may be caused by an interaction (inside the witness's brain) with other factors eg. a specific ambient sound. Also, the particular magnetic stimulation may be fairly consistent across experiences as it is constrained by the way the bed moves (see here).

As to other dimensions - that's a log argument. Essentially, we know if you stimulate people's temporal lobes they experience all sorts of weird things. In the video at the top of this thread, Persinger says he can influence what people experience by what type of fields he uses. The least complex explanation of that would be that the brain is hallucinating rather than 'opening a gate to another dimension' (which would also require lots of new science!). In addition, the imagery people report in anomalous phenomena does not exceed that they have alrready been exposed to through such things as science fiction or horrow films. Presumably there would be no such restrictions if we were really looking at another dimension which could easily contain unpredictable novelties.

[Admin]

I think we've found the 'how' it happens - but not the 'why' it happens. Say you were sitting at home and you had such an experience, without the helpful magnetic fields of the god helmet, the question is, why? Did your brain have a sudden epileptic interlude?

A small number of people have what's called Temporal Lobe Epilepsy. They get small seizures in the temporal lobes and, IIRC when it's in the right temporal lobe, they get these unusual experiences. They don't have fits as with normal epilepsy (grand mals) it's just small, localised seizures. This is a known explanation for many anomalous experiences.

With magnetic stimulation, it's thought that the complex magnetic fields applied to the temporal lobes may induce these microseizures in people (not everyone is susceptible however) and this is why they too experience some odd feelings.

So this is not creating something new - it's a way of replicating what is happening in the brains of some people anyway.

IIRC, it's also possible to have TLE without it ever being diagnosed so such people may often get a sense of another presence or of being watched etc., and interpret this as something psychic or paranormal.

It doesn't necessarily have to induce hallucinations either, an odd sensation or 'spooky feeling' that TLE might cause may end up making the person interpret quite normal things as paranormal simply because of their unusual state at the time of experiencing it.

[Mulder]

A small number of people have what's called Temporal Lobe Epilepsy.

Such as here (another ASSAP link I'm afraid!). It describes the condition and first-hand accounts of its affects.

[Allo Allo]

Such as here (another ASSAP link I'm afraid!). It describes the condition and first-hand accounts of its affects.

Absolutely fascinating - but scary too. Thanks - good link.

Hi John!

It doesn't necessarily have to induce hallucinations either, an odd sensation or 'spooky feeling' that TLE might cause may end up making the person interpret

Our haunted house caused creepy feelings in two different families at the bathroom end. It's not logical we all suffered from TLE - but I wondered if the pipes, or old wiring could produce a magnetic field - or vibration? It wasn't a sleeping area. I'm sure I've told this story here before - but no one would go down to that bathroom at night. We live in a completely un-haunted house now - so it's not us.....

Thanks John

[Dr B]

The trap you seem to be falling into is that when you hear an explanation for some experiences, you sometimes assume it must be for all experiences - then when you find what you think is a counter example - you think you falsify or limit the original findings.

There are many explanations for anomalous experiences - visual context and suggestive surroundings, prior beliefs, sematic mediation of random sensations, response biases and a loose response criterion, neural instability, false memory, attributional biases, cognitive style, generation of explanations for odd sensations, faliures to generate alternatives, jump to conclusion biases, logical fallacies, reasoning biases, probabilisitc biases / chance perception, social contagion, cultural imprinting, and yes, a potential role for magnetic fields, to name only a few...

What you describe above could easily be an influence of context. Change the context and well....hey presto.....

[Allo Allo]

The trap you seem to be falling into is that when you hear an explanation for some experiences, you sometimes assume it must be for all experiences - then when you find what you think is a counter example - you think you falsify or limit the original findings.

There are many explanations for anomalous experiences - visual context and suggestive surroundings, prior beliefs, sematic mediation of random sensations, response biases and a loose response criterion, neural instability, false memory, attributional biases, cognitive style, generation of explanations for odd sensations, faliures to generate alternatives, jump to conclusion biases, logical fallacies, reasoning biases, probabilisitc biases / chance perception, social contagion, cultural imprinting, and yes, a potential role for magnetic fields, to name only a few...

What you describe above could easily be an influence of context. Change the context and well....hey presto.....

Well, I didn't think I'd fallen into a trap - I was just telling an anecdote. The fact that our current house is not 'haunted' means, to me, personally, that my brain must be ok in this house (in THAT context). That's comforting. I was trying to weigh up whether we were all possibly TLE's after John and Mulder's posts. I accept there are all the possibilities you mention....my story was simply an anecdote. I'm not doing a PHD. I was having a 'light discussion' about a group of people who experienced 'creepy' without a god helmet. I don't know why, and it's not important in any way to me - just a fragment of experience I remembered apropos 'feeling' things in a non laboratory situation. I'm not trying to prove or disprove anything......