'Done for a book on Paranormal Experiences by Chris French'
Out-of-Body Experience
The illustration will focus on the following points:
- Visualizing what the experience feels like
- Illustrating an experiment done in this field
- The brain region is believed to be responsible for the experience
What is it:
An out-of-body experience (OBE is the sensation of a person floating out his own body and viewing the world around them, under special circumstances or by will. Some claim to be able to gain information during this state that is otherwise impossible to perceive from their 'physical' position: also under some methods of "Clairvoyance"
it is upgraded to a Near-death Experience (NDE) when certain criteria are met.
- Awareness of being dead/ or dying.
- An out of body experience; viewing the body from an outsider's point of view
- Entering a 'tunnel'
- A Sense of Peace (most of the time) and Acceptance
- Life review / 'Life flash before their eyes
- 'Light' / Religious figures
- Reluctance to return (to being alive) ...
The Experiment:
In an attempt to prove without a shadow of a doubt the truth behind OBE. A study had religious figures hidden out of sight from a normal vintage in cardiac resuscitation units (where patients undergoing a heart attack get 'brought back')of select hospitals The researchers interviewed cardiac arrest survivors for NDE.
They were looking for survivors to have witnessed the hidden figure or none at all.
"Findings:
- Out of 344; 62 patients (18%) reported NDE, of whom 41 (12%) described a core experience.
- The occurrence of the experience was not associated with the duration of cardiac arrest or unconsciousness, medication, or fear of death before cardiac arrest.
- The frequency of NDE was affected by how we defined NDE, the prospective nature of the research in older cardiac patients, age, surviving a cardiac arrest in first myocardial infarction, more than one cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR) during stay in the hospital, previous NDE, and memory problems after prolonged CPR.
- Depth of the experience was affected by sex, surviving CPR outside the hospital, and fear before cardiac arrest.
- Significantly more patients who had an NDE, especially a deep experience, died within 30 days of CPR (p<0.0001).
- The process of transformation after NDE took several years and differed from those of patients who survived cardiac arrest without NDE."
As is the case, a study on such a small scale proved inconclusive and the results had raised more questions than answered them.
"Neither the duration of cardiac arrest (2 minutes or 8 minutes) nor the duration of seeming unconsciousness (5 minutes or three weeks in coma), nor the need for intubation in complicated CPR, nor a short induced cardiac arrest in electrophysiological stimulation (EPS) had any influence on the frequency of NDE. So, the degree of gravity of the lack of oxygen in the brain (anoxia) appeared to be irrelevant, and a physiological explanation for NDE like anoxia could be excluded in our study. Neither could we find any relationship between the frequency of NDE and administered drugs, fear of death before the arrest, nor foreknowledge of NDE, gender, religion, or education."
” The fact that people report lucid experiences in their consciousness when brain activity has ceased is, in her view, “difficult to reconcile with current medical opinion.”
Near-Death Experiences during cardiac arrest by: dr. Pim van Lommel
Unfortunately, further studies are not being funded, therefore the questions still remain. 'Do we have 'Souls' that leaves our bodies, or is it all in our brain only?'
The Theory:
So far scientists are not sure what is causing the experience, but they found that the Right Temporoparietal Junction of the brain seems to be involved one way or another. Researchers were able to recreate the sensation of floating outside of the volunteer's body by stimulating/sending a slight pulse to that lobe of the brain.
"Here the author's marshal evidence from neurology, cognitive neuroscience, and neuroimaging that suggests that OBEs are related to a failure to integrate multisensory information from one's own body at the Temporoparietal Junction (TPJ). It is argued that this multisensory disintegration at the TPJ leads to the disruption of several phenomenological and cognitive aspects of self-processing, causing illusory reduplication, illusory self-location, illusory perspective, and illusory agency that are experienced as an OBE."
