There is evidence of associations being stored in the brain as a spatial pattern, through observations of synchronous firing of spatial patterns, which is reproducible as stimuli is switched back n forth. But I find it hard not to be amazed with
Yang Dan's work with cats, where they seem able to present visual stimuli to a cats eyes, then recover the stimuli directly from the cats brain using quite crude internal probes inserted into it's visual cortex. These seem to demonstrate - all stimuli being equal - that a similar pattern of neurons fire in any particular organisms brain, when the organism is presented with identical stimuli.
Remember I'm only claiming 'associations' are stored spatially in matter, as a way of moving
access to information forward in time (as I detailed above). I don't think it's a major deal, the heavy lifting of our experience is done by another mechanism which I suspect allows these patterns to be coherently interfered with by other identical patterns (adding hats).
I don't think people are literally outside of their body in the classic NDE OBE, I just think their sense of 'self' is logically located according to any fields intersecting their brain, which are compatible, and allow access (as above) via their networks. That they recall these experiences suggests that a spatial pattern of activation was laid down on their networks, with the strong recalls indicating the pattern was laid down in a different way to usual, and grafted onto the network and solidified in a spatial pattern that is difficult to integrate or interfere with.