The science of OBE's (Cambridge Science Festival).

Max_B

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Jane Aspell made a presentation on the Science of Out-of-Body Experiences at Cambridge Science Festival last Saturday (19/3/2016) Unfortunately no recording of the talk has yet been published online.

However, I've found a similar presentation on the Science of 'Self' from a talk she gave at the same festival in 2014... worthwhile watching IMO... towards the end, the discussion about the effect of internal states of the body (visualized heartbeat) on 'self' is interesting.

 
This is Jane's paper on her visualised heartbeat experiment...

http://www.dyspnea2016inparis.fr/faculty/album-photo/olaf-blanke/psychological-science2013_2.pdf

It's interesting that if you asked participants if they knew whether the flashing aura around the virtual body was in time with their heartbeat, or not in time with their heartbeat, they couldn't tell at all. But when the flashing aura was in time with their heat beat, they still felt like the virtual body was more like theirs.

Intriguing too, because that effect is rather close to the non-conscious knowledge effect in UBC's Ouija Board Study.
 
At 22.48, Olaf Blanke's epileptic woman 2002 case is brought up again. This woman's experience is nothing like an OBE reported from someone underfoing cardiac arrest.

"Blanke inadvertently disrupted some of these signals while preparing a female patient for epilepsy surgery. When he applied electrical stimulation to her right angular gyrus, located behind the TPJ, she experienced distinct out-of-body sensations.“I see myself lying in bed, from above, but I only see my legs and lower trunk,” she said, according to Blanke.Stimulating her right angular gyrus may have disrupted signals that are crucial to “own-body perception,” Blanke suggested when he reported on this phenomenon in the journal Nature in 2002 and in the journal Brainin 2004

Jane Aspell then deftly slips in "she was back up on the ceiling" hoping we wouldn't notice. Nice try, (Jane) but the woman never said she was up on the ceiling, only that she could see her lower trunk and legs. Nothing out of the ordinary there and her brain was working too. She also deliberately "waters down"
reports from the literature by telling us that patients only "have the feeling" that they are on the ceiling etc when in fact they have an absolute conviction.

I understand why she has to do this (otherwise she'd get potted from her position) but wouldn't it be better if she didn't try and give a helping hand to this crude and unconvincing parietal lobe theory.
 
At 22.48, Olaf Blanke's epileptic woman 2002 case is brought up again. This woman's experience is nothing like an OBE reported from someone underfoing cardiac arrest.

"Blanke inadvertently disrupted some of these signals while preparing a female patient for epilepsy surgery. When he applied electrical stimulation to her right angular gyrus, located behind the TPJ, she experienced distinct out-of-body sensations.“I see myself lying in bed, from above, but I only see my legs and lower trunk,” she said, according to Blanke.Stimulating her right angular gyrus may have disrupted signals that are crucial to “own-body perception,” Blanke suggested when he reported on this phenomenon in the journal Nature in 2002 and in the journal Brainin 2004

Jane Aspell then deftly slips in "she was back up on the ceiling" hoping we wouldn't notice. Nice try, (Jane) but the woman never said she was up on the ceiling, only that she could see her lower trunk and legs. Nothing out of the ordinary there and her brain was working too. She also deliberately "waters down"
reports from the literature by telling us that patients only "have the feeling" that they are on the ceiling etc when in fact they have an absolute conviction.

I understand why she has to do this (otherwise she'd get potted from her position) but wouldn't it be better if she didn't try and give a helping hand to this crude and unconvincing parietal lobe theory.

I agree, but at least she was clear that they generally didn't understand what is happening, just that it does happen.

This video talk was just on 'self', I really wanted to hear to talk she gave about OBE's last Saturday.

Despite that, her experiment showing an effect of internal signals (like the heartbeat) on the location of 'self' is quite amazing... if you really spend some time thinking about it...

I mean, participants estimated themselves as being closer to the projected body, when its pulsing aura was in sync with their heartbeat, compared to controls where it was not in sync.

Imagine an experient whose endogenous EM field of their brain has lost power, leaving it more exposed, and able to become entrained by external fields.

In the absence of their own heart beat, it appears from Janes paper, that third party heart beat could also contribute to an affect, (entrain/synchronise) on the experients networks.

The heart generates a massive EM field... I had never really considered that third party heart generated EM fields might contribute to synchronising an experients network... in the sudden absence of their own hearts EM field, and subsequent loss in power of their brains EM field.
 
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