European researchers have found a way to induce out-of-body experiences using virtual-reality goggles, helping to explain a phenomenon reported by about one in 10 people.
The illusion of watching oneself from several metres away while awake is often reported by people undergoing strokes or epileptic seizures.
In the
studies, published in last week's Science journal, two teams of researchers managed to induce the effect in healthy people by scrambling their senses of vision and touch.
One team in London had volunteers sit in a chair in the middle of a room wearing the goggles showing the view from a video camera placed behind them. A researcher moved a rod up to the camera at the same time as the person's chest was touched, and then the rod disappeared from view. This created the illusion that the person was sitting a few steps back, where the camera stood.
In the other experiment, in Switzerland, subjects wearing the goggles watched an image of a mannequin representing their own body placed directly in front of them while a researcher scratched their back.
Afterwards, the volunteers were blindfolded and guided backwards. When they were asked to return to their original positions, they went toward the place where they had seen the mannequin. The researchers said mixing up the senses of sight and touch was key to the experiments.
- Reuters
