The Out of Body Experience Near Death

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The Out of Body Experience Near Death

• UC San Diego, COGS 175 Final Presentation, Group
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• Yasmin Ghochani
• Gayatri Boddupalli
• Rosa Sonia Miguel
• Sayaka Uchida

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Presentation Outline

• What is a NDE?
• What is an OBE?
• Neural Correlates of OBE?
• How does OBE relate to NDE?

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What is a near death experience (NDE)?

• Experiences reported by individuals who have been
  close to dying or who have been pronounced
  clinically dead and then resuscitated
• We hypothesize that
• NDE is a changed state of consciousness
• OBE is a basic component of NDE

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Characteristics of NDE

• History scientific study began with Moody (Life
  after Life, 1975)
• 150 case reports with these commonalities
• Overwhelming feeling of peace and well-being,
  free from pain
• Floating or drifting through darkness
• Awareness of a golden light
• Encountering/Communicating with a presence
• Rapid Succession of visual images of ones past
• Experiencing another world, meeting past
  acquaintances
• The impression of being located outside ones
  physical body (OBE)

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Measuring NDE

• Greysons Three Point Scale (1983)

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Results, Lange et al.
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Is there a core NDE?

• Lange, Greyson, Houran (2004) evaluate Greysons
  scale using the Rasch model
• Results
• There is a hierarchy of NDE experiences
• OBE is one of the characteristic, basic
  experiences of NDE
• Hierarchy is invariant across gender, current
  age, age of NDE, latency between NDE and report
• Conclusion Yes, there is a core NDE. Basic
  structure and semantics are preserved regardless
  of intensity of NDE and demographics

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What is an out of body experience (OBE)?

• Ones visuo-spacial perspective and ones self
  are experience to have departed from their
  habitual position within ones body
• Disembodiment
• Extracoporeal egocentric perspective
• Autoscopy
• What produces it?
• OBEs are components of near death experiences
• A fundamental characteristic of NDE according to
  Lange et als analysis

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Examples of OBE

• Suddenly it was as if he saw himself in the bed
  in front of him. He felt as if he were at the
  other end of the room, (Blanke and Arzy, 2005)

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Autoscopic Phenomenon

• Autoscopy is a visual illusion of your own body.
• Three types of autoscopic phenomena
• Autoscopic hallucination Seeing your double but
  viewpoint is still from your own body
• Heautoscopy Seeing your double but not sure
  where youre located
• OBE Seeing your double, but the viewpoint is
  from your double. Supine position.

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Out of Body Experience

• Failure to integrate multisensory information
  from ones own body at the temporo-parietal
  junction (TPJ)
• Disruption of phenomenological and cognitive
  aspects of self-processing, causing illusory
  reduplication, illusory self-location, illusory
  perspective and illusory agency

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OBE Patients

• Predominantly in patients with epilepsy and
  migraine (Lippman, 1953)
• Devinskey et al. 1989
• Nonlesional epilepsy
• Epilepsy due to an arteriovenous malformation
• Posttraumatic brain damage
• Blanke et al. 2004
• Dysembryoplastic tumor
• Induced by focal electrical stimulation

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Clinical Findings in Neurological OBE Patients
with Focal Brain Damage

• These studies reveal that most OBEs are related
  to focal epilepsy in the right temporal and/or
  parietal lobe.

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MRI-Based lesion overlap analysis in OBE Patients
(Blanke et al. 2004)
Implication of the TPJ in all patients OBE can
be induced by electrical stimulation of the TPJ
(2002) 75 of patients had right hemi-spheric
brain Damage
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Disturbed Own-body Processing

• Association to vestibular sensations
• Graviceptive (ortholithic) sensations evoked in
  regions where higher currents induced OBE (Blanke
  et al. 2002)
• Feelings of elevation and floating
• 180 degree inversion of ones body and
  visuo-spacial perspective in extrapersonal space
• Proxymal vestibular dysfunction (Grusser and
  Landis, 1991)
• Paroxysmal visual body-part illusion
• Supernumerary phantom limbs or illusiory limb
  tansformations
• Integration of proprioceptive, tactile and visual
  information of ones body fails due to discrepant
  central representation of the different sensory
  systems
• Both of the above are present to lead to OBE

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Visual Body-part Illusions Accompanying OBE
Induced by electrical stimulation at the right TPJ
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Multisensory Disintegration at the TPJ Leads to
OBE
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Temporo-parietal Junction

• Core region of vestibular cortex situated at the
  TPJ including the posterior insula
• Implication of TPJ and cortical areas along the
  intraparietal sulcus in combining tactile,
  proprioceptive, and visual information in
  coordinated reference frame
• TPJ?perception of body parts, entire body,
  biological motion, mental imagery with respect to
  ones own body (not only visual input but
  movement, thus proving role in multisensory
  perception)
• TPJ?ego-centric visuo-spatial perspective taking,
  agency, self-other distiction (self at a third
  person perspective)

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Activation in EBA and TPJ code differentially for
embodiment

• EEG recording, EP mapping, and distributed linear
  inverse solution (Arzy et al. 2006)
• Own body Transformation task (OBE)
• Mirror task (MIR)

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Results

• Generators of MapMIR (top row) were localized at
  the left EBA and of MapOBT (bottom row) at the
  right TPJ and left EBA.
• Timing of the Activations
• TPJ activation was 50ms later than EBA
  activation in OBE Task
• EBA linded to visual processing of human bodies
  and also responds to actual and imagined
  movements of ones own arm (Astafiev et al. 2004)

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Spontaneous OBE vs. OBE near death

• Spontaneous OBE vs. OBE near death
• Spontaneous OBErs score higher on measures of
  somatoform dissociation, body dissatisfaction and
  self-consciousness (Murray).

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Possible causes of NDEs

• REM Intrusion (Nelson)
• Still have NDES when taking drugs blocking REM
  (Greyson).
• Cerebral Anoxia Shortage of Oxygen (McHarg)
• Trying to avoid reality (Pfister)

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Effects of NDEs

• Increased Concern for Others
• Reduced death anxiety
• Strengthened belief in afterlife
• Increased self worth
• 
  

Groth- Marnat and Summers
Different study found higher divorce rate in
those who had a NDE, 65, vs. those who had a
life changing event,19 (Christian).
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Shared NDEs

• Examples

A shared NDE but not a shared OBE. How Can We
Explain Shared NDES?
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Discussion Questions

• What are the neural correlates that relate OBE to
  NDE?
• If OBEs are caused by a disruption of neural
  function, does that mean you also have a
  disruption of neural function when you have a
  NDE?
• Does having a NDE change your normal state of
  consciousness/neural structure?
• How common are OBEs? Related to drug use?
• Are NDEs caused by the medications administered
  to the patient?
• Is NDE real or not? Is just due to being so close
  to death that youre psychologically shocked?
  Or is NDE an actual experience?
• Are NDEs inherent only to the dying process or do
  they also manifest themselves during
  life-threatening situations?
• Is there really a core NDE or does it differ
  with demographics, culture, and religion?

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Terms

• Out-of-body experience (OBE)
• Experience of seeing ones own body and the world
  from a location that is outside ones physical
  body (disembodiment). This extracorporeal
  location and visuo-spatial perspective is
  generally experienced as inverted by 180 degrees
  with respect to the subjects actual position.
• Disembodiment
• Experience that the self is localized outside
  ones physical body boundaries.
• Autoscopic hallucination
• Experience of seeing ones body in extracorporeal
  space (as a double) without disembodiment. The
  double is seen from the habitual egocentric
  visuo-spatial perspective.
• Heautoscopy
• Intermediate form between autoscopic
  hallucination and OBE the subject experiences
  seeing his or her body and the world in an
  alternating (or simultaneous) fashion from an
  extracorporeal and his bodily visuo-spatial
  perspective often, it is difficult for the
  subject to decide whether the self is localized
  in the double or in ones own body.

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Terms (Cont.)

• Sense of agency
• The ability to recognize oneself as the agent of
  a behavior or thought.
• Visual body-part illusions
• Experience of seeing parts of ones own body
  (generally a limb) as modified in shape,
  position, number, or movement with respect to
  their habitual appearance.
• Visuo-spatial perspective
• The point of view and the direction from which
  the subject experiences seeing.
• Inversion illusion
• The experience of seeing the world from a
  location and visuo-spatial perspective that is
  inverted by 180 degrees with respect to the
  subjects actual position and perspective. There
  is neither disembodiment nor autoscopy.
• Room-tilt illusion
• The experience that the world is inverted by 180
  degrees with respect to the subject, whose
  experienced position and visuo-spatial
  perspective does not change. There is neither
  disembodiment nor autoscopy.

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Bibliography

• Lange, R., Greyson, B., Houran J., (2004). A
  Rasch scaling validation of a core near-death
  experience. British Journal of Psychology, 95,
  161177.
• BLANKE, O., ARZY, S., (2005). The Out-of-Body
  Experience Disturbed Self-Processing at the
  Temporo-Parietal Junction. THE NEUROSCIENTIST,
  ISSN 1073-8584.
• Arzy, S., Thut, G., Mohr, C., Michel, C.M.,
  Blanke, O., (2006). Neural Basis of Embodiment
  Distinct Contributions of Temporoparietal
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• Blanke, O., Mohr, C., (2005). Out-of-body
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• Murphy, T. (2001). The Structure and Function of
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Bibliography (Cont.)

• Howarth, G. (2001). Shared Near-Death and
  Related Illness Experiences Steps on an
  Unscheduled Journey. Journal of near-death
  studies, 20(2), 71-85.
• Groth-marnat, G. (1998). Altered Beliefs,
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• Greyson, B. (2006). Does the arousal system
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• Nelson, KR. (2006). Does the arousal system
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• Murray, CD. (2006). Differences in body image
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• Christian, SR. (2006). Marital satisfaction and
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