Near-death experiences have fascinated people – and experts – for thousands of years.
But until recently, there was no scientific explanation for why this phenomenon occurs.
Now neuroscientist Dr Jane Aspell has explained that it may be caused by damage to a vital part of the brain responsible for sense processing and balance.
It could explain why those who have come close to death, taken drugs, or suffered brain injuries are among those who reported out-of-body experiences.
Such reports include detailed cases of patients hovering above their body lying below them just after a traumatic event or accident.
Experiences of stepping out of your body and seeing your own body have been reported not only when someone is dying, but also after taking drugs such as ketamine, as a result of brain injury and in epilepsy
Dr. Aspell, an associate professor of cognitive neuroscience at Anglia Ruskin University, lectured on the science behind out-of-body experiences, explaining that the phenomenon is a “very real, very vivid hallucination.”
She believes that people seeing their own “body double” may be caused by damage to a part of the brain called the temporal parietal junction.
Anglia Ruskin University neuroscientist Dr Jane Aspell, pictured, says out-of-body experience may be due to damage to a vital part of the brain responsible for sense processing and balance
Dr. Aspell said: ‘There is now strong evidence that out-of-body experiences and related experiences are caused by abnormal functioning in parts of the brain that process and combine signals from our body.
“Recent research in neurological patients has shed light on how the healthy brain generates the experience of itself, and what happens when that construct temporarily goes ‘wrong’.”
The temporal parietal junction is located on both sides of the brain, just above the ear, but it’s the right side that’s associated with out-of-body experiences, Dr. Aspell explains.
This part of the brain is active during social functions and is needed to process empathy and memory.
It also uses the senses of sight, sound, and touch to create a coherent sense of self within the body.
The temporal parietal junction is located on both sides of the brain just above the ear. This part of the brain takes information from vision, ears, and touch and creates a cohesive sense of self, a feeling that resides in the body
‘It then seems logical that if this area is not functioning as it should, then this integration of all these different signals will not occur as it should, so the experience of being a single body can be disrupted as a result,’ says Dr Aspell .
Part of the temporal parietal junction called the vestibular cortex acts as the balance system in our ear and helps us know where we are relative to gravity.
The vestibular cortex could provide further explanation for out-of-body experiences, Dr. Aspell believes.
If the brain can’t combine information from this balance system with other senses, it is can provide the sensation of floating above your own body that occurs with near-death and out-of-body experiences, according to Dr. Aspell.
Dr. In fact, Aspell says there are several examples of people who had out-of-body experiences, all of whom had abnormal functions in the temporal-parietal junction.
A 42-year-old female epileptic patient in a hospital in Geneva was reported in an article published in Nature in 2002.
She would have surgery to remove the part of the brain that caused her seizures.
Before surgery, doctors implanted a grid of electrodes in her brain to record its activity and stimulate parts of the organ to identify which parts needed surgery.
When the patient’s temporal parietal junction was stimulated, she reported having an out-of-body experience. When medics turned off the electricity, she was back in her body.
In another case, a man with a ringing in the ears known as tinnitus was cured of the condition when medics permanently placed electrodes in his temporal-parietal junction.
But it had a similar side effect that caused an out of body experience.