Just discovered your site on Philosopher Eric's recommendation. Excellent, well done content!
On your final question, are you familiar with Michael Graziano's attention schema theory? Using a discussion on phantom limb pain, he notes that body schema issues are ones that people can't see past, because it's their very primal understanding of their body, so when it goes wrong, they experience things like the pain of a missing limb.
He then points out that if we have a schema for attention, likewise it's not something we can see around. Our understanding and control of our own attention has to go through that schema. And like any model, it's much coarser grained than the reality, giving the impression of something separate and apart from the functionality of the brain.
Hi Mike! Thanks for the kind words. I'm glad you're enjoying the content
Ah! Yes, I am familiar with Graziano's attention schema theory. It's was actually a key theory in my PhD, which was on the role of attention in consciousness. The analogy with phantom limb pain is a good one. It highlights how our cognitive models can shape our experience in ways we can't easily see past.
Phantom pain seems inversely related to referred pain. In the case of phantom pain, the brain seems to be creating an “out of limb” experience in reverse. There really is no limb (body) in reality but the brain says there is. In the case of referred pain, there is a limb, but there is nothing physically causing the pain. In the case of the limb, the brain fools the body. In the case of referred pain, the body fools the brain. I’m an expert in referred pain; I have a moderate to severe case of spinal stenosis on my right side which plays havoc with my right leg below the knee. I’ve had plantar fasciitis for five years. The weird part is the pain is mirrored in my left lower limb. The relationship between the brain and the body is almost as complex as that between the brain and the mind eh?
I've had to deal with referred dental pain, so I know where you're coming from. The fact that the brain can get confused about exactly what is in pain has always highlighted to me just how much pain is a complex evaluation, really a constellation of complex evaluations done by the brain, evaluations which are, unfortunately, cognitively impenetrable.
What really amazes me is the fact that I actually do have plantar fasciitis. I have knee pain. My brain isn’t just registering pain not caused by a physical condition, but my feet and my right knee believe that they are injured. They get told that constantly by the nerve root exiting through the fifth vertebrae and extending down to split and becomes the two branches of the sciatic nerve. I have zero sciatica (knock on wood). This is the equivalent of an IBE (In Body Experience) of the phantom pain variety.
That's a great article, thank you. You have studied the TPJ in people under 'normal' circumstances, but I'd like you to write about situations of a serious crises, " when the TPJ is disrupted, (and) the brain struggles to create a coherent body schema." In psychological theory, this happens when the person cannot run away, cannot fight, and the body is helpless to protect itself. The brain (which we sometimes call "the mind") disengages from the body. Thanks.
Good point, stress and trauma can cause OBEs. Apparently, it's not uncommon for women to experience an OBE during childbirth. And sadly, there are too many reports that OBEs are experienced by children who are the victims of abuse. My guess is that this response is closely tied to the brain's attention system -- attention is diverted as a protective mechanism.
Thanks for this. Interestingly, ketamine orally was used (maybe still is) as a premedication for children prior to undergoing tonsillectomy. In adults it is used but may produce what the literature suggested bitd were dissociative states (sometimes quite unpleasant unless you were “under” with other sedative agents). This avoided having to introduce cannulae into the repertoire of anxious children and was a good thing. I wonder if children, say 10 years or younger experience any such phenomena as OBE, or if it’s only a maturity onset phenomenon? I haven’t seen it in anyone young self-describing seizures, but that doesn’t really mean very much at all. Memories and the ability to report are poor or absent in these circumstances. Partial-Complex seizures (temporal lobe foci) also weren’t a feature in children when I knew about such things. They had absences but no somatic dislocation of any specific kind. I am not familiar with the literature at all these days but your essay did make me wonder.
Thanks John! I didn't know that ketamine was used during tonsillectomy.
I'm not too familiar with research on OBEs in children. But my guess is that we might see OBEs in children under 10, but that OBEs in children are more likely to be associated with psychological factors such as stress, trauma, or imagination rather than neurological conditions like epilepsy or brain lesions.
Good point about reportability. It's also worth mentioning that rates of OBEs vary across different cultures. Some cultures have belief systems or practices that make OBE-like experiences more recognised or reported. For instance, I read that certain shamanic traditions include practices that induce OBE-like states, which might influence how these experiences are perceived and reported even in children.
A fascinating question. Is there a developmental trajectory for out of body experiences? Do infants experience them? Crawling around in a room chocked full of stuff to touch or bump into with few skills to orient the body. Proprioception is probably a hope and a prayer at this point. I wonder to what degree language acquisition helps form the brain mechanisms that lie at the root of OBE. We rely on language—reported experience—to get evidence of OBE. To what degree does language shape them? To report is to name.
Great question! You're so right, it's challenging to know if infants have out-of-body experiences (OBEs) because they can't communicate them. And you make a great point -- the act of describing an experience can shape how we remember and understand it. This could potentially influence the experience itself.
On this point, there are cultural differences in how OBEs are perceived, interpreted, and reported across different societies and belief systems. So I suspect that the development and expression of OBEs might vary significantly across cultures and individuals, shaped by language, beliefs, and social context.
When I discovered lucid dreaming, I fell down a rabbit hole of sites explaining how to achieve the experience. Inevitably, you'll stumble across astral projection because the two have an incredible overlap in process.
I'm sure there's got to be a Venn diagram with OOB, AP, LD, and Near Death Experience.
And if you ask my opinion, they're all just your conscious mind bumping into processes that are usually firewalled by sleep.
There are so many strange body illusions -- and many of them are associated with abnormalities of the parietal lobe. But I don't know too much about astral projection. Have they been associated with things like sleep paralysis or lucid dreaming?
Out of body experiences are usually considered to fall into one of three types. Autoscopy -- experiencing the surrounds from outside the body. Autoscopic hallucination -- seeing a double of ones self (without felling like they've left their body). And heautoscopy -- seeing a double of ones self but not sure if one is embodied or not.
The Astral Projection community is at war with the sceptical community. They've yet to produce some credible evidence that it's not just a hallucination. I've gone through the subreddit and most of the claims of proof are below the standards for decent evidence.
And on the sceptical side, there have been testers who did things like putting coloured shapes in high places (red crosses and green circles) that would be easy to spot if you were really flying. They deliberately leave out those details, then bring people into a lab and ask them to sleep and leave their body. None report having seen the shapes.
The near-death experiences on operating tables usually involve the argument that they're unconscious and gain unknowable evidence. EXCEPT their bodies are on the table and they usually just discuss what the doctors spoke about. It's just as easily explained by saying "you might be unconscious but you were in the room and your body heard it - who's to say that your brain didn't hear it and store that information for later?"
Peter, the skeptics sort of miss the point right. It’s not that the body actually escapes and floats up to the ceiling. It’s a mental thing. The key word for my money is experience, and the key feature is ‘not real.’ Lucid dreaming is so interesting. I sometimes think that powerful poetry can cause simulated lucid dreaming.
There are two things which have been disturbing me this morning. One is “The last day I rode my bike…” and the second is “three cracked vertebrae”. It’s such a dangerous world!
Thanks, Eric. I should have mentioned in the article that I'm totally fine now. After several surgeries and many hours in physiotherapy, I'm pretty much back to normal. I consider myself incredibly lucky. In a different era, or without access to modern medicine, it would have been a different story.
Hi. Going to college in the 1960's I observed quite a few people, usually after they had imbibed some form of hallucinogenic, or smoked something, ( it was the 60's) claim that they were experiencing some form of out of body experience. They professed it to be very real for them. Just wanted to share. Thx
Great article Suzi, I love how open minded you are and the invitation in the last paragraph.
As an idealist, I always think physicalists have everything upside down and inside out.
Instead of asking how brains create the illusion of leaving our bodies, I’d be inclined to interpret this as explaining how the brain creates the illusion of being inside a body in the first place.
After all, it’s stretching credulity to think that the brain can create a conscious self. But now we have to accept that not only can it create a subjective point of view, but it can then take a point of view from outside itself. As far as engineering projects go, it makes perpetual motion machines look easy.
Whereas if we start with the conscious subject, a subjective point of view, it’s not even mildly surprising it can take a point of view from inside the body. The TPJ is our onboard GPS.
I find idealism really fascinating, probably because it seems so counter intuitive. I keep coming back to the same sorts of questions like, how does idealism explain why there are different conscious entities? Isn't a separation between things fundamentally a feature of being physical? And why do these different entities experience the same structured reality if there's no underlying physical world?
I'd be really interested to hear your thoughts on these sorts of questions.
For the idealist, the external world is still a structured reality, it’s just “made of” consciousness. There is no other substance. That leads logically to the existence of a universal consciousness. You could call that God if the word didn’t come with so much baggage. Calling it the Absolute, the first cause, ground of all being, might be better.
I’m mostly familiar with the Vedic ideas. On the non-realist end of the spectrum, Advaita Vedanta says separate conscious entities is ultimately an illusion. On the realist side you’ll have some kind of theological explanation, usually our free will is the cause of our separation from God. In all cases, the goal is re-union with the universal consciousness, but that union looks different depending on the particular philosophy.
I don’t like dropping links in other people’s comments, but I just published an article on substack called the conscious dimensions of reality. You might find that one interesting because it outlines the Vedic progression of logic that ends with the universal consciousness (Brahman).
It seems that, unlike some forms of idealism, your view is that reality consists of multiple dimensions of consciousness, with the physical world being the most superficial level. Did I understand that correctly?
If so, there seems to be some overlap with panpsychism here -- consciousness is fundamental to reality, but it manifests in different states or dimensions?
Yes, there is overlap depending on how you cash things out. Idealism is a substance monism, there is only consciousness. I take panpsychism to be a type of physicalism, but our concept of the physical is radically transformed, In addition to properties like mass and charge, all matter also has the property of consciousness. But that said, I’ve seen Ramanuja’s (Vedantic) view classified as panpsychism, so the borders are fuzzy.
I think I started reading Suzi from an agnostic position. It seemed impossible to explain consciousness/mind/sense of self by pointing to the brain. But over time Suzi has pretty much led me into a corner. I have to admit the brain and the mind are two sides of the same coin. What really surprised me was how liberating this idea was. If you haven’t had the chance to read the five part series, I’d say do it. They’re very fun to read.
Hi, Suzi. I, too, have been brought here thanks to Philosopher Eric's recommendation. I've been reading your articles and catching up. Sometimes I dabble in questions of consciousness, and your newsletter strikes me as a good resource.
I have had an out-of-body experience. When I was in my teens, I sometimes suffered from a condition where, as I went to sleep, I would find myself fully awake but unable to move my body. I say "suffered" because it felt unpleasant; I wanted nothing more than to break the spell. A concentration of will to make my little finger twitch would eventually work, but it required tremendous effort. (My mother had the same condition, but she was not always so lucky. She could only manage to groan, so that someone would come and massage her neck to wake her up. )
On one of these occasions, I became aware of floating above my body in the bedroom. I floated to the window, where I saw the disembodied face of a girl with pale skin and long dark hair. She regarded me with calm, deep, soulful eyes. This scene was rendered in a what I can only describe as a moonlight-drenched pointillism, as if speckle-painted.
I was quite awake, and I decided to see if I could astral-travel (this was in the 1970s). As I began to leave the room, I started having trouble breathing. My real body felt ill-positioned, as if my head were nodding forward onto my throat, and in my discomfort I was pulled out of the state.
Before anyone becomes too excited by this anecdote, I have to add that the bedroom visible to my astral state was quite tidy, whereas, as I realized on emerging from the condition, my real one was anything but, with clothes and belongings strewn about as was my teenage habit.
Fascinating article. These experiments do seem very rudimentary and make me wonder about correlation, causation, and multiple factors. It seems they indicate adaptability of the TPJ as much as causation of OBE. They also don’t demonstrate the direction of the causation—the OBE (from a different yet unidentified factor or factors which may not be physical) could cause the brain change and disconnection of the TPJ—Not TPJ causing OBE. Clearly there’s a correlation—but a causation for all OBE? Not so sure. Why? Because we do know that a person can change their brain structure through choices, or focus, etc. As an example through choice / concentration—or actually not concentrating—I can lower my own heart rate significantly. I told this to my wife for years (she kindly patronized this as one of my self-delusions) and then when I was in the ER hooked up to a heart monitor waiting for a Doctor I demonstrated this ability to her while she watched the monitor and my heart rate slowly dropping. Oh course the nurses rushed in and asked me if I was having a heart attack ( I had gotten it very low)—my wife then laughed out loud and told them—“no he’s just playing with his heart rate”. They were surprised at first (not convinced). but eventually turned the heart monitor alarm off and asked me to stop it.
Our power to impact significant physiological changes in our bodies is little understood. Perhaps TPJ and OBE are mutually causational at best? And there is a lot more to this.
As always I look forward to seeing your continued work in these areas.
You're spot on about the correlation vs causation issue -- it's something I probably should have emphasised more in the article. Also the one study that comes closest to causation (the stimulation patient) is an n of 1. I'm with you - there's likely a lot more going on here than we currently know.
That's wild about your heart rate control! What a great party trick.
My thoughts on out of body experiences go along with my conception of consciousness states in general. I presume we tend to survive better when we aren’t generally having out of body experiences, “tripping out”, and whatnot. So that’s what evolution should have selected for. (The only exception that I know of is the altered state of sleep where we tend to dream. Apparently the general purpose for this is recuperation however, so that works too.) From here I suspect evolution had to do quite a lot to create a consciousness that feels quite seamless and body based. Thus certain drugs which alter brain function ought to be able to mess that up, which is of course what‘s found.
So let’s imagine that our senses cause neurons to fire with a synchrony where the resulting electromagnetic field itself exists as the experiencer of those input senses (and the same for our thought processor and decision output). Certain chemicals ought to interfere with that firing to thus provide us with skewed perceptions, skewed thinking, and skewed decisions since the field itself should be skewed. Thus altered states of consciousness such as out of body experiences.
Good point! and I agree -- evolution likely selected for a consciousness that's generally does a good job of representing our bodies. It makes sense that feeling "in our bodies" most of the time would be advantageous for survival and reproduction.
There's some new ideas about dreaming you might find interesting -- dreams might be for updating our predictive models. It might be a way for us to try out different scenarios in the safety of a dream state.
I’m open to evidence that dreams might have uses, and yes I can see how people would explore the the thought that they might help us safely test various scenarios. Currently that doesn’t seem very plausible to me though. Observe that if you tell off your boss in a dream, this will not test what would happen in real life. Instead it would only be you, and with impaired faculties. All sorts of bullshit happens in my own dreams, though given my impairment I don’t even know they’re bullshit.
For a while my wife would have these strong anxiety dreams where she’d let out these intense moans of fear. So I’d intervene to let her know everything was actually fine. It happened enough times that in these situations she recalls feeling like I was watching over her to see if she could sort the situation out or I’d have to get involved.
I’m pretty sure that dreams are mainly just a functionless spandrel, which is to say a purposeless consequence of dynamics that actually are functional. I’d certainly consider evidence that evolution has found at least certain uses for them however.
Eric, when you used the phrase “altered state of sleep” I wondered how sleep could be an altering of consciousness rather than a continuation of consciousness… I wondered if people have dreams of OBE. I think I’m always in my body in my dreams. I’ve had a recurring dream about my dad who died when I was twelve. In it I’m at his funeral, sitting in my body in the back of the room. I have a walkie talkie in my hand (yes, this was a long time ago). There is also a walkie talkie in his chest (he died suddenly from a heart attack), and I can talk to him. I know he hears me but he never responds. I don’t see this dream as an “altered state” of consciousness but a part of my consciousness. I’ve never believed that there is a place like heaven. When I was young I remember watching people praying and I would wonder who they were speaking to. The whole relationship to me among physicality, language, imagination, sense of self, knowledge, and consciousness seems to me knowable and indeed real as opposed to spiritual or ghostly, but I’m not sure the explication of that relationship is close at hand, at least not for me. The evolutionary advantage of a GPS is clear, but humans aren’t the only ones with GPS service. Searle describes watching a golden retrieving leap from the ground to catch a flying frisbee in its mouth with a precision unmatched by an Olympian. Knowledge of calculus and physics doesn’t allow us to catch flying frisbees. Do animals have OBE? Are we looking for our keys in the light from a street lamp just because that’s where we can see when we turn to brain activity to explain consciousness?
Actually Terry, we’re in alignment on dreams being a continuation of consciousness. The “altering” would just be in how things aren’t quite phenomenally “correct” in our dreams, or the state that evolution should have generally selected for when we’re awake. So dreaming might be considered somewhat like a natural psychedelic experience, though certainly a conscious experience. Thus in such a state as an adult today you can trick yourself into thinking that you’re actually a 12 year old boy at your father’s funeral telling him things with your walkie talkie.
You’ve also raised the question of the physics which resides as your consciousness, though aren’t optimistic anything will ever make sense to you. You might, however, take a test drive for the answer that I find sensible. This is to say that when you see something, for example, that the incoming information causes a dynamic synchrony to your neural firing which creates an electromagnetic field that itself exists as the experiencer of what you see, and by extension, all other elements of your consciousness reside as elements of such a field. It’s just that the neural firing shouldn’t have quite the same fidelity when you’re asleep and thinking about things, which is to say dreaming.
On looking for our dropped keys in the light rather the dark, yes that’s a very real concern. With his “imitation game” I think Alan Turing got people doing this back when computing machines were young — if you feel like you’re speaking with a human, though it’s actually just a standard computer, then that computer must be conscious. This little heuristic seems to have dominated consciousness science since then. But what if it takes more than the right processed information itself for consciousness to emerge, and because information can only exist as such by informing something appropriate? In that case we’d need to go on to a more hidden additional explanation, such as a neurally produced electromagnetic field which becomes so informed.
What do you know about cases where the disembodied person can gather data that they couldn't have obtained from their position within their body? Such stories often involve the experiences of near dead people in operating rooms.
If such experience could be proven credible, wouldn't that be a very important piece of information?
I know that some studies have placed hidden targets (like symbols or numbers) in hospital rooms, visible only from a high vantage point, to test if OBE experiencers could identify them.
The general finding is that while there have been some intriguing anecdotal reports, controlled studies have generally failed to produce verifiable evidence of information gathering during OBEs that couldn't be explained by other means. So, the topic remains controversial.
I would argue logically that OBE as an experience by definition excludes the possibility of spotting objects on the ceiling. What is interesting about OBE is that the person is embodied. The person is not floating toward the ceiling but imagines it. What do we know physically about the link between the brain and imaginary experience generally? OBE is just one type of imaginary experience.
There's some overlap between different brain functions that might be relevant here -- although this connection isn't firmly established. There's a network in the brain called the default mode network. Within this network, activation in the medial prefrontal cortex (mPFC) is associated with the perception of self and others. Interestingly, this same area -- the mPFC -- is also involved in imagining oneself in different situations or perspectives.
I was familiar with the "rubber hand" illusion but never heard of the full-body VR version. That must be a very trippy experience!
It always surprises me just how easily our brains are tricked when having to incorporate conflicting information from different senses. One of my favorites is the McGurk effect, where we're tricked into hearing "fa" or "ba" depending on the speaker's lip movements, despite the fact that only "ba" is ever actually spoken. The craziest part is that even knowing this fact doesn't give you the power to "override" you hearing "fa" or "ba" if you're watching the person's mouth.
Hi Suzi, I really enjoyed this article. I'm curious, if OBEs are illusory, why is it commonly reported that one can 'see' one's own body from above? Also, I have linked your article to my own newsletter which I will publish later this week. :) Thanks!
Great question! While we don't have a definitive answer, there are a few theories about why out-of-body experiences (OBEs) are often perceived from above.
One explanation is cultural influence: the concept of consciousness rising upwards is common in many cultures, religions, and media depictions of OBEs. This cultural conditioning might shape how people perceive and report their experiences.
Another theory relates to sensory interpretation. During an OBE, a person is often lying on their back, typically on a bed. The brain receives touch information from the back of the body, and in the OBE state, this sensory input might be misinterpreted, leading to the illusion of the self being positioned above the body. Interestingly, people often report feeling about 2 meters (6 feet) above their physical body during an OBE. This would roughly place their perceived self with their back against the ceiling, mirroring their actual body's position on the bed. The touch sensations from lying on the bed might be reinterpreted by the brain as touching the ceiling.
Thanks for linking to my article -- looking forward to reading yours :)
I'm sorry, but I just don't trust the science community to study any topic too far outside of the group consensus in an objective manner. They have too much on the line in their careers, and are terrified of being branded crackpots, which they perceive as a mortal threat to their professional reputations and incomes.
For decades the science community looked down their snooty superior condescending noses at UFO reports. And now that UFO reports (as distinct from alien theories) have been confirmed as real by Navy pilots and the US government, the science community doesn't have the intellectual honesty to admit the "UFO wackos" were right all along. Not to mention they seem to have little curiosity about what is arguably the biggest story of our times.
I don't know if OBEs are real cases of consciousness operating outside the body. I only know the science community is not competent to study them, or they already would have with great enthusiasm. I just don't buy any of the waffle talk they produce instead on such subjects.
The story doesn't prove OBEs, it only illustrates the lack of curiosity often to the level of contempt of many in the science community.
The woman is clinically dead, and then recovers. Upon recovery she immediately reports an OBE. The medical team dismisses her report. The surgeon holds up his hands and tells her to be quiet. So she then proceeds to describe what happened in the operating room while she dead in great detail. The lead surgeon finds her accurate report so inconvenient to his imaginary superiority that he becomes outraged and stomps out of the room. And then....
Nobody follows up to interview the other witnesses to either confirm or debunk the woman's story of what happened in the operating room while she was dead. No curiosity. No intellectual courage. No credibility.
I should add here that I really don't think most scientists are bad people, I really don't. The vast majority of the time they are good people with good intentions. But you have to understand, they are only in a position to study safe subjects. Their fear of being seen as wackos is an important form of bias which needs to be taken in to account.
For the sake of keeping this from turning in to a book, I'll end here. Should anyone wish to challenge this, please do, with my sincere blessing. Just know before you do, I have a LOT more ammunition to aim at the credibility of the science community. You've been warned.
While I think there's probably a lot of truth to your claim that scientist are concerned about their professional reputations. The problem, I think, is probably a bit more complicated.
Almost all scientists rely on funding from governments. To get funding we have to write grants that outline and make justifications for the research we want to run. There are more scientists writing grants than there is grant money for those grants. So, to keep their jobs, scientists must write compelling grants that are likely to get funding.
If an individual scientist wants to investigate a controversial subject, they face significant hurdles in securing funding for such research. Grant reviewers and funding bodies tend to favour proposals that build on established knowledge or address pressing societal needs.
This is one of the main reasons consciousness research remained dormant for many years. Nowadays there is more consciousness research, but you're still more likely to get funding if you call it 'decision making' in a grant proposal than if you use the word 'consciousness' to describe the same research.
I love the description of the woman who felt herself floating above her body, but still could see only her legs and lower torso. That's something that's bothered me for a long time about descriptions of OBE's. I experience dissociation under certain circumstances, but I've always described it as "losing my depth perception". I can be standing in conversation with someone and perceive that they are twenty feet away.
I am an artist and I can easily visualize what it would look like to be literally floating above my head or behind myself (seeing the top of my hair, the back of my neck, etc) and I have never experienced that during a dissociative episode.
But that has meant that I answer in the negative if asked on a diagnostic test, "Have you ever experienced floating above your body?" That has left me with false negative test results.
I would love to see greater care taken with diagnostic evaluation and description to account for the cases where one does not literally see from a point of view outside themselves.
Hi Suzi,
Just discovered your site on Philosopher Eric's recommendation. Excellent, well done content!
On your final question, are you familiar with Michael Graziano's attention schema theory? Using a discussion on phantom limb pain, he notes that body schema issues are ones that people can't see past, because it's their very primal understanding of their body, so when it goes wrong, they experience things like the pain of a missing limb.
He then points out that if we have a schema for attention, likewise it's not something we can see around. Our understanding and control of our own attention has to go through that schema. And like any model, it's much coarser grained than the reality, giving the impression of something separate and apart from the functionality of the brain.
Anyway, again, impressive content!
Actually I switched names Mike, but good to see you here!
Oops, sorry Eric. You've been "Philosopher Eric" for so long that my autopilot hasn't caught up yet.
Hi Mike! Thanks for the kind words. I'm glad you're enjoying the content
Ah! Yes, I am familiar with Graziano's attention schema theory. It's was actually a key theory in my PhD, which was on the role of attention in consciousness. The analogy with phantom limb pain is a good one. It highlights how our cognitive models can shape our experience in ways we can't easily see past.
Phantom pain seems inversely related to referred pain. In the case of phantom pain, the brain seems to be creating an “out of limb” experience in reverse. There really is no limb (body) in reality but the brain says there is. In the case of referred pain, there is a limb, but there is nothing physically causing the pain. In the case of the limb, the brain fools the body. In the case of referred pain, the body fools the brain. I’m an expert in referred pain; I have a moderate to severe case of spinal stenosis on my right side which plays havoc with my right leg below the knee. I’ve had plantar fasciitis for five years. The weird part is the pain is mirrored in my left lower limb. The relationship between the brain and the body is almost as complex as that between the brain and the mind eh?
I've had to deal with referred dental pain, so I know where you're coming from. The fact that the brain can get confused about exactly what is in pain has always highlighted to me just how much pain is a complex evaluation, really a constellation of complex evaluations done by the brain, evaluations which are, unfortunately, cognitively impenetrable.
What really amazes me is the fact that I actually do have plantar fasciitis. I have knee pain. My brain isn’t just registering pain not caused by a physical condition, but my feet and my right knee believe that they are injured. They get told that constantly by the nerve root exiting through the fifth vertebrae and extending down to split and becomes the two branches of the sciatic nerve. I have zero sciatica (knock on wood). This is the equivalent of an IBE (In Body Experience) of the phantom pain variety.
Hi Suzi,
That's a great article, thank you. You have studied the TPJ in people under 'normal' circumstances, but I'd like you to write about situations of a serious crises, " when the TPJ is disrupted, (and) the brain struggles to create a coherent body schema." In psychological theory, this happens when the person cannot run away, cannot fight, and the body is helpless to protect itself. The brain (which we sometimes call "the mind") disengages from the body. Thanks.
Hi Margot!
Good point, stress and trauma can cause OBEs. Apparently, it's not uncommon for women to experience an OBE during childbirth. And sadly, there are too many reports that OBEs are experienced by children who are the victims of abuse. My guess is that this response is closely tied to the brain's attention system -- attention is diverted as a protective mechanism.
Thanks for this. Interestingly, ketamine orally was used (maybe still is) as a premedication for children prior to undergoing tonsillectomy. In adults it is used but may produce what the literature suggested bitd were dissociative states (sometimes quite unpleasant unless you were “under” with other sedative agents). This avoided having to introduce cannulae into the repertoire of anxious children and was a good thing. I wonder if children, say 10 years or younger experience any such phenomena as OBE, or if it’s only a maturity onset phenomenon? I haven’t seen it in anyone young self-describing seizures, but that doesn’t really mean very much at all. Memories and the ability to report are poor or absent in these circumstances. Partial-Complex seizures (temporal lobe foci) also weren’t a feature in children when I knew about such things. They had absences but no somatic dislocation of any specific kind. I am not familiar with the literature at all these days but your essay did make me wonder.
Thanks John! I didn't know that ketamine was used during tonsillectomy.
I'm not too familiar with research on OBEs in children. But my guess is that we might see OBEs in children under 10, but that OBEs in children are more likely to be associated with psychological factors such as stress, trauma, or imagination rather than neurological conditions like epilepsy or brain lesions.
Good point about reportability. It's also worth mentioning that rates of OBEs vary across different cultures. Some cultures have belief systems or practices that make OBE-like experiences more recognised or reported. For instance, I read that certain shamanic traditions include practices that induce OBE-like states, which might influence how these experiences are perceived and reported even in children.
A fascinating question. Is there a developmental trajectory for out of body experiences? Do infants experience them? Crawling around in a room chocked full of stuff to touch or bump into with few skills to orient the body. Proprioception is probably a hope and a prayer at this point. I wonder to what degree language acquisition helps form the brain mechanisms that lie at the root of OBE. We rely on language—reported experience—to get evidence of OBE. To what degree does language shape them? To report is to name.
Great question! You're so right, it's challenging to know if infants have out-of-body experiences (OBEs) because they can't communicate them. And you make a great point -- the act of describing an experience can shape how we remember and understand it. This could potentially influence the experience itself.
On this point, there are cultural differences in how OBEs are perceived, interpreted, and reported across different societies and belief systems. So I suspect that the development and expression of OBEs might vary significantly across cultures and individuals, shaped by language, beliefs, and social context.
The things we tell ourselves to protect the nest:)
When I discovered lucid dreaming, I fell down a rabbit hole of sites explaining how to achieve the experience. Inevitably, you'll stumble across astral projection because the two have an incredible overlap in process.
I'm sure there's got to be a Venn diagram with OOB, AP, LD, and Near Death Experience.
And if you ask my opinion, they're all just your conscious mind bumping into processes that are usually firewalled by sleep.
Hi Peter!
There are so many strange body illusions -- and many of them are associated with abnormalities of the parietal lobe. But I don't know too much about astral projection. Have they been associated with things like sleep paralysis or lucid dreaming?
Out of body experiences are usually considered to fall into one of three types. Autoscopy -- experiencing the surrounds from outside the body. Autoscopic hallucination -- seeing a double of ones self (without felling like they've left their body). And heautoscopy -- seeing a double of ones self but not sure if one is embodied or not.
The Astral Projection community is at war with the sceptical community. They've yet to produce some credible evidence that it's not just a hallucination. I've gone through the subreddit and most of the claims of proof are below the standards for decent evidence.
And on the sceptical side, there have been testers who did things like putting coloured shapes in high places (red crosses and green circles) that would be easy to spot if you were really flying. They deliberately leave out those details, then bring people into a lab and ask them to sleep and leave their body. None report having seen the shapes.
The near-death experiences on operating tables usually involve the argument that they're unconscious and gain unknowable evidence. EXCEPT their bodies are on the table and they usually just discuss what the doctors spoke about. It's just as easily explained by saying "you might be unconscious but you were in the room and your body heard it - who's to say that your brain didn't hear it and store that information for later?"
Peter, the skeptics sort of miss the point right. It’s not that the body actually escapes and floats up to the ceiling. It’s a mental thing. The key word for my money is experience, and the key feature is ‘not real.’ Lucid dreaming is so interesting. I sometimes think that powerful poetry can cause simulated lucid dreaming.
There are two things which have been disturbing me this morning. One is “The last day I rode my bike…” and the second is “three cracked vertebrae”. It’s such a dangerous world!
Thanks, Eric. I should have mentioned in the article that I'm totally fine now. After several surgeries and many hours in physiotherapy, I'm pretty much back to normal. I consider myself incredibly lucky. In a different era, or without access to modern medicine, it would have been a different story.
That’s great to hear!
Hi. Going to college in the 1960's I observed quite a few people, usually after they had imbibed some form of hallucinogenic, or smoked something, ( it was the 60's) claim that they were experiencing some form of out of body experience. They professed it to be very real for them. Just wanted to share. Thx
Thanks for sharing David. I think for many, it's a very enjoyable experience. So, it makes sense.
Great article Suzi, I love how open minded you are and the invitation in the last paragraph.
As an idealist, I always think physicalists have everything upside down and inside out.
Instead of asking how brains create the illusion of leaving our bodies, I’d be inclined to interpret this as explaining how the brain creates the illusion of being inside a body in the first place.
After all, it’s stretching credulity to think that the brain can create a conscious self. But now we have to accept that not only can it create a subjective point of view, but it can then take a point of view from outside itself. As far as engineering projects go, it makes perpetual motion machines look easy.
Whereas if we start with the conscious subject, a subjective point of view, it’s not even mildly surprising it can take a point of view from inside the body. The TPJ is our onboard GPS.
Thanks Prudence, I try to be open minded.
I find idealism really fascinating, probably because it seems so counter intuitive. I keep coming back to the same sorts of questions like, how does idealism explain why there are different conscious entities? Isn't a separation between things fundamentally a feature of being physical? And why do these different entities experience the same structured reality if there's no underlying physical world?
I'd be really interested to hear your thoughts on these sorts of questions.
For the idealist, the external world is still a structured reality, it’s just “made of” consciousness. There is no other substance. That leads logically to the existence of a universal consciousness. You could call that God if the word didn’t come with so much baggage. Calling it the Absolute, the first cause, ground of all being, might be better.
I’m mostly familiar with the Vedic ideas. On the non-realist end of the spectrum, Advaita Vedanta says separate conscious entities is ultimately an illusion. On the realist side you’ll have some kind of theological explanation, usually our free will is the cause of our separation from God. In all cases, the goal is re-union with the universal consciousness, but that union looks different depending on the particular philosophy.
I don’t like dropping links in other people’s comments, but I just published an article on substack called the conscious dimensions of reality. You might find that one interesting because it outlines the Vedic progression of logic that ends with the universal consciousness (Brahman).
Thanks for taking the time to explain, Prudence.
It seems that, unlike some forms of idealism, your view is that reality consists of multiple dimensions of consciousness, with the physical world being the most superficial level. Did I understand that correctly?
If so, there seems to be some overlap with panpsychism here -- consciousness is fundamental to reality, but it manifests in different states or dimensions?
Yes, there is overlap depending on how you cash things out. Idealism is a substance monism, there is only consciousness. I take panpsychism to be a type of physicalism, but our concept of the physical is radically transformed, In addition to properties like mass and charge, all matter also has the property of consciousness. But that said, I’ve seen Ramanuja’s (Vedantic) view classified as panpsychism, so the borders are fuzzy.
Robert Kuhn has published a detailed taxonomy of the various views - https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0079610723001128#sec13
Oh, yes! Kuhn's article is epic. I love the diagram
I think I started reading Suzi from an agnostic position. It seemed impossible to explain consciousness/mind/sense of self by pointing to the brain. But over time Suzi has pretty much led me into a corner. I have to admit the brain and the mind are two sides of the same coin. What really surprised me was how liberating this idea was. If you haven’t had the chance to read the five part series, I’d say do it. They’re very fun to read.
Thanks so much Terry!
Hi, Suzi. I, too, have been brought here thanks to Philosopher Eric's recommendation. I've been reading your articles and catching up. Sometimes I dabble in questions of consciousness, and your newsletter strikes me as a good resource.
I have had an out-of-body experience. When I was in my teens, I sometimes suffered from a condition where, as I went to sleep, I would find myself fully awake but unable to move my body. I say "suffered" because it felt unpleasant; I wanted nothing more than to break the spell. A concentration of will to make my little finger twitch would eventually work, but it required tremendous effort. (My mother had the same condition, but she was not always so lucky. She could only manage to groan, so that someone would come and massage her neck to wake her up. )
On one of these occasions, I became aware of floating above my body in the bedroom. I floated to the window, where I saw the disembodied face of a girl with pale skin and long dark hair. She regarded me with calm, deep, soulful eyes. This scene was rendered in a what I can only describe as a moonlight-drenched pointillism, as if speckle-painted.
I was quite awake, and I decided to see if I could astral-travel (this was in the 1970s). As I began to leave the room, I started having trouble breathing. My real body felt ill-positioned, as if my head were nodding forward onto my throat, and in my discomfort I was pulled out of the state.
Before anyone becomes too excited by this anecdote, I have to add that the bedroom visible to my astral state was quite tidy, whereas, as I realized on emerging from the condition, my real one was anything but, with clothes and belongings strewn about as was my teenage habit.
Hi Jim! Thanks for the kind words. Eric is great, I'm glad you're both here.
Oh, that sounds awful. Thank you for sharing. It seems like you don't suffer from sleep paralysis anymore? I hope that is true.
Thanks, but the condition hasn't bothered me since my twenties (a long time ago).
Fascinating article. These experiments do seem very rudimentary and make me wonder about correlation, causation, and multiple factors. It seems they indicate adaptability of the TPJ as much as causation of OBE. They also don’t demonstrate the direction of the causation—the OBE (from a different yet unidentified factor or factors which may not be physical) could cause the brain change and disconnection of the TPJ—Not TPJ causing OBE. Clearly there’s a correlation—but a causation for all OBE? Not so sure. Why? Because we do know that a person can change their brain structure through choices, or focus, etc. As an example through choice / concentration—or actually not concentrating—I can lower my own heart rate significantly. I told this to my wife for years (she kindly patronized this as one of my self-delusions) and then when I was in the ER hooked up to a heart monitor waiting for a Doctor I demonstrated this ability to her while she watched the monitor and my heart rate slowly dropping. Oh course the nurses rushed in and asked me if I was having a heart attack ( I had gotten it very low)—my wife then laughed out loud and told them—“no he’s just playing with his heart rate”. They were surprised at first (not convinced). but eventually turned the heart monitor alarm off and asked me to stop it.
Our power to impact significant physiological changes in our bodies is little understood. Perhaps TPJ and OBE are mutually causational at best? And there is a lot more to this.
As always I look forward to seeing your continued work in these areas.
Hi Dean!
You're spot on about the correlation vs causation issue -- it's something I probably should have emphasised more in the article. Also the one study that comes closest to causation (the stimulation patient) is an n of 1. I'm with you - there's likely a lot more going on here than we currently know.
That's wild about your heart rate control! What a great party trick.
My thoughts on out of body experiences go along with my conception of consciousness states in general. I presume we tend to survive better when we aren’t generally having out of body experiences, “tripping out”, and whatnot. So that’s what evolution should have selected for. (The only exception that I know of is the altered state of sleep where we tend to dream. Apparently the general purpose for this is recuperation however, so that works too.) From here I suspect evolution had to do quite a lot to create a consciousness that feels quite seamless and body based. Thus certain drugs which alter brain function ought to be able to mess that up, which is of course what‘s found.
So let’s imagine that our senses cause neurons to fire with a synchrony where the resulting electromagnetic field itself exists as the experiencer of those input senses (and the same for our thought processor and decision output). Certain chemicals ought to interfere with that firing to thus provide us with skewed perceptions, skewed thinking, and skewed decisions since the field itself should be skewed. Thus altered states of consciousness such as out of body experiences.
Good point! and I agree -- evolution likely selected for a consciousness that's generally does a good job of representing our bodies. It makes sense that feeling "in our bodies" most of the time would be advantageous for survival and reproduction.
There's some new ideas about dreaming you might find interesting -- dreams might be for updating our predictive models. It might be a way for us to try out different scenarios in the safety of a dream state.
I’m open to evidence that dreams might have uses, and yes I can see how people would explore the the thought that they might help us safely test various scenarios. Currently that doesn’t seem very plausible to me though. Observe that if you tell off your boss in a dream, this will not test what would happen in real life. Instead it would only be you, and with impaired faculties. All sorts of bullshit happens in my own dreams, though given my impairment I don’t even know they’re bullshit.
For a while my wife would have these strong anxiety dreams where she’d let out these intense moans of fear. So I’d intervene to let her know everything was actually fine. It happened enough times that in these situations she recalls feeling like I was watching over her to see if she could sort the situation out or I’d have to get involved.
I’m pretty sure that dreams are mainly just a functionless spandrel, which is to say a purposeless consequence of dynamics that actually are functional. I’d certainly consider evidence that evolution has found at least certain uses for them however.
Eric, when you used the phrase “altered state of sleep” I wondered how sleep could be an altering of consciousness rather than a continuation of consciousness… I wondered if people have dreams of OBE. I think I’m always in my body in my dreams. I’ve had a recurring dream about my dad who died when I was twelve. In it I’m at his funeral, sitting in my body in the back of the room. I have a walkie talkie in my hand (yes, this was a long time ago). There is also a walkie talkie in his chest (he died suddenly from a heart attack), and I can talk to him. I know he hears me but he never responds. I don’t see this dream as an “altered state” of consciousness but a part of my consciousness. I’ve never believed that there is a place like heaven. When I was young I remember watching people praying and I would wonder who they were speaking to. The whole relationship to me among physicality, language, imagination, sense of self, knowledge, and consciousness seems to me knowable and indeed real as opposed to spiritual or ghostly, but I’m not sure the explication of that relationship is close at hand, at least not for me. The evolutionary advantage of a GPS is clear, but humans aren’t the only ones with GPS service. Searle describes watching a golden retrieving leap from the ground to catch a flying frisbee in its mouth with a precision unmatched by an Olympian. Knowledge of calculus and physics doesn’t allow us to catch flying frisbees. Do animals have OBE? Are we looking for our keys in the light from a street lamp just because that’s where we can see when we turn to brain activity to explain consciousness?
Actually Terry, we’re in alignment on dreams being a continuation of consciousness. The “altering” would just be in how things aren’t quite phenomenally “correct” in our dreams, or the state that evolution should have generally selected for when we’re awake. So dreaming might be considered somewhat like a natural psychedelic experience, though certainly a conscious experience. Thus in such a state as an adult today you can trick yourself into thinking that you’re actually a 12 year old boy at your father’s funeral telling him things with your walkie talkie.
You’ve also raised the question of the physics which resides as your consciousness, though aren’t optimistic anything will ever make sense to you. You might, however, take a test drive for the answer that I find sensible. This is to say that when you see something, for example, that the incoming information causes a dynamic synchrony to your neural firing which creates an electromagnetic field that itself exists as the experiencer of what you see, and by extension, all other elements of your consciousness reside as elements of such a field. It’s just that the neural firing shouldn’t have quite the same fidelity when you’re asleep and thinking about things, which is to say dreaming.
On looking for our dropped keys in the light rather the dark, yes that’s a very real concern. With his “imitation game” I think Alan Turing got people doing this back when computing machines were young — if you feel like you’re speaking with a human, though it’s actually just a standard computer, then that computer must be conscious. This little heuristic seems to have dominated consciousness science since then. But what if it takes more than the right processed information itself for consciousness to emerge, and because information can only exist as such by informing something appropriate? In that case we’d need to go on to a more hidden additional explanation, such as a neurally produced electromagnetic field which becomes so informed.
I admire your fervor. Thanks for the response. There is definitely something magnetic about consciousness!
What do you know about cases where the disembodied person can gather data that they couldn't have obtained from their position within their body? Such stories often involve the experiences of near dead people in operating rooms.
If such experience could be proven credible, wouldn't that be a very important piece of information?
Hey Phil!
I know that some studies have placed hidden targets (like symbols or numbers) in hospital rooms, visible only from a high vantage point, to test if OBE experiencers could identify them.
The general finding is that while there have been some intriguing anecdotal reports, controlled studies have generally failed to produce verifiable evidence of information gathering during OBEs that couldn't be explained by other means. So, the topic remains controversial.
I would argue logically that OBE as an experience by definition excludes the possibility of spotting objects on the ceiling. What is interesting about OBE is that the person is embodied. The person is not floating toward the ceiling but imagines it. What do we know physically about the link between the brain and imaginary experience generally? OBE is just one type of imaginary experience.
There's some overlap between different brain functions that might be relevant here -- although this connection isn't firmly established. There's a network in the brain called the default mode network. Within this network, activation in the medial prefrontal cortex (mPFC) is associated with the perception of self and others. Interestingly, this same area -- the mPFC -- is also involved in imagining oneself in different situations or perspectives.
I was familiar with the "rubber hand" illusion but never heard of the full-body VR version. That must be a very trippy experience!
It always surprises me just how easily our brains are tricked when having to incorporate conflicting information from different senses. One of my favorites is the McGurk effect, where we're tricked into hearing "fa" or "ba" depending on the speaker's lip movements, despite the fact that only "ba" is ever actually spoken. The craziest part is that even knowing this fact doesn't give you the power to "override" you hearing "fa" or "ba" if you're watching the person's mouth.
Here's a good clip about it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2k8fHR9jKVM
I love this one too! Great clip!
Hi Suzi, I really enjoyed this article. I'm curious, if OBEs are illusory, why is it commonly reported that one can 'see' one's own body from above? Also, I have linked your article to my own newsletter which I will publish later this week. :) Thanks!
Apologies if you have already addressed this in the comments section.
Hi Grant!
Great question! While we don't have a definitive answer, there are a few theories about why out-of-body experiences (OBEs) are often perceived from above.
One explanation is cultural influence: the concept of consciousness rising upwards is common in many cultures, religions, and media depictions of OBEs. This cultural conditioning might shape how people perceive and report their experiences.
Another theory relates to sensory interpretation. During an OBE, a person is often lying on their back, typically on a bed. The brain receives touch information from the back of the body, and in the OBE state, this sensory input might be misinterpreted, leading to the illusion of the self being positioned above the body. Interestingly, people often report feeling about 2 meters (6 feet) above their physical body during an OBE. This would roughly place their perceived self with their back against the ceiling, mirroring their actual body's position on the bed. The touch sensations from lying on the bed might be reinterpreted by the brain as touching the ceiling.
Thanks for linking to my article -- looking forward to reading yours :)
I'm sorry, but I just don't trust the science community to study any topic too far outside of the group consensus in an objective manner. They have too much on the line in their careers, and are terrified of being branded crackpots, which they perceive as a mortal threat to their professional reputations and incomes.
For decades the science community looked down their snooty superior condescending noses at UFO reports. And now that UFO reports (as distinct from alien theories) have been confirmed as real by Navy pilots and the US government, the science community doesn't have the intellectual honesty to admit the "UFO wackos" were right all along. Not to mention they seem to have little curiosity about what is arguably the biggest story of our times.
I don't know if OBEs are real cases of consciousness operating outside the body. I only know the science community is not competent to study them, or they already would have with great enthusiasm. I just don't buy any of the waffle talk they produce instead on such subjects.
Here's a very interesting story from an ATHEIST who reports an OBE and NDE to her hospital staff. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5ZfaPCwjguk
The story doesn't prove OBEs, it only illustrates the lack of curiosity often to the level of contempt of many in the science community.
The woman is clinically dead, and then recovers. Upon recovery she immediately reports an OBE. The medical team dismisses her report. The surgeon holds up his hands and tells her to be quiet. So she then proceeds to describe what happened in the operating room while she dead in great detail. The lead surgeon finds her accurate report so inconvenient to his imaginary superiority that he becomes outraged and stomps out of the room. And then....
Nobody follows up to interview the other witnesses to either confirm or debunk the woman's story of what happened in the operating room while she was dead. No curiosity. No intellectual courage. No credibility.
I should add here that I really don't think most scientists are bad people, I really don't. The vast majority of the time they are good people with good intentions. But you have to understand, they are only in a position to study safe subjects. Their fear of being seen as wackos is an important form of bias which needs to be taken in to account.
For the sake of keeping this from turning in to a book, I'll end here. Should anyone wish to challenge this, please do, with my sincere blessing. Just know before you do, I have a LOT more ammunition to aim at the credibility of the science community. You've been warned.
Thanks Phil.
While I think there's probably a lot of truth to your claim that scientist are concerned about their professional reputations. The problem, I think, is probably a bit more complicated.
Almost all scientists rely on funding from governments. To get funding we have to write grants that outline and make justifications for the research we want to run. There are more scientists writing grants than there is grant money for those grants. So, to keep their jobs, scientists must write compelling grants that are likely to get funding.
If an individual scientist wants to investigate a controversial subject, they face significant hurdles in securing funding for such research. Grant reviewers and funding bodies tend to favour proposals that build on established knowledge or address pressing societal needs.
This is one of the main reasons consciousness research remained dormant for many years. Nowadays there is more consciousness research, but you're still more likely to get funding if you call it 'decision making' in a grant proposal than if you use the word 'consciousness' to describe the same research.
I love the description of the woman who felt herself floating above her body, but still could see only her legs and lower torso. That's something that's bothered me for a long time about descriptions of OBE's. I experience dissociation under certain circumstances, but I've always described it as "losing my depth perception". I can be standing in conversation with someone and perceive that they are twenty feet away.
I am an artist and I can easily visualize what it would look like to be literally floating above my head or behind myself (seeing the top of my hair, the back of my neck, etc) and I have never experienced that during a dissociative episode.
But that has meant that I answer in the negative if asked on a diagnostic test, "Have you ever experienced floating above your body?" That has left me with false negative test results.
I would love to see greater care taken with diagnostic evaluation and description to account for the cases where one does not literally see from a point of view outside themselves.