Illusion of Out-of-body Experience

In August 2007 Henrik Ehrsson from the University College of London Institute of Neurology published research in Science demonstrating the first experimental method that, according to the scientist's claims in the publication, induced an out-of-body experience in healthy participants.[1] The experiment was conducted in the following way:

The study participant sits in a chair wearing a pair of head-mounted video displays. These have two small screens over each eye, which show a live film recorded by two video cameras placed beside each other two metres behind the participant’s head. The image from the left video camera is presented on the left-eye display and the image from the right camera on the right-eye display. The participant sees these as one ‘stereoscopic’ (3D) image, so they see their own back displayed from the perspective of someone sitting behind them. The researcher then stands just beside the participant (in their view) and uses two plastic rods to simultaneously touch the participant’s actual chest out-of-view and the chest of the illusory body, moving this second rod towards where the illusory chest would be located, just below the camera’s view. The participants confirmed that they had experienced sitting behind their physical body and looking at it from that location.[2]

1. ^ Ehrsson, H.H. 2007. The Experimental Induction of Out-of-Body Experiences. Science 317:1048 DOI: 10.1126/science.1142175
2. ^ First out-of-body experience induced in laboratory setting, August 23 2007, EurekAlert!