Out of Body Experience

Out of Body Experience (OBE)--> a feeling of departing from one's physcial body and observing both one's self and the world from the outside OR sensation of being awake and seeing your own body from a location outside your physical body

Types;

• Narurally Occuring --> experienced by subjects naturally without any stimulation
• Artifically Induced --> OBE experienced as a result of being in a state of relaxation, hypnosed or induced via audio-visual stimulation
• Parasomatic OBE --> the subject appears to himself to be located in a duplicate body, more or less resembling his physical body
• Asomatic OBE --> subject does not appear to himself to be associated with a body, rather he or she is just a disembodied consciouseness 

Something beyond our current understanding is happening

The only possible way to explain how you can physically leave your body is by seperating your mind and body

OBEs are related to sensory disturbance which is when all stimulation is cut off to the sensory receptors 

Normally we view the world as if we were from behind our own eyes

In situations where sensory input breaks down, the brain attempts to reconstruct what we are seeing using memory and imagination

Memory images are often birds eye view so the constructed image usually apears to view one's self from above

Green (1968):

• Researched 400 Naturally occuring OBEs by contacting people through media appears 
• Classification system was developed to organise the individual accounts
• 20% of individuals experienced another body (Parasomatic)
• In other accounts there was no sense of another body (Asomatic)
• 25% of cases were associated with psychological stress and 12% during sleep

Alavardo (1982);

The evidence does not support such explanations

Alvarado's Review;

• OBEs are related to sensory disturbance
• Support for this from Blanke that involved the activation of the TP

Persinger 2001;

Ehrsson's;

OBEs are reported more often by people who are paranormal believers

People who have OBEs are more fantasy prone, score higher on hypnostisability and on dissociation (ability to seperate different aspects of conscious activity)

Such characterisitcs go along way to explain why

BUT there is no evidence for this