From: Walter Watts (wlwatts@cox.net)
Date: Tue Sep 24 2002 - 14:01:34 MDT
Oh shit, Joe. You almost got me excited. When I saw MAPS, I immediately
thought your posts were concerning new results from the "microwave
anisitropy probe".
That's ok, though. Consciousness topics light my neural net too.
Discover on, southern man.
Walter
joedees@bellsouth.net wrote:
> On 19 Sep 2002 at 22:32, Joshua Tinnin wrote:
>
> > Mostly on-topic ...
> >
> > - jt
> >
> > --
> > http://www.nature.com/nsu/020916/020916-8.html
> >
> > Electrodes trigger out-of-body experience
> > Stimulating brain region elicits illusion often attributed to the
> > paranormal. 19 September 2002 HELEN PEARSON
> >
> > Activity in one region of the brain could explain out-of-body
> > experiences. Researchers in Switzerland have triggered the phenomenon
> > using electrodes.[1]
> >
> > People describe out-of-body experiences as feeling that their
> > consciousness becomes detached from their body, often floating above
> > it. Because these lucid states are popularly linked to the paranormal,
> > "a lot of people are reluctant to talk about them", says neurologist
> > Olaf Blanke of Geneva University Hospital in Switzerland.
> >
> > Blanke found that electrically stimulating one brain region - the
> > right angular gyrus - repeatedly triggers out-of-body experiences.
> > Blanke and his team were using electrodes to excite the brain of a
> > woman being treated for epilepsy.
> >
> > The right angular gyrus integrates visual information - the sight of
> > your body - and information that creates the mind's representation of
> > your body. This is based on balance and feedback from your limbs about
> > their position in space.
> >
> > "It makes perfect sense," agrees Peter Brugger of University Hospital,
> > Zurich, in Switzerland, who studies the phenomenon. "We have
> > representations of our entire body that can be dissociated from our
> > real body," he says. But this is an isolated case, he points out.
> >
> > With gentle stimulation, the woman, who could speak during the
> > operation, felt she was falling or growing lighter. As the intensity
> > increased she told them: "I see myself lying in bed, from above."
> >
> > When asked to look at her raised arm, she thought it was coming to
> > punch her. This observation suggests that 'alien hand syndrome' - when
> > people feel that a limb is foreign - or 'phantom' limbs that people
> > can feel after amputations could be related to out-of-body
> > experiences, says Blanke.
> >
> > Weird science
> >
> > Out-of-body experiences are incredibly common, says clinical
> > neurologist John Marshall of the Radcliffe Infirmary in Oxford, UK.
> > Some are part of near-death experiences.
> >
> > Some believe that the events have religious or spiritual causes, or
> > that a person really leaves their physical body behind. They may, for
> > example, interpret them as evidence that the physical and spiritual
> > body can separate again after death.
> >
> > The new experiments cannot disprove such ideas, says Marshall: "It
> > doesn't show that people with paranormal beliefs are wrong" - it
> > simply demonstrates one way that the experience can be stimulated.
> > Nevertheless, "I think it would give great comfort to patients" who,
> > he says, frequently question their own sanity.
> >
> > Thrill-seekers will be hard-pushed to artificially create their own
> > out-of-body experiences, adds Brugger. "You can't stimulate that
> > precisely without opening up the skull," he says.
> >
> >
> > References
> > 1. Blanke, O., Ortigue, S., Landis, T., Seeck, M. Stimulating own-body
> > perceptions. Nature, 419, 269 - 270, (2002). |Article|
> >
> >
> > ----------------
> > MAPS-Forum@maps.org, a member service of the Multidisciplinary
> > Association
> > for Psychedelic Studies (see www.maps.org/cgi-bin/thatsanorder_LE ).
> > To [un]subscribe, email the message text, [un]subscribe maps-forum
> > youraddress to majordomo@maps.org List archives: www.cerebral.org/Maps
> > Guidelines for authors: www.maps.org/guidelines.txt MAPS Forum is
> > supported by a generous grant from the Promind Foundation.
> >
-- Walter Watts Tulsa Network Solutions, Inc. "No one gets to see the Wizard! Not nobody! Not no how!"
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.5 : Wed Sep 25 2002 - 13:28:59 MDT