The researchers tracked down a woman who is able to enter this “out of body experience” (or OOBE) state at will, and hooked her up to a brain scanner. According to their paper, published in Frontiers of Human Neuroscience, the woman saw herself floating in the air above herself, watching herself move while feeling completely unaware of her physical body.
While she was getting her float on, the MRI showed a deactivation of her visual cortex, while the part of her brain responsible for imagining body movement lit up. This particular portion of the brain is responsible for “kinesthetic imagery,” the thing that allows you understand how your body relates to the world around it. It seems that this particular combination of brain function allowed the woman to feel as though she was floating outside of her physical body.
via Geekosystem
