When a weak current was passed through a subdural electrode on the
right angular gyrus, she reported sinking into the bed or falling from a
height. With increased current she said, ‘I see myself lying in bed, from
above, but I only see my legs and lower trunk’. This experience was induced
twice more, as were various body image distortions. The researchers
attributed her OBE to a failure to integrate somatosensory and vestibular
information caused by the stimulation (Blanke et al., 2002).
The specific area involved was the right temporoparietal junction
(TPJ). In this area visual, tactile, proprioceptive, and vestibular informa-
tion all come together to construct a body schema. This is the bodily
representation that is needed by all animals and is constantly updated
as we move about. It underlies our physical or bodily sense of self and
is integrated with emotions and memories, and with ideas about how
we appear to others, which all in turn contribute to generating our
body image and self image.
Several lines of research have converged to show how the OBE relates to self-pro-
cessing at the TPJ. Not only does direct stimulation of this spot induce OBEs,
but PET scanning has shown brain activation at the TPJ during OBEs induced by
stimulating the right temporal gyrus. The researchers conclude that ‘activation of
these regions is the neural correlate of the disembodiment that is part of the out-
of-body experience’ (de Ridder et al., 2007, p. 1829). Other evidence comes from
several patients who experience OBEs or autoscopy and have been found to have
damage to the TPJ (Blanke et al., 2004; Blanke and Arzy, 2005).
The right TPJ is also involved in perspective-taking, the ability to see things from
another’s point of view. A visual test is the Own Body Transformation Task, which
entails looking at rotated human figures and
deciding which is their right hand. Evoked poten-
tial mapping shows selective activation of the TPJ
during this test, and interfering with the TPJ using
TMS makes this mental transformation more dif-
ficult (Blanke and Arzy, 2005). Yet there is much
doubt here.If OBEs depend on ‘disturbed processing at the
TPJ’ or ‘disruption of vestibular-motor integration’
(Wilkins, Girard, and Cheyne, 2011), then OBErs
might be expected to do worse at perspec-
tive-taking. But we noted earlier some evidence
of the opposite, and British psychologist Jason
Braithwaite has argued that rather than implying
failure, ‘genuine OBEs should not be regarded
as a flaw in the system of certain individuals but
as “the other side of the coin” of full-blown per-
spective taking’ (Kessler and Braithwaite, 2016, p.
423). In this case, OBErs might do better at tasks involving perspective-taking, as
they did in early experiments on changing viewpoints (Blackmore, 1996b). Jason
Braithwaite and colleagues (2013) devised an improved version of the OBT and
found that OBErs did perform better. Whether OBEs reveal a skill or a flaw is very
much an open question.‘The soul is the
OBE-PSM’
(Metzinger, 2009, p. 85)
FIGURE 15.15 • Cloud chambers are normally
used to detect subatomic
particles, which leave a trail
of water droplets as they
pass through super-cooled
water vapour. In the 1920s
psychical researchers adapted
the technique to detect the
astral double. A frog, mouse,
or grasshopper was placed in
the inner chamber and poison
introduced to kill the animal
whose soul would then pass out
through the cloud chamber and
so be made visible.FIGURE 15.16 • This picture of a ‘phantom frog’,
kept in the SPR archives, was
taken in the 1930s by R.A.
Watters, who claimed to have
photographed the ‘intra-atomic
quantity’ departing from the
physical body at death.