Research News:
Out-of body experiences induced in lab
By Sandra Blakeslee The New York Times
Article Last Updated: 08/24/2007 12:31:33 AM MDT
Using virtual-reality goggles, a camera and a stick, scientists have induced out-of-body experiences in healthy people, according to experiments being published in the journal Science.
When people gaze at an illusory image of themselves through the goggles and are prodded in just the right way with the stick, they feel as if they have left their bodies.
The research reveals that "the sense of having a body, of being in a bodily self," is actually constructed from multiple sensory streams, said Matthew Botvinick, an assistant professor of neuroscience at Princeton University, an expert on body and mind who was not involved in the experiments.

The Research:
Read the research behind this story in the journal Science.
"The Experimental Induction of Out-of-Body Experiences"
"Video Ergo Sum: Manipulating Bodily Self-Consciousness"