The reports are as old as storytelling: a person in great physical or emotional distress or in spiritual ecstasy leaves the body. The patient in the ER floats above his body, seeing and hearing everything as the doctors work to revive him. A woman lying in bed at three in the morning suddenly find herself detached from her corporeal self, and wanders through the window and out into the nighttime meadow. The shaman leaves the flesh and enters the spirit world to do battle with forces threatening the souls of the people.

An epilepctic in Geneva undergoes a procedure to locate the source of her seizures. Electrodes are implanted in her brain, and then stimulated one by one for a few seconds at a time, while she remains conscious to report on her experience. The doctors stimulate an electrode buried in the angular gyrus in the right cortex. The patient reports that she had an out-of-body experience.

The doctors try a bunch of other electrodes. Each time they return to the angular gyrus she reports the same thing, and only then.

Clearly more research is called for here, as this is essentially a sample of one. Furthermore, epilectics sometimes experience an out-of-body sensation before the onset of a seizure. But if this finding is confirmed, does that mean that the out-of-body experience is a purely neurological anomaly?

Dr. Blanke is hopeful that many different experts will be able to work together in using this unexpected information from his patient. He says there's even some value in what's often viewed as the "paranormal."

"Lots of people try to explain something away which is for many people, an amazing experience that has transformed their lives. I hope we can add some precise neuroscience and try to collaborate with people in many fields," said Blanke.

The debate on mind/body/spirit is far from over. I look for it to keep getting more and more interesting.

Read more in this CNN article.

[via Fury]

2:45:58 PM    please comment []

...you'll be needing them to see the polarized light from the Big Bang. And that glare is the "star power" of the inflation theory of cosmology getting another piece of evidence chalked up in the Yes column. The New York Times reports on the results announced by astronmers from the Universities of Columbia and California .

"We're stuck with a preposterous universe," Dr. Carlstrom said. Two papers describing the work will be posted on the team's Web site, astro.uchicago.edu/dasi, he said.

Other cosmologists responded with a mixture of glee and relief, saying it would have been bigger news if the polarization had not been found. "If you had any doubts that this radiation is from the Big Bang, this should quash them," said Dr. Michael Turner, a cosmologist at the University of Chicago.

Next up: more powerful polarized telescopes that will actually be able to see the distortions (gravitational waves) in space-time caused by inflation, if it occurred, in the first thirty seconds of the universe's existence. We'll need some new telescopes and satellites for that. (I expect the shape of the number "42" will be especially difficult to make out.)

5:27:20 AM    please comment []

A very brief edition of The Wayback Journal (the next one's much longer).

5:16:39 AM    please comment []