An article in today’s New York Times unravels how the brain can create out of body experiences. It’s good evidence against there being anything supernatural involved, but it’s also interesting to me in furthering understanding of how the brain creates our everyday perceptions of ourselves: Disrupt the machinery, and normal “reality” disappears. When the video game creators get a handle on this, “emmersive” will take on new meaning.

Here’s the link: http://www.nytimes.com/2007/08/24/science/24body.html

Yes, I saw this article this morning. Thanks for posting it—very interesting result.

the Flying Spaghetti Monster is tryin’ t’ test our faith with this. If ye are good Pirates ye we will hold steady, arrr!!!

Derren Brown did a trick in which he made this girl pull over and pass out by calling her on her mobile phone while she was driving.  When she awoke she was looking at her crashed car and a woman dressed in identical clothing (and a latex mask of her face) passed out behind the wheel.  She was unable to move from the spot where she was standing and the emergency services (played by actors were ignoring her when she shouted to them).  Cruel but cool.  I don’t know if you can get his shows in the US.

He hypnotized her over the phone while she was driving?

He claims that he doesn’t do hypnosis, and is known to be an extremely good practitioner of NLP.  He is also a very witty and intelligent sceptic.

Well, the following is somehow out of topic, but…hell…

I did a silly experiment on myself some time ago. I decided not to sleep for a week.

Nothing happened in the first three days, I used to go to work, eat, watch TV and more.

In the 4th day at night I started to “hear voices”.

This happened in the following two days, I used to hear whispering voices all day long.

I guess that my brain started to have some problems coordinating itself, and I think that this might explains why some people say that they can hear voices…including the voice of god.

This phenomenon has been also observed in people who have suffered an accident of that are sick for a while.

I lost my notes, and I’m not willing to repeat the experiment again, but if you decide to do so, you might experience similar symptoms.