Can Telepathy Occur During Dreams and OBEs?

[fuzzyfelt]

I'm not sure what this means.

I'll make it a question. You wrote that OBEs were a neurological phenomenon, a blockage... coupled with release hallucinations, and are you now saying that this isn't the case?

Weinberger seems not to understand Konorski is describing "release hallucinations", that he is attempting to explain "hallucinations in the sane", not hallucinations in general, and faults him for not explaining other hallucinations, in particular hallucinations in the absence of sensory deprivation. On the other hand I think his taking issue with the need for "retro" connections in this kind of hallucination is a good point. Given Phantom Limbs, why would this Konorski mechanism be necessary? I looked on Amazon for Konorski's book and it is $170.00, so I'm not about to buy it to find out. Perhaps Sacks will hear about Weinberger's criticism and address it somewhere at some point.

Yes, I had been wondering about their superfluous nature as well as evidence of function. I don’t really see how this idea makes much sense. Also I feel any wish to link sensory deprivation and release hallucinations only to sanity and extra noise and different hallucinations only to psychosis is not supported here. Is such a link supported?

I can't tell what you're saying here. Your original sentence before the quotes was never completed. Likewise it's clear you frequently have difficulty making out the intent of my sentences. I have explained this but I'll repeat: the reason I did not specifically characterize the tpj as the place where the OBE could be triggered, saying instead merely that they had been "located" to that area, is that my intent was simply to point out it was neurological.

My sentence was completed by the quote, but the intention is fair enough.

I think this is a straw man. I did not say they questioned it because it did not explain enough.

No straw man, the words in the sentence following the word 'because' was part of my explanation, not any addition of words to your position.

This is the point: the OBE was easy to trigger in this patient because she was epileptic. This was not her normal seizure, but because she was epileptic she had hyperexitable neurons. The OBE happened incidentally to their search for her seizure focus, they were not looking for it or expecting it.


Could the same thing be triggered in a non-epileptic at this spot? Almost certainly, but it would require more voltage and would not be allowed because it could leave them vulnerable to spontaneous seizures once the neurons here had been "kindled".

That there is an understandable reason for the experiment to be limited doesn’t change that fact that it is limited.

The haptic hallucinations were not typical, yes. In other respects it was much more like the typical OBE than the Ehrrson demonstration.

Agreed other hallucinations involved were not typical and, again, it varied in other respects from typical OBE reports.

What various areas? How much knowledge would satisfy you?

Accurate information and relevant facts.

How are they exclusive? As I pointed out earlier one can lead to the other: seizures can be followed by paralysis, and subdued cortical activity can lead to seizures. Likewise, the spreading cortical depression of migraine aura is preceded by a slow wave of neuronal hyperactivity. The depression that follows can then spawn another wave of hyperactivity. To the extent your linked paper ascribes hallucination to a dream state caused by either hypo- or hyper- activity it is also, apparently unknown to that author, proposing the circumstances from which seizures and migraine aurae arise. In other words, it isn't providing
an air tight case for the dream mechanism of OBE at all, but points back at seizures instead.

My words were ‘possibly exclusive’. The paper offers two complimentary possibilities.

Failure of proprioception is not the hallucination of something that isn’t there, it’s the inability to sense something that is there

states a possibly exclusive course.

Certainly states may change.

I'm not in any position to speak for the author, but there was no mention of any air-tight case.

The dream mechanism has the misfortune of ascribing the OBE to a brief period of psychosis. Even if we stipulate that is the cause, you couldn't call it an "hallucination in the sane" anymore. Your promise about that paper was that it had something relevant to say about hallucinations in the sane. Instead, I wasted my time reading up to that part only to find out it was actually saying sane people sometimes lapse into brief psychosis.

Then also included in this criterion of psychosis is sleep with attendant hallucinational dreams. Recalling that McCreery was discussing functional dis-order, sleep - something that happens routinely in all humans, and considered beneficial isn’t considered dis-order, but natural order. The bigger picture here is that he is not discussing sanity and insanity as mutually exclusive, but that there are varying degrees that is something more like a continuum across the population. Also interesting is an idea that unusual experiences and cognitive disorganisation are linked with academic achievement and creativity (Nettle 2006) and problem solving and adapting (Jackson 1997) so that degrees may be beneficial.

I don't see a complete thought here.

The explanation given for OBEs may not accommodate additional information.

No, it's not "anything goes". Certain kinds of hallucinations are associated with certain causes. The OBE is known to be a simple partial seizure. There may be other related mechanisms for it (Migraine aura) , or some experience similar enough to it to be casually described as an OBE, but that one, at least, has been positively identified. Infrequently and by itself a simple-partial seizure is harmless. The danger is that if a person finds themselves to be frequently having spontaneous OBE's they could also be having more serious seizures for which they have amnesia (complex partial seizures) and should be checked out. The notion we can just throw out any "alternative", and one is as good as another is not correct.

I see the misunderstanding, I was not expanding on the little knowledge shown of hallucinations, I meant here that given all these problems with the statements in post 24that there were a range of alternative explanations to those stated.

This paragraph is pretty silly.

It is pedantic, sure, and I could have left a range of alternatives that I spoke of above to be guessed at, but thought it might be helpful to suggest what these may be. Given how misunderstood my language has been, it would seem to have actually been not so silly.

All the cases linking the OBE to the tpj in seizures pretty much sews up the case that it is an essential area to this phenomenon. That doesn't limit the experience to that area, the activity is almost certainly spreading out from there, just based on the fact seizure activity usually does spread out into adjacent areas, and sometimes to remote areas. In any event, stimulation of the brain areas of epileptics by electrode is how Wilder Penfield mapped out many areas of the cortex and created his famous "homunculus". From this we got further proof that brain areas are dedicated. The homunculus is not in dispute: the brain areas of epileptics perform the same tasks as those of non-epileptics. People who deviate from the normal map are rare. The right temporo-parietal junction is clearly important for creating the sense we are located in our bodies. That's fascinating. Who knew we even needed such a sense?

That is a fairer explanation.

If you read all these books by Sacks, Ramachandran, Penfield, and Klawans you find they are packed full of cases of unbelievable neurological experiences you never imagined existed. In 95% of these cases no one questions that they are neurological, despite the fact none has been fully explained. It is only when you get to the small percentage of experiences that have become attached in people's minds to the paranormal or mystical that people suddenly start trying to pick the neurological explanations apart. No one ever seems to come out of the woodwork and argue that hemi-neglect after stroke has a mystical significance. No one seems interested in asserting that the "shuffling gait" of Parkinson's sufferers is the characteristic walk of the Ascendent Masters of the Third Level of Sainthood and Uppity Consciousness, or some such. Malfunction is accepted as malfunction, and the neurological explanation is not doubted EXCEPT when it has become attached to a notion people don't want to relinquish. Obviously people must have been suffering these seizures going back to prehistoric times, and the experience was taken at face value: the 'spirit or 'mind' was assumed to be able to leave the body, because that what it seemed like.

Certainly it would be difficult to question things that had not yet been imagined :)

I don’t know, but possibly it is that reports of OBEs in 15-25% of the general population (Irwin 1985- I think, I'll check it later) that makes them prone to some explanation.

 

[fuzzyfelt]

Re the last reference, it is Irwin 1985, from 'Flight of the Mind'.

I think this has been argued on reasonable grounds and, as argued, any convictions or not is irrelevant and it would not be helpful to answer the direct question. If it matters at all where my interests lie, they are more especially concerned with physical theories about creativity and perception- only slightly related to the thread and I wouldn’t ask to discuss them here particularly. I have tried to understand the position of post 24, and argued that there reasonable questions remain.

 

[zoobyshoe]

Re the last reference, it is Irwin 1985, from 'Flight of the Mind'.

I think this has been argued on reasonable grounds and, as argued, any convictions or not is irrelevant and it would not be helpful to answer the direct question. If it matters at all where my interests lie, they are more especially concerned with physical theories about creativity and perception- only slightly related to the thread and I wouldn’t ask to discuss them here particularly. I have tried to understand the position of post 24, and argued that there reasonable questions remain.

I am hard at work composing an answer to your last post!

You could start a thread in Medical Sciences on the topic you want to discuss. There have been some threads about things somewhat related to creativity such as synesthesia and problem solving in autistic savants. Maybe some others.

 

[fuzzyfelt]

No hurry, Zooby, I'll be away for a while. Look forward to it! Yes, thanks, I enjoy those threads often when they come up, and I'll think about what I'd like to discuss specifically.

 

[zoobyshoe]

I see you're back.

I'll make it a question. You wrote that OBEs were a neurological phenomenon, a blockage... coupled with release hallucinations, and are you now saying that this isn't the case?

No, I haven’t changed my position. Weinberger has cast doubt on the mechanism proposed by Konorski for release hallucinations, but not on the phenomenon of release hallucinations.

Release hallucinations are those arising from sensory deprivation.

Here is how Sacks explains these kinds of hallucinations to a patient:

“Her hallucinations, I replied, were not psychotic, but neurological, so-called “release” hallucinations. Given her deafness, that auditory part of the brain, deprived of its usual input, had started to generate a spontaneous activity of its own, and this took the form of musical hallucinations, mostly musical memories from her earlier life. The brain needed to stay incessantly active, and if it was not getting its usual stimulation, whether auditory or visual, it would create its own stimulation in the form of hallucinations”

Musicophilia
p.57

That phenomenon isn’t disputed by Weinberger. He’s disputing the proposed mechanism, specifically the need for efferent connections. His argument was (paraphrasing): “Why do we need all this stuff about efferent connections when release hallucination happens without them in Phantom Limbs?”

Yes, I had been wondering about their superfluous nature as well as evidence of function. I don’t really see how this idea makes much sense.

Unfortunately, after I said that Weinberger seemed to have a good point, something important Ramachandran said about Phantom Limbs came back to me. I found it and reread it. Now I have reservations about Weinberger’s criticism. I can’t sort it out till I read Konorski, though. Sacks’ brief digest of what Konorski said may lack important points. God spoke to me recently in a telepathic dream state during a temporal lobe seizure and told me a copy of this book would soon come into my hands at a cheap price, so I'm holding out for that. In any case I hope it’s clear to you the phenomenon of release hallucinations is not being doubted by Weinberger, just the need for efferent connections in producing them. I get the feeling you do understand that, but I want to state it clearly.

Also I feel any wish to link sensory deprivation and release hallucinations only to sanity and extra noise and different hallucinations only to psychosis is not supported here. Is such a link supported?

I wasn‘t linking them like that. I only objected to the particular “noise and different hallucinations” you brought into the discussion, because they were specifically being asserted by that author as arising from his proposed mechanism for psychosis. My repeated pointing to the fact that Sacks and Konorski were explaining “hallucination in the sane” wasn’t intended to rule out “noise and other hallucinations” in the sane, it was to prevent ascribing any specifically psychosis-based hallucinations to the sane. You can’t ascribe psychosis to the sane, because then, of course, they aren’t sane.

Konorski is trying to explain a certain kind of hallucination in people who don’t really fit the criteria for psychosis. The notion there might be a continuum of sanity/insanity across the population is fine, but beside the point, because release hallucinations arise independently of a person’s place on that continuum. “Noise and other hallucinations” which aren’t stipulated as arising from psychosis are, it follows, allowed to be ascribed to the sane.

Repeating myself: “His main drift, clear from the context, is that there is a stigma associated with hallucination: hallucination = crazy, or, brain damaged, therefore the subject of hallucinations in people who don't fit the criteria of "crazy" or "brain damaged" was neglected for a long time because no one had any good ideas how a "sane" person might hallucinate.”

That there is an understandable reason for the experiment to be limited doesn’t change that fact that it is limited.

The fact it’s limited could mean all such experiences are limited. I explain below.

Agreed other hallucinations involved were not typical and, again, it varied in other respects from typical OBE reports.

It did, but I feel you are overemphasizing the differences and failing to appreciate the rather more important similarities.

I realized on reading this we have never established what you consider to be a typical OBE. Doing that would probably bring the discussion more to the point.

Accurate information and relevant facts.

Hmmm. All neurological authors I’ve read explain that the way we learn what the brain does is to observe it when it fails. This discovery-by-deficit started with Paul Broca who noticed that people with injuries to the same place on the left hemisphere had the same language deficits, a fact from which he drew the right conclusion. Brain damage isn’t considered the only, or best, source of info, however. Penfield called Epilepsy “The Great Teacher, and I’m sure many agree that more has been learned about the brain from Epilepsy than from any other neurological disorder. (But every disorder contributes huge amounts to our understanding. ) Brain damage is often gross and can simultaneously affect several functions, while simple partial seizures tend to either emphasize or delete the functions of specific “circuits”. (J. Hughlings Jackson deduced the existence and layout of the motor strip in the 1800’s from the progression of seizure activity in his wife’s simple partial motor seizures, to name a famous example.) Broca's "right conclusion" has had to be refined and updated according to a more sophisticated understanding of the contributions of different areas to what we consider a single function, but his basic conclusion was right: this area of the brain is important for specific aspects of language.

The distortions a person experiences during these seizures at the TPJ represents the typical sort of information anyone has about what this area does when it‘s working properly (depending on how well you interpret the distortions). We, in this thread, probably have 70% of the information known about what this area does. Deeper understanding will require hypothesis and detective work by clever experimentalists like Ramachandran, Ehrrson, and others.

“How much knowledge would satisfy you?” is the important question. Statements like this: “and finally given how little is shown here to be known about hallucinations and their ambiguous nature (like the difference between OBEs, psychotic hallucinations and naturally occurring dreams), all sorts of permutations with a range of alternative possibilities may be allowed,” are symptomatic of a desire for a specific kind of answer to a specific kind of question. Approaching the subject with that kind of mental filter can result in missing all the information that actually is there.This happens often in the hard science forums here: “What is a photon?, “What is energy?” The questioner is expecting a certain kind of definite answer, but runs into the confusing fact that physicists don’t analyze things such that they can give an answer that is satisfying to the questioner at the level the question was asked. Unbeknownst to the questioner the question is naïve. “…how little is shown here to be known” could easily be changed to the opposite statement by someone who, like myself, is constantly surprised by how much they have recently figured out, and characterizing hallucinations as having an “ambiguous nature” about which little is known, simply demonstrates that your specific questions aren’t answerable at the level they’re asked. My level of curiosity about hallucinations would lead me to the opposite statement, that we actually know a great deal about hallucinations. If you know what the terms mean and imply, it's entirely possible to distinguish OBE's from psychotic hallucinations and naturally occurring dreams.

Then also included in this criterion of psychosis is sleep with attendant hallucinational dreams. Recalling that McCreery was discussing functional dis-order, sleep - something that happens routinely in all humans, and considered beneficial isn’t considered dis-order, but natural order. The bigger picture here is that he is not discussing sanity and insanity as mutually exclusive, but that there are varying degrees that is something more like a continuum across the population.

I’ve personally observed varying degrees of insanity across the population, yes.

On the subject of psychosis that paper was very interesting and I’m sure I would have had an enthusiastic reaction to it if that were what I was focused on at the moment. I’ll go back to it sometime and read it through carefully. The kind of sanity/insanity continuum you report he’s proposing doesn’t really have any applicability to “release” hallucinations; those caused by sensory deprivation. Does it have any applicability to OBE’s? I don’t think so because OBE’s are stereotyped experiences with the same features in evidence across large populations of individuals and cultures. Dreams are more obviously individual-specific and lack the relatively rigid stereotype format you see in OBE reports. The OBE is stereotyped because its content does not arise from “mind,” as dreams do, it arises from a glitch in neurological hardwiring common to all people. If you aren’t looking for a preconceived mystical explanation it’s evident that the OBE both arises from, and informs us of, the existence of a sensory/neural mechanism that evolved to tell us that we are located in our body in the first place. I, personally, was incredibly surprised to find out we even needed such a sense. Isn't it self-evident that we're located in our bodies? But no: it is not enough that things and phenomena exist for us to be aware of them: in all cases we need sensory/neural mechanisms to be aware of them.

This video is a brief look at one of the 6 known people in the world to have completely lost proprioception:

http://videos.howstuffworks.com/discovery/30683-one-step-beyond-loss-of-proprioception-video.htm

With decades of constant self-training, he manages to function pretty well. The scary part of the video is the brief glimpse of Charles Freed, another of the 6 with no proprioception, who is clearly incapacitated by it.

Also interesting is an idea that unusual experiences and cognitive disorganisation are linked with academic achievement and creativity (Nettle 2006) and problem solving and adapting (Jackson 1997) so that degrees may be beneficial.

Yes, see also: Townshend, Daltry, et al. 1969:

“Sickness will surely take the mind where minds can’t usually go.”

I see the misunderstanding, I was not expanding on the little knowledge shown of hallucinations, I meant here that given all these problems with the statements in post 24that there were a range of alternative explanations to those stated…
… It is pedantic, sure, and I could have left a range of alternatives that I spoke of above to be guessed at, but thought it might be helpful to suggest what these may be. Given how misunderstood my language has been, it would seem to have actually been not so silly.

I am not persuaded that post #24 has “all these problems”.

I think the range of alternatives has to be reigned into what we know is possible and probable. What I meant earlier when I said all such experiences could be limited is that they could all be seizures. Since seizures are the only documented cause, we should suspect they are all seizures (hypersynchronous neuronal firing), first, and not start throwing other speculative causes around for the hell of it, and especially not to accommodate mystical notions that probably arose in an attempt to explain this kind of seizure in the first place. There should be a pretty good reason, something pointing directly at some other cause for us to suspect some other cause. (Migraine runs second in my mind, but I haven’t found any Migraine OBE descriptions that fit with total comfort: there are sensations of floating, of having no body, but not coupled with autoscopy.)

Certainly it would be difficult to question things that had not yet been imagined J

Um…good point.

However, things like Autism, Parkinson’s, Alzheimer’s, Tourette’s, Stroke, Amnesia, and Migraine are well known, but you don’t find people claiming they’re anything but neurological problems.

Explanations are questioned (doubted) when the questioner has a different belief about the cause already in mind.

It doesn’t follow that believers would want to question this because it doesn’t explain enough, for, just as religions may accommodate both a meeting of gametes to trigger life and also mystery of life, so too may believers accommodate both a trigger of OBEs whilst maintaining supernatural facets of them.

I haven't exactly searched, but as far as I know but there’s no organized religion that asserts the OBE is any sort of religious phenomenon. It’s “authenticity” seems mostly to be claimed by armchair mystics and paranormal afficionados of eclectic lineage: a little yoga, a dash of zen, two parts Moody, a smattering of Swedenborg, etc. Lord Nelson declared his phantom limb was proof of the existence of the soul. No doubt many followers of organized religion would nod at that with approval, but it is not a tenet of any of those religions that this is the case.

 

[fuzzyfelt]

Originally Posted by zoobyshoe
I see you're back.

Yes, back, didn’t realize you were waiting for me particularly, sorry. I’m afraid any of my replies are likely to be take some time.

I am not persuaded that post #24 has “all these problems”.

Despite having some written fairer explanations since, there were problems with post 24. For example-

The Out-Of-Body experience has been demonstrated to be a neurological phenomenon, a temporary failure, or blocking of, the sense of proprioception coupled with a release hallucination.

This seems incompatible with this-

As for the OBE being caused by extremely low or extremely high cortical arousal: this simply throws the explanation back to a simple partial seizure.

and this-

(Migraine runs second in my mind, but I haven’t found any Migraine OBE descriptions that fit with total comfort: there are sensations of floating, of having no body, but not coupled with autoscopy.)

On another point, there is this-

It's been known for decades that it commonly happens to some people diagnosed with seizures, and also to some people who suffer from Migraines, and it was specifically located to an area on the temporo-parietal junction a couple years ago when it was induced in a woman with epilepsy who was about to undergo epilepsy surgery. Another class of people who seem to report frequent OBE's is heavy pot smokers, I recently found out.

What is ‘it’ that is ‘specifically located’, as so far OBEs, proprioception and triggers have been suggested and these have been denied, e.g.-

No, it is mentioned as the specific location where OBE's were triggered by stimulation with an electrode

and-

the reason I did not specifically characterize the TPJ as the place where the OBE could be triggered, saying instead merely that they had been "located" to that area

Whatever the conclusion reached here is, it is boldly asserted. Blanke himself is more cautious, using words, like results ‘suggest’ …TPJ, and ‘may’ lead… to OBEs.

But rather than continue repeating myself, I’ll stop exemplifying problems with post 24 here, and move on.

The fact it’s limited could mean all such experiences are limited.

Certainly, but I was not arguing that.

It did, but I feel you are overemphasizing the differences and failing to appreciate the rather more important similarities.

I realized on reading this we have never established what you consider to be a typical OBE. Doing that would probably bring the discussion more to the point.

I objected to the convenient generalisation of phenomena amongst other generalisations. It is not what I consider, but what has been researched and well argued as being typical. I imagine there are various sources, but since I have just read a Metzinger paper-

http://www.mindmatter.de/mmpdf/metzinger.pdf


I'll refer to that a lot here (for convenience), in which he details typical OBEs, summarised by me as- involving an egocentric duality apart from the body, may be full blown or not, and (Blackmore) involving motion.

“How much knowledge would satisfy you?” is the important question. Statements like this: “and finally given how little is shown here to be known about hallucinations and their ambiguous nature (like the difference between OBEs, psychotic hallucinations and naturally occurring dreams), all sorts of permutations with a range of alternative possibilities may be allowed,” are symptomatic of a desire for a specific kind of answer to a specific kind of question. Approaching the subject with that kind of mental filter can result in missing all the information that actually is there.This happens often in the hard science forums here: “What is a photon?, “What is energy?” The questioner is expecting a certain kind of definite answer, but runs into the confusing fact that physicists don’t analyze things such that they can give an answer that is satisfying to the questioner at the level the question was asked. Unbeknownst to the questioner the question is naïve. “…how little is shown here to be known” could easily be changed to the opposite statement by someone who, like myself, is constantly surprised by how much they have recently figured out, and characterizing hallucinations as having an “ambiguous nature” about which little is known, simply demonstrates that your specific questions aren’t answerable at the level they’re asked. My level of curiosity about hallucinations would lead me to the opposite statement, that we actually know a great deal about hallucinations. If you know what the terms mean and imply, it's entirely possible to distinguish OBE's from psychotic hallucinations and naturally occurring dreams.

No, it was a reasonable response to post 24, whatever it means, that assumed a rationally unquestionable knowledge. Maybe you are correct about people who assume a definite answer, however, it wasn't me who proffered one.

I agree, the stuff you mention about proprioception is interesting, the vid was sad and interesting too, and as I said I will mainly limit my references to Metzinger, he mentions some interesting philosophical ideas about it too. I do find these ideas about the origins of perceiving identity really interesting too.

I think the range of alternatives has to be reigned into what we know is possible and probable. What I meant earlier when I said all such experiences could be limited is that they could all be seizures. Since seizures are the only documented cause, we should suspect they are all seizures (hypersynchronous neuronal firing), first, and not start throwing other speculative causes around for the hell of it

Yes, it would be interesting to read more about arguments for your speculations, and how you intend to incorporate other information. Further scientific information which would also be interesting.

Originally Posted by fuzzyfelt
It doesn’t follow that believers would want to question this because it doesn’t explain enough, for, just as religions may accommodate both a meeting of gametes to trigger life and also mystery of life, so too may believers accommodate both a trigger of OBEs whilst maintaining supernatural facets of them.

I haven't exactly searched, but as far as I know but there’s no organized religion that asserts the OBE is any sort of religious phenomenon. It’s “authenticity” seems mostly to be claimed by armchair mystics and paranormal afficionados of eclectic lineage: a little yoga, a dash of zen, two parts Moody, a smattering of Swedenborg, etc. Lord Nelson declared his phantom limb was proof of the existence of the soul. No doubt many followers of organized religion would nod at that with approval, but it is not a tenet of any of those religions that this is the case.

An argument that (A) gametes trigger life is to, or may be accommodated by, (B) a religious view of life, as, (C) a trigger of OBEs is to, or may be accommodated by, (D) 'believers' of OBEs, doesn’t depend on D and B being the same thing, if that is what you are arguing( (?). I was using your term ‘believers’ for people with convictions in some supernatural qualities of OBEs or something like that.

Explanations are questioned (doubted) when the questioner has a different belief about the cause already in mind.

I think it suffice to repeat, yet again, that there are, aside from the reasons you gave for questioning your statements, rational reasons for questioning your statements. I hope this discussion such as it is will be above-board in future.

However, things like Autism, Parkinson’s, Alzheimer’s, Tourette’s, Stroke, Amnesia, and Migraine are well known, but you don’t find people claiming they’re anything but neurological problems.

Already mentioned have been some statistics about prevalence in the general population. I like Metzinger’s neuroanthropological idea that OBEs may be the basis for the concept of soul, a perceptual constant, and enjoy further speculation that, vice-versa-ish, an anthropological concept of duality may have been necessary for reinforcing cognition of self-awareness.

The kind of sanity/insanity continuum you report he’s proposing doesn’t really have any applicability to “release” hallucinations; those caused by sensory deprivation. Does it have any applicability to OBE’s?

More importantly, why are ‘release’ hallucinations mentioned at all? I asked what was special about them, received an answer in the form of a description of a mechanism, and now that the mechanism is reasonably questioned the original question again stands. Again, how do ‘release’ hallucinations differ from other hallucinations and on what grounds are they specifcally connected with OBEs? Again, strong evidence suggests both low and high cortical activity associated with OBEs.

To answer your question ‘does this continuum have any applicability to OBEs?’, again, OBEs are described as a microcosm in the paper I offered regarding NREM sleep hallucinations. Here, there is Monique’s paper in the ‘strange sensations’ thread linking lucid dreams and OBEs. Metzinger mentions that although it does not necessarily fit with his theories, OBEs could still be a sub cluster of pre-lucid dreams.

For interest’s sake, on a less grand level than neuroanthropological constant theories, from the ‘strange sensation’ thread in the Medical Sciences sub forum, Monique said-

‘I tried to find some information on the internet. This is not the best website, but it does somewhat describe the phenomenon. It appears to be an out-of-body experience that occurs in a lucid dream at the direct transition between wakefulness and REM sleep.’

Offering the name ‘Alice In Wonderland syndrome’ as a possible syndrome descibing the condition, it interests me that that sensation has became part of our culture if it were not before, famously described since the Victorians. Whether it was originally inspired by education and imagination- Dodgson, aka Lewis Carroll, was also a logician and mathematician; by NREM, as has been suggested; by migraine auras (he mentioned his first or second migraine years after ‘Alice in Wonderland’ was published); by drugs – e.g. he moved in Pre-Raphaelite circles with the Rossettis, she dying from an over-dose of laudanum, he sinking into an abyss of Chloral addiction (admittedly, I don’t happen to know if this sensation bears any resemblance to the effects of laudanum or chloral); or, there may be evidence of Dodgson suffering epilepsy; or whatever. Funny this is so well known and read to our kids, performed, updated, and reinterpretted e.g. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8gMA9qvphpM&feature=related, itself.

 

[fuzzyfelt]

edit-

I should have said 'Metzinger's ideas'?

Also, Metzinger cites Blackmore 1982b and himself 2003a regarding the sub cluster of pre-lucid dreams.

And, it may be helpful to mention Metzinger's paper referred to here, 2005, was reviewed by Blanke.

'Acknowledgments I wish to thank two reviewers, Olaf Blanke and Harald Atmanspacherfor valuable discussions. I also wish to thank Sue Blackmore and Peter Brugger for critical comments on earlier versions of this paper; and Olaf Blanke and Ernst Waelti for the permission to reproduce their figures.'

And, the 'or not' in the summary of traditional OBEs is an intricate point made by Irwin (1985).

Sorry for the late editing, it was a hurried post.

 

[zoobyshoe]

Fuzzyfelt, have you, yourself, ever had an OBE?

 

[Ivan Seeking]

Zooby, could you explain the relevance of your question? It always concerns me when one assumes or even implies that a logical debate is somehow dependent on one's personal experiences or beliefs.

 

[fuzzyfelt]

Agreed, I don’t get how this is an appropriate response to this post in a logical debate-

I see you're back.

Yes, back, didn’t realize you were waiting for me particularly, sorry. I’m afraid any of my replies are likely to be take some time.

I am not persuaded that post #24 has “all these problems”.

Despite having some written fairer explanations since, there were problems with post 24. For example-

The Out-Of-Body experience has been demonstrated to be a neurological phenomenon, a temporary failure, or blocking of, the sense of proprioception coupled with a release hallucination.

This seems incompatible with this-

As for the OBE being caused by extremely low or extremely high cortical arousal: this simply throws the explanation back to a simple partial seizure.

and this-

(Migraine runs second in my mind, but I haven’t found any Migraine OBE descriptions that fit with total comfort: there are sensations of floating, of having no body, but not coupled with autoscopy.)

On another point, there is this-

It's been known for decades that it commonly happens to some people diagnosed with seizures, and also to some people who suffer from Migraines, and it was specifically located to an area on the temporo-parietal junction a couple years ago when it was induced in a woman with epilepsy who was about to undergo epilepsy surgery. Another class of people who seem to report frequent OBE's is heavy pot smokers, I recently found out.

What is ‘it’ that is ‘specifically located’, as so far OBEs, proprioception and triggers have been suggested and these have been denied, e.g.-

No, it is mentioned as the specific location where OBE's were triggered by stimulation with an electrode

and-

the reason I did not specifically characterize the TPJ as the place where the OBE could be triggered, saying instead merely that they had been "located" to that area

Whatever the conclusion reached here is, it is boldly asserted. Blanke himself is more cautious, using words, like results ‘suggest’ …TPJ, and ‘may’ lead… to OBEs.


Rather than continuing to repeat myself exemplifying problems with post 24, I’ll stop here and move on.

The fact it’s limited could mean all such experiences are limited.

Certainly, but I was not arguing that.

It did, but I feel you are overemphasizing the differences and failing to appreciate the rather more important similarities.

I realized on reading this we have never established what you consider to be a typical OBE. Doing that would probably bring the discussion more to the point.

I objected to the convenient generalisation of phenomena amongst other generalisations. It is not what I consider, but what has been researched and well argued as being typical. I imagine there are various sources, but since I have just read a Metzinger paper-

http://www.mindmatter.de/mmpdf/metzinger.pdf


I'll refer to that a lot here (for convenience), in which he details typical OBEs, summarised by me as- involving an egocentric duality apart from the body, may be full blown or not, and (Blackmore) involving motion.

“How much knowledge would satisfy you?” is the important question. Statements like this: “and finally given how little is shown here to be known about hallucinations and their ambiguous nature (like the difference between OBEs, psychotic hallucinations and naturally occurring dreams), all sorts of permutations with a range of alternative possibilities may be allowed,” are symptomatic of a desire for a specific kind of answer to a specific kind of question. Approaching the subject with that kind of mental filter can result in missing all the information that actually is there.This happens often in the hard science forums here: “What is a photon?, “What is energy?” The questioner is expecting a certain kind of definite answer, but runs into the confusing fact that physicists don’t analyze things such that they can give an answer that is satisfying to the questioner at the level the question was asked. Unbeknownst to the questioner the question is naïve. “…how little is shown here to be known” could easily be changed to the opposite statement by someone who, like myself, is constantly surprised by how much they have recently figured out, and characterizing hallucinations as having an “ambiguous nature” about which little is known, simply demonstrates that your specific questions aren’t answerable at the level they’re asked. My level of curiosity about hallucinations would lead me to the opposite statement, that we actually know a great deal about hallucinations. If you know what the terms mean and imply, it's entirely possible to distinguish OBE's from psychotic hallucinations and naturally occurring dreams.

No, it was a reasonable response to post 24, whatever it means, that assumed a rationally unquestionable knowledge. Maybe you are correct about people who assume a definite answer, however, it wasn't me who proffered one.

I agree, the stuff you mention about proprioception is interesting, the vid was sad and interesting too, and as I said I will mainly limit my references to Metzinger, he mentions some interesting philosophical ideas about it too. I do find these ideas about the origins of perceiving identity really interesting too.

I think the range of alternatives has to be reigned into what we know is possible and probable. What I meant earlier when I said all such experiences could be limited is that they could all be seizures. Since seizures are the only documented cause, we should suspect they are all seizures (hypersynchronous neuronal firing), first, and not start throwing other speculative causes around for the hell of it

Yes, it would be interesting to read more about arguments for your speculations, and how you intend to incorporate other information. Further scientific information which would also be interesting.

Originally Posted by fuzzyfelt
It doesn’t follow that believers would want to question this because it doesn’t explain enough, for, just as religions may accommodate both a meeting of gametes to trigger life and also mystery of life, so too may believers accommodate both a trigger of OBEs whilst maintaining supernatural facets of them.

I haven't exactly searched, but as far as I know but there’s no organized religion that asserts the OBE is any sort of religious phenomenon. It’s “authenticity” seems mostly to be claimed by armchair mystics and paranormal afficionados of eclectic lineage: a little yoga, a dash of zen, two parts Moody, a smattering of Swedenborg, etc. Lord Nelson declared his phantom limb was proof of the existence of the soul. No doubt many followers of organized religion would nod at that with approval, but it is not a tenet of any of those religions that this is the case.

An argument that (A) gametes trigger life is to, or may be accommodated by, (B) a religious view of life, as, (C) a trigger of OBEs is to, or may be accommodated by, (D) 'believers' of OBEs, doesn’t depend on D and B being the same thing, if that is what you are arguing( (?). I was using your term ‘believers’ for people with convictions in some supernatural qualities of OBEs or something like that.

Explanations are questioned (doubted) when the questioner has a different belief about the cause already in mind.

I think it suffice to repeat, yet again, that there are, aside from the reasons you gave for questioning your statements, rational reasons for questioning your statements. I hope this discussion such as it is will be above-board in future.

However, things like Autism, Parkinson’s, Alzheimer’s, Tourette’s, Stroke, Amnesia, and Migraine are well known, but you don’t find people claiming they’re anything but neurological problems.

Already mentioned have been some statistics about prevalence in the general population. I like Metzinger’s neuroanthropological idea that OBEs may be the basis for the concept of soul, a perceptual constant, and enjoy further speculation that, vice-versa-ish, an anthropological concept of duality may have been necessary for reinforcing cognition of self-awareness.

The kind of sanity/insanity continuum you report he’s proposing doesn’t really have any applicability to “release” hallucinations; those caused by sensory deprivation. Does it have any applicability to OBE’s?

More importantly, why are ‘release’ hallucinations mentioned at all? I asked what was special about them, received an answer in the form of a description of a mechanism, and now that the mechanism is reasonably questioned the original question again stands. Again, how do ‘release’ hallucinations differ from other hallucinations and on what grounds are they specifcally connected with OBEs? Again, strong evidence suggests both low and high cortical activity associated with OBEs.

To answer your question ‘does this continuum have any applicability to OBEs?’, again, OBEs are described as a microcosm in the paper I offered regarding NREM sleep hallucinations. Here, there is Monique’s paper in the ‘strange sensations’ thread linking lucid dreams and OBEs. Metzinger mentions that although it does not necessarily fit with his theories, OBEs could still be a sub cluster of pre-lucid dreams.

For interest’s sake, on a less grand level than neuroanthropological constant theories, from the ‘strange sensation’ thread in the Medical Sciences sub forum, Monique said-

‘I tried to find some information on the internet. This is not the best website, but it does somewhat describe the phenomenon. It appears to be an out-of-body experience that occurs in a lucid dream at the direct transition between wakefulness and REM sleep.’

Offering the name ‘Alice In Wonderland syndrome’ as a possible syndrome descibing the condition, it interests me that that sensation has became part of our culture if it were not before, famously described since the Victorians. Whether it was originally inspired by education and imagination- Dodgson, aka Lewis Carroll, was also a logician and mathematician; by NREM, as has been suggested; by migraine auras (he mentioned his first or second migraine years after ‘Alice in Wonderland’ was published); by drugs – e.g. he moved in Pre-Raphaelite circles with the Rossettis, she dying from an over-dose of laudanum, he sinking into an abyss of Chloral addiction (admittedly, I don’t happen to know if this sensation bears any resemblance to the effects of laudanum or chloral); or, there may be evidence of Dodgson suffering epilepsy; or whatever. Funny this is so well known and read to our kids, performed, updated, and reinterpretted e.g. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8gMA9qvphpM&feature=related, itself.

Given this change of subject from debating the matters of post 24 shall I take it as agreed that there were a problems with it that were rationally questionable, and that that debate has been concluded? If so, then the further discussions about the significance of proprioception, hallucinations and personal anecdotes etc. may be better suited to the medical sciences forum or the social sciences forum.

 

[zoobyshoe]

Given this change of subject from debating the matters of post 24 shall I take it as agreed that there were a problems with it that were rationally questionable, and that that debate has been concluded?

These mentions by you and Ivan of "logical debate" is the perhaps where the problem lies: I'm not debating anything. I'm trying to explain something and I'm meeting with your continued resistance to merely understanding that explanation. And that is a prime source of frustration for me. I suggested above the resistance might be due to your questions being naive, but your response showed you didn't even understand the text of that paragraph, much less the concept it held. All the questions and confusions mentioned in your last post have been previously addressed and clarified. So, I tried a second time to cut to something basic that might, but I don't know, hold the key to your resistance.

So, no. Post #24 is good and to characterize it as having problems that were rationally questionable is to ignore clear indications the problems lie in your attitude of resistance to understanding post #24. I don't think you are at a point of understanding where you are in a position to debate it, but you think you are.

 

[Ivan Seeking]

Ivan is comparing the OBE to other sorts of hallucinations, the hallucination of a sound, for example, or the hallucination of something in the visual field, saying that the ability to induce such an hallucination does not disprove real sounds or real visual experiences. His train of reasoning is: just because there can be a false OBE doesn't mean there are no real experiences of this sensation. I am pointing out the flaw in that train of reasoning, which is that the proprioceptive failure that is required for an OBE is not a stimulation of a sensation, it is the failure of a sensation: the failure of proprioception to give you internal information about your body. When you have no feel for where your limbs are in relation to each other, no feel for your body position as a whole, it is a situation of sensory deprivation. And it is from sensory deprivation that hallucinations easily arise. Failure of proprioception is not the hallucination of something that isn't there, it's the inability to sense something that is there. It is analogous to blindness or deafness.

Zooby, I haven't followed the details enough to be sure who might be unreasonable here, so be sure that I'm not taking any sides. However, you are completely ignoring the claim of attaining knowledge of a distant place, and instead focusing on the physical element, which is not what's at the heart of the matter. You can argue about theory until pigs fly if faced with actual evidence for real OBEs, such as the ability to retrieve distant information. And one can argue about faith to the same extent if there is no evidence to support the claims. Given no evidence for real OBEs and a reasonable neurological explanation for what people experience, then it would seem likely that there are no real OBEs. However, while I am not about to defend claims of actualy OBEs, there is one absolute fact that you refuse to acknowledge: The ability to induce an OBE does not exclude the possibility that there are real OBEs. That is an unavoidable point of logic.

So-called masters of OBEs can allegedly produce an OBE on demand. Therefore, any claims of that nature could be tested directly and there is no point in debating the issue. The only question that seems relevant for this forum is whether or not anyone has ever produced experimental evidence for an intentional or incidental OBE? For that matter, is there any compelling anecdotal evidence beyond isolated stories from individuals who cannot repeat the experience?

Again, it has been shown that there are good neurological explanations for what people report. Also, we don't know of any physics that could account for the claims made. So if there is no good evidence to show otherwise, it is entirely reasonable to conclude that there are no real OBEs. But we can never have absolute certainty.

At this point I want to limit the discussion to any experimental evidence for real OBEs, that might exist.

 

[pftest]

The ability to induce an OBE does not exclude the possibility that there are real OBEs.

Also, real OBEs may be inducible.

 

[zoobyshoe]

...there is one absolute fact that you refuse to acknowledge: The ability to induce an OBE does not exclude the possibility that there are real OBEs. That is an unavoidable point of logic.

I acknowledge it. If someone made the assertion: "'real' OBE's have been disproven", I would have disagreed with it. I spent some time trying to get ZapperZ to see that distinction in the case of ghosts in that recent ghost thread, if you recall. Not sure why you thought I wouldn't see the same thing applies here.

The thought "'real OBE's haven't been disproven", doesn't mean much, though. It's a point of logic, as you say, not really grounds for hope. The reasons for giving up belief in a thing once it has been shown the belief probably resulted from an illusion in the first place seem obvious to me. It doesn't seem obvious to some other people, though. I think I am going to gather my thought on that subject and write up a little essay and start a thread with it.

In the meantime I'll allow this thread to get back to discussing experimental evidence for real OBE's.

 

[Ivan Seeking]

Fair enough.

I did limit the discussion to experimental evidence, but unusually compelling anecdotal evidence would be acceptable as well - this does not include any claims lacking evidence beyond one person's story.

 

[Ivan Seeking]

One more thing that is fair to add for the sake of full disclosure. When I was in my late teens, I fiddled around with meditation techniques that allegedly can induce an OBE. After practicing for perhaps six months, one night, while in a meditative state and doing what I had done every night for months before, I suddenly felt as though I was leaving my body and rushing upwards into a void of the blackest black I have ever seen. It was all-consuming, seemingly uncontrollable, and terrifying! I could hear a low-pitched buzzing that grew in intensity as, in my mind's eye, things grew darker and darker. Then, in what I would describe as an impulse to protect my life, and with the realization of what was happening - thus breaking my concentration and focus - I snapped back to reality and found myself standing beside my bed. I was aware of jumping out of bed and landing on my feet, but I didn't do it on purpose. It just happened.

It was such a terrifying experience that I never pursued the practice with the vigor that I had before. Eventually I quit the practice altogether. I didn't know what had happened -exactly what I had experienced - but I was convinced that I had touched the edge of the phenomenon reported, and my instincts told me that it was dangerous.

When, some number of years ago, I first read Zooby's explanation for reports like mine, it seemed to be consistent with what I had experienced.

I suspect that one reason it scared me was that I never really expected anything to happen. I wasn't prepared for something that seemed so real.

 

[fuzzyfelt]

Ok, that was a really interesting discussion. Thanks Zoobyshoe and Ivan Seeking.

 

[potato991]

Regarding OBE's, specifically the notion of remote viewing, there seem to be some logical inconsistencies with how such a process would work. On the one hand it is claimed that the remote viewing cannot be physically (objectively) confirmed through the use of brain scans/probes, otherwise it would have already been verified. On the other hand it is a fact that what we see is a product of the physical structure of our visual cortex. So how can remote viewing happen without the local 'hardware' in our visual cortex, since it is that very hardware that defines the qualia of vision.

To explain further, if a human blind from birth is suddenly given the gift of vision, they won't see how we see, they have to learn this. If they tried to rely on vision to navigate obstacles, they would fail (http://scienceblogs.com/cognitivedaily/2008/11/can_a_blind_person_whose_visio.php ). Only with enough experience will brain adapt the necessary edge detection/discrimination so they can comprehend the visual experience, see patterns etc. Humans with synesthesia can experience numbers or letters as colors. Some humans are color blind, while some animals can see ultraviolet light. All this means our visual experience is not some universal modality, it depends on the wiring of our brain. A blind person will have parts of the visual cortex 'reassigned' for auditory processing through brain plasticity, obviously this would impact any restored sight.

So if something can be viewed remotely, completely independent of my brain, it's not logical that the experience would be anything like what I see in waking life. Why would I be restricted to the human-viewable color spectrum, and not see ultraviolet light, when remote viewing?

 

[Chronos]

I was influenced in my younger days by Robert Monroe - see
http://www.near-death.com/experiences/triggers12.html
Had some creepy experiences and abandoned the practices.

 

[Ivan Seeking]

Had some creepy experiences and abandoned the practices.

Do tell! Do you mean that you had some creepy experiences, or that Monroe did?

I should also specify that people are still free to share their experiences. But it would not be appropriate to argue that they qualify as even anecdotal evidence that OBEs are real. For that we would need something more substantial.

 

[Chronos]

Strictly me. The creepy part was this 'rift' of crackling energy that invariably 'opened' a short time into the experience. I had no desire to further explore. I agree, however, that OBE's are not scientifically useful until otherwise unobtainable knowledge is acquired by the practice.

 

[mXSCNT]

Occams razor is a rule of thumb, not a scientific principle that can be used to draw conclusions.

In its most simplified form, Occam's razor simply says that if you have two models that explain your data equally well, the model whose representation is shorter is more likely to be correct. This makes statistical sense. Suppose you have decided to choose a model from among all those that are m bits long (with some standard representation of a model as a series of bits). There are something like 2^m models that are m bits long. So the larger m is, the greater your risk of selection bias (and hence a false positive).

See also: minimum description length