Scientists closer to understanding the brain, teleportation
Tanya Lewis
Live Science

© Arvid Guterstam
While participants lay in a brain scanner, they experienced the illusion that they were being "teleported" to different locations around the room.




What happens in the brain when a person has an out-of-body experience? A team of scientists may now have an answer.

In a new study, researchers using a brain scanner and some fancy camera work gave study participants the illusion that their bodies were located in a part of a room other than where they really were. Then, the researchers examined the participants' brain activity, to find out which brain regions were involved in the participants' perceptions about where their body was.

The findings showed that the conscious experience of where one's body is located arises from activity in brain areas involved in feelings of body ownership, as well as regions that contain cells known to be involved in spatial orientation, the researchers said. Earlier work done in animals had showed these cells, dubbed "GPS cells," have a key role in navigation and memory.

The feeling of owning a body "is a very basic experience that most of us take for granted in everyday life," said Dr. Arvid Guterstam, a neuroscientist at the Karolinska Institutet in Sweden, and co-author of the study published today (April 30) in the journal Current Biology. But Guterstam and his colleagues wanted to understand the brain mechanisms that underlie this everyday experience. [Eye Tricks: Gallery of Visual Illusions]

Rubber hands and virtual bodies

In previous experiments, the researchers had explored the feeling of being out of one's body. For example, the researchers developed the so-called "rubber hand illusion," in which a person wearing video goggles sees a rubber hand being stroked, while a researcher strokes the participant's own hand (which is out of sight), producing the feeling that the rubber hand is the participant's own. The researchers have used a similar technique to give people the feeling of having a manikin's body, or even an invisible body, as they described in a report published last week in the journal Scientific Reports.

In the new study, Guterstam and his colleagues wanted to understand the brain mechanisms behind the perception of where one's body is located. Experiments in mice and other animals have shown that neurons called GPS cells are involved in navigating one's body in space (as well as in memory), a finding that was awarded the Nobel Prize in physiology or medicine in 2014.

These studies have typically involved animals running in a virtual maze, while electrodes are hooked up to their brains. "But we don't know what the animals perceive," Guterstam told Live Science. To better understand how the process works in people, the researchers scanned the brains of people who were experiencing the illusion of being outside their body, Guterstam said.

Out-of-body experience

In the latest experiment, the participants lay in an MRI scanner while wearing a head-mounted display that showed video from a set of cameras elsewhere in the room. The cameras were positioned to look down on the body of a stranger, while an image of the participant's own body lying inside the scanner was visible in the background.

To produce the out-of-body illusion, the researchers touched the participants' body with a rod while simultaneously touching the stranger's body in the same place, in view of the cameras. For the participants, this technique produces the illusion that their body is in a different part of the room than where it actually is.

"It's a very fascinating experience," Guterstam said. "It takes a couple of touches, and suddenly you actually feel like you're located in another part of the room. Your body feels completely normal — you don't feel as it's floating around," he added.

Then, the researchers analyzed the brain activity in the participants' temporal and parietal lobes, which are involved in spatial perception and the feeling of owning one's body. From this activity, Guterstam and his colleagues decoded the participants' perceived location.

The researchers found that the hippocampus, a region where GPS cells have been found, is involved in figuring out where one's body is. They also found that a brain region called the posterior cingulate cortex is what binds together the feeling of where the self is located with the feeling of owning a body.

The findings could one day lead to a better understanding of what happens in the brains of people with a condition called focal epilepsy, who have seizures that affect only one half of the brain, as well as people with schizophrenia. Out-of-body experiences are more commonly reported by these groups.

It may also help to better understand the effect of the anesthetic drug Ketamine (which is used illegally for recreational purposes), which can induce similar feelings of being removed from one's own body, Guterstam said.

"We don't know what's going on in the brain [in these conditions]," he said, "but this sense of self-location could possibly involve the same brain areas" as those in his study.

Slightly off subject, leaving teleportation aside for the moment
and getting back to basics.


From the term MRI, i deduce that within the machine created mag field; our brain waves 'resonate'?
By resonate it would mean 'amplify'; i.e, brain waves are 'amplified'
The amplification takes place at same region where the initial waves originated. The amplification / magnification is for the cameras.

Now backtrack a bit, isn't brain waves a side output or a byproduct of neural activity?

After all neural activity is explained in terms of 'proton' discharge or transmission - through axons (conduits)- to other neurons.
A notable point was - a single proton discharge may or may not trigger an avalanche effect but if it does then we have it; the building blocks of thought.

Now returning to the EM waves; ok, they are associated with proton discharges but the waves by themselves don't hold any messages that could be captured 'and decoded' by neurons.

If this is right, then excessive dosage of EM waves could lead to what?

I'm not saying it would 'cook' the brain.

But in a controlled environment, if the MRI was powered up / to beam down on random locales around the brain; the EM field could 'facilitate' or trigger neurons and therefore disjointed thoughts.

Then the next question; let the MRI remain passive recipient
what if our 'volunteer' is activated with caffeine, medicinal doses of weed.

I notice an earlier post veered off to Nazi camps and their drug based experiments; so I hope we avoid stalling this thread.

Moreover in ancient India, there was some experimentation with natural herbs; reportedly by ancient Rishis (monks) here. No records available.

What am I getting at?
Brain research appears to be going way too slow and if any member could provide updates from this point onwards or a link..

Its commendable breakthrough so far it does NOT imply or attempt to explain away visions,dreams and revelations from God as mere brain process

......and if it did?

i'm not seeing what "god" has to do with this...

lol, stalling? i don't think that's a concern, since this post sat for a week before you posted anything...lol

Your post seems to be confusing several actions of the brain. The protons in water (hydrogen nuclei) are caused to resonate by the magnetic field which gives rise to their location. The transmission between neurons is done by sodium ions and potassium ions, not protons, and do not resonate. The electrical impulse that causes the sodium/potassium reaction does not resonate.

The fMRI (most modern and commonly used type) measures the change in hemoglobin (iron based) as the brain consumes oxygen giving an accurate view of brain activity. "Thoughts" are not measured, resonated, amplified, or affected by a fMRI.

The electrical activity has long been measured by conductors but in a much simpler way than MRI.

Magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) is a noninvasive medical test that helps physicians diagnose and treat medical conditions. MRI uses a powerful magnetic field, radio frequency pulses and a computer to produce detailed pictures of organs, soft tissues, bone and virtually all other internal body structures.
Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) - Body - RadiologyInfo
www.radiologyinfo.org/en/info.cfm?pg=bodymr

does the MRI affect the iron thats in our bodies?

What do we know. The paranormal forum beat us to it.
There was a post on 'pray.. & get it' or something like that.

Which means there's an EM field out there, you pray; it resonates high up;
and then for some, wonderfull-ness happens..
I personally have no comment to add; maybe because i may've a prayer,
reserved somewhere for a later time

On a serious note
While searching for info, came across a web site by Mr. James Thorton
He writes about the 3 independent brains we inherited via evolution
Good read and just in case some of us missed this:
http://www.threes.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=2472:humans-have-three-brains&catid=70:science&Itemid=52

But the real genius is Dr Steve Peters who converted this clinical research
to a working model: "3 of us in 1"; 'The Chimp Paradox'

On the other hand we are closer to having virtual brains; for instance we have outsourced our mental functions to Microsoft Excel; then there is the joker Google; ask the dumbest question, springs back with 'yes master'
The day is not far off when we start wearing smart chips under our collars
this much is conceivable; although I'm not sure about brainwaves actuating them.

While all this modelling & tech advances are going on; clinical research is painfully plodding. If c_research does not catch up & race ahead, then what?

Could the question be please rephrased for Google?

thanks Metal.
Appreciate the clarification.

Yes. Specifically, it is the iron used by the blood supply to carry oxygen (hemoglobin), that has about 20% change in reactivity to fMRI radiation after dumping it's load of oxygen into body tissue which allows the fMRI to paint a picture of how much oxygen the different parts of the brain are using showing up as "brain activity".

The f in fMRI stands for "functional".

thanks, i was wondering how the MRI actually works... i was thinking if the MRI was affecting the iron and maybe moving/vibrating it was what was making the patients feel the out of body experience...