Following on from my previous post about this, I bought Robert Winston's book, The Human Mind, at the weekend. On p.61 he explains how a scientist induced an 'Out of Body Experience' in a patient by stimulating a section of the brain with electrical pulses:
(The scientist) Olaf Blanke and his team noticed that whenever they stimulated a certain region of the brain - the angular gyrus of the right cortex - the patient reported an "out of body" experience. "I see myself lying on the bed from above," she told them. When she was asked to lift her arm up and look at it, she believed it was trying to punch her. Rather than having tapped into the "seat of the soul", Blanke reported in 'Nature' that he had simply identified a region of the brain where two functions overlap. The visual system - which we use to see our own bodies and the rest of the world - and the system which uses touch and balance to create our physical awareness."
Winston goes on to talk about other such symptoms as the doppelganger effect, and gives that a scientific explanation for this. I should add that Winston is a religious person, so he is not just sceptically debunking in order to take a swipe at people who believe in Guardian Angels and so on.
I'd recommend this book for those interested in the physiological side of thought processes. In the book, CBT has been mentioned quite a lot (I'm only at p.70) and I'll post any other interesting observations he makes.
Jim
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