Electroencephalography of the Induction of Out of Body Experience Using Virtual Reality

During out-of-body-experiences (OBE), the perceived location of one’s mental self (mind) is displaced from the known location of one’s physical self (body). OBE could help uncover mysteries underlying our experience of having and being a self, yet neuroscientific OBE inductions remain understudied. This thesis employed virtual reality (VR) and personalized video recordings to simulate OBE, comparing to stationary and ambulatory in-body experience control conditions (IBE-S and IBE-A) alongside prior naturally-occurring OBE. Compared to IBE-S and IBE-A, OBE simulations evoked significantly greater self-reports of OBE and related subjective phenomena. EEG results showed changes in all five frequency bands (but especially for alpha oscillations) at various electrode sites that were source localized to brain regions of interest to self-referential processing including cingulate cortex, insula, and parietal cortex. These findings endorse VR as an OBE induction method for exploring the neural correlates of altered bodily self-consciousness.