The scientific journal Science is reporting the findings of neuroscientist Dr Henrik Ehrsson who has succeeded in simulating out of body experiences under laboratory conditions.

The experiments have a lot in common with those of Dr Rupert Sheldrake, whose concept of “extended mind” is one of the more interesting developments in biological research this century. The findings seem to reveal that the mind relies on the senses of sight and touch to locate itself inside the human body.

When the connection is disrupted, whether by illness, drugs or deliberate confusion, strange things begin to happen. The sensation arises that the mind has left the body.

Ehrsson used goggles, a video camera and rods to confuse the brain and create the effect. A sitting volunteer wore goggles linked to a video camera pointing to his back. Looking through the goggles, he saw an image of his back from the perspective of someone sitting around six feet behind him. A technician then touched his chest with a rod, which was unsighted to the camera behind. The split effect then took hold.

Dr Ehrsson tried the experiment out on himself, “You really feel that you are sitting in a different place in the room, and you’re looking at this thing in front of you that looks like yourself, and you know it’s yourself, but it doesn’t feel like yourself. This experiment suggests that the first-person visual perspective is critically important for the in-body experience. In other words, we feel our self is located where our eyes are.”

This has an uncanny resemblance to Sheldrake’s experiments on extended mind and certainly supports many people’s experience of being outside their body during sleep or at unusual moments in their lives.

A five-year study of the brains of 136 subjects showed that changes in the brain precede symptoms and diagnosis of cognitive impairment and Alzheimers.

The participants, all over the age of 65, ranked as cognitively normal on tests given at the start of the study. Brain scans of the participants were also taken at the start of the study. The participants were followed with neurological and cognitive testing over the study period.

At the end of the study, 23 participants had developed MCI (mild cognitive impairment) and, of those, 9 went on to be diagnosed with Alzheimers.

Researchers discovered that changes in the brain had taken place as much as four years before the subjects had started to show cognitive impairment. The brain scans showed a decrease in grey matter in those participants who went on to develop memory problems while they still tested normal for cognitive function.

Researchers hope that the results of the study will help in identifying people at risk of developing MCI which leads to Alzheimers.

The study is published in the April 17, 2007, issue of Neurology®, the scientific journal of the American Academy of Neurology.