If there is anything about your “self” of which you can be sure, it is that it is anchored in your own body and yours alone. The person you experience as “you” is here and now and nowhere else.
But even this axiomatic foundation of your existence can be called into question under certain circumstances. Your sense of inhabiting your body, it turns out, is just as tenuous an internal construct as any of your other perceptions—and just as vulnerable to illusion and distortion. Even your sense of “owning” your own arm is not fundamentally different—in evolutionary and neurological terms—from owning your car (if you are Californian) or your shotgun (if you are Sarah Palin).
Outlandish as such a notion may seem, what you think of as your self is not the monolithic entity that you—and it—believe it to be. In fact, it is possible to pharmacologically manipulate body ownership with a drug called ketamine, which reliably generates out-of-body experiences in normal people. Patients on ketamine report the sensation of hovering above their body and watching it. If someone gives them a sharp poke, they might say, “My body down below is feeling the pain, but I don’t feel it myself.” Because in such patients the “I” is dissociated from the body it inhabits, they do not experience any agony or emotional distress (for this reason, ketamine is sometimes used as an anesthetic).
Your sense of body ownership, and of being a distinct entity, seems to derive in part from a network of brain cells known as mirror neurons. Located in the premotor cortex, they interact with your prefrontal cortex, the part of the brain that makes plans and decisions. Ordinarily, when you move your hand to, say, reach for a pen (a motion that is accompanied by your sense of having free will), certain motor-command neurons in the motor cortex fire. Intriguingly, as Giacomo Rizzolatti of the University of Parma in Italy and his colleagues Marco Iacoboni and Vittorio Gallese have demonstrated, some of these neurons also fire when you merely watch another person perform the same action.
Mirror neurons allow you to put yourself in another person’s shoes. Your brain says, in effect, “The same neurons are firing as when I move my hand, so I know what he is feeling and what he is up to.” In addition, neurons we might loosely call “touch mirror neurons” fire when you are touched or watch someone else being touched. That humans have these abilities made intuitive sense to Charles Darwin, who noted that when you watch a javelin thrower about to release the spear, your leg muscles flinch unconsciously and that when a child watches his mother use a pair of scissors, he clenches and unclenches his jaws in uncontrollable mimicry. In this phenomenon we see an evolutionary prelude to the ability to imitate and emulate—the basis of cultural transmission of knowledge.
Yet as you grow to adulthood, you no longer irresistibly mime the actions of whomever you happen to be looking at; your self doesn’t feel like a puppet controlled by others. You preserve your sense of free will and agency (although patients with Tourette syndrome do sometimes engage in unconscious mimicry).
The tendency to unconsciously mimic the person you are with is normally inhibited by your prefrontal cortex (the most evolutionarily advanced part of the brain, which is pronounced in humans). We recently suggested in an essay on the Edge Foundation Web site (www.edge.org) that interactions between the mirror neuron system and feedback from the prefrontal cortex is what gives the self its peculiar dual character of simultaneously maintaining individuality and reciprocity with others.
Derangements in this system would lead to out-of-body experiences, which may explain the mechanism of ketamine. Under its influence you “empathize” with your body the same way you empathize with other people, and you are able to simultaneously detach yourself from it—just as you detach yourself from others.
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16 Comments
Add CommentInteresting article, but in the future I'd suggest leaving out the attempts at comedy... at least when you choose politically charged targets.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI love a good Palin joke as much as the next (non ultra-conservative) person, but all that does in this article is risk getting some readers upset and distracts from the science in the article.
Thanks!
Tharriss, most comedy comes at someone else's expense. The writers aren't trying to make friends, they are writing a scientific article in an entertaining fashion.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisYou can have your opinion on how to write, but I'm fairly certain you aren't a professional writer. Leave your advice to your field of expertise.
The paragraph describing RSD is horribly inaccurate. RSD can affect any part of the body (not just the arm), and the mirror treatment is a joke - ask anyone who actually has RSD. It's not something that can be treated with optical illusions.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThe paragraph describing RSD is horribly inaccurate. It can affect any part of the body (not just an arm). Also, the mirror treatment is a joke and it's efficacy in clinical trials is grossly overstated in this article. RSD is not a disease that can be treated with optical illusions.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisWhen I read that about Palin, I sortof thought to myself, "Would she/her followers be insulted?" I concluded most wouldn't, and some may take it as a compliment. Any supporter of Palin and Tea Party politics must certainly be aware they are aligned with the gun rights and ownership subculture. Sarah Palin's shotgun is a symbol of freedom to these groups! I'm surprised I haven't seen any "Sarah Palin's perception of Shotgun ownership is fundamentally no different than Sarah Palin's perception of owning her own arm!" bumper stickers.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisWow... such lame comments regarding the vacuous Palin versus the fascinating research that further establishes what many have known for centuries... and what the late Sir Francis Crick famously postulated: that we ourselves... and our notion of supernatural "souls" and contra-casual free will are in fact illusions, wholly instantiated by our (marvelously evolved) physical brains.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisEven a cursory review of either neruoscience or genetics would force any rational person, still able to think critically to arrive at that conclusion. From schizophrenia... to phantom limb syndrome... from autism spectrum disorder to obscession-compulsion disorders and addictions, the evidence is overwhelming.
Any one still seriously entertaining the notion of a supernatural "free-willing" secret-soul-agent, somehow supervening on our physical brains, apart from natural causation... is well... rather "willfully" ignorant.
to syncratio400,
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisAre you by any chance an expert on Internet etiquette
:)
Thought provoking article. I know nothing about the subject and certainly not specifics such as RSD, but it raises the question as to what 'self treatment' could be feasible, how these findings could link with physiotherapy and whether a Wii program could be created to give pain relief or treatment.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisIt's funny that the lame jokes are always the expense of the right,but never the left?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this"Jack", that is because the "right" is seldom, if ever "right" and the "conservative" is very seldom, if ever "conservative" and you always give a great deal of jargon to poke jokes and negative comments at...so get over it and if you don't like the jokes then change your behavior or learn to laugh at the jokes. After all, laughter is the best medicine and Palin consumes a lot of RSDs.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisNice article...looks like they are on to something...(deleted my remaining comments;-)
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisCan anybody give me a scientific explanation of what happens in the brains of people who have spontaneous out-of body experiences? Is there something that works differently in their brains? Some people think these experiences can be induced through relaxation techniques and I would be curious to know if any of you was able to experience OOB through relaxation.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisA short study of Buddhism,first working with relaxation techniques,then working with your with colors then objects,and you can work your way up to OOB's.Although it may only be a different state consciousness,but it like humor and beauty are in the mind of the beholder,but with practice,you will be amazed at the visions you can come up with.but it can take a few years to get there.As for scientific proof,I know of no brain scans while meditating going on right now,but it might be something someone should try to get grant for,but It would make for a great doctoral thesis.A faster way obtaining an OOB would be lucid dreaming,the technique is simple.Start keeping a daily journal of your dreams, the more you record the more you will remember,This is followed by giving yourself commands, before sleeping,and then focus on something in your dreams that would make you aware you are dreaming such flying,flying is a good one,because it's something that doesn't happen outside of a dream.I am of course speaking of doing so without an aircraft.When you first become aware in a dream,it can be quite an experience,at first it it short, but with practice you can stay in the dream longer and longer going to where you want and doing what you want uncluding OOB's.Good Luck.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisSee how one can invoke a political discussion by dropping a political name in the midst of an article like this? That silly joke (that made me giggle a second) was cute until you nuts took it so far and diverted your thoughts and wasted energy into a messy and silly assault on one another.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisIt was just a joke, maybe not appropriate for this, but funny none the less.
Now, would anyone care to discuss their out of body experience? I thought that is what this article was about.
I don't care about the odd joke here and there, the important thing is this article makes for an interesting read. My only criticism is the detail of the effects of Ketamine could have been �more fully explored. On page 1 you state:
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this'Under its influence you empathize with your body the same way you empathize with other people, and you are able to simultaneously detach yourself from it'
Under a low dose this may well be the case, under higher dosages the effect is far more dramatic. I now know this from personal experience.
Seven days ago I was admitted to I.C.U. (post-operatively). In order to have an epidural inserted into my spine between the shoulder blades I was administered Ketamine. This is without doubt the scariest, most terrifying drug I have ever encountered. Whilst being physically conscious I was convinced I was underwater, in almost total (b&w) darkness, that I was dead, only able to talk in slow motion in a voice that was not my own and in total confusion at no longer having a body. Above all I was totally consumed by utter terror. The (chief) anaesthetist told me later he had never seen such an extreme reaction in all his thirty odd years, and had to very quickly make the decision to put me 'under' to override the Ketamine. In the short time it took to get the artificial respirator and all the other kit up and running I had an endotracheal tube inserted, which I then pulled out again. However, it wasn't me I was pulling it out of! There is of course a lot more than that I write here but I won't bore you with the whole experience, suffice to say, normal nightmares pale into insignificance to this.
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Two days later I 'woke up,' which actually took about three hours to do, and the team were shocked that I could remember every single detail. Normally you remember nothing, or at most fragments. I wish that were the case for me as this is going to haunt me for the rest of my life.
Interesting article. I am wondering about if research is being done or considered regarding if the mirror neurons are dammaged or undeveloped in individuals with Autism, psychopathic or narcissistic disorders. They all have a disability in their ability to put themselves in another's shoes.
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