This Brain-Zapping Bungled Mess Sheds No Light on Out-of-Body Experiences

One of the oldest tricks used by people who don't understand something is to claim that they are "starting to understand" the thing. Very often someone making such a claim has no understanding at all of the topic. For example, there might occur a conversation like this on a blind date:

Sally: I'm looking for a very smart person, like someone smart enough to understand quantum mechanics.

Willy: Yes, I've done some reading on that. I'm starting to understand it. 

The odds here are ten to one that Willy has no understanding of quantum mechanics. 

We see such language sometimes used by scientists and science journalists. There will be a mention of some phenomenon that is not at all explicable under the assumptions of today's scientists.  But we will be reassured with a claim that "scientists are starting to understand" the phenomenon. Typically the justification for the claim is entirely groundless.  

An example is a recent Discover magazine article with a subtitle groundlessly claiming that "Now, scientists are starting to understand what causes out-of-body experiences." Out-of-body experiences are experiences in which report floating out of their bodies, often seeing their bodies from a position high above their bodies.  Out-of-body experiences can occur during near-death experiences, or when there is no danger of death. Some people report them occurring spontaneously, and a small number of people claim to be able to produce them at will through methods such as relaxation techniques. 

In the Discover article we read about this doubly-ridiculous methodology:

"Parvizi and his team worked with nine epilepsy patients who had electrodes inserted into their brains as part of their treatment for severe seizures. With their consent, the researchers stimulated regions of the patients' brains with electrical pulses and asked whether the patients experienced self-dissociation, or out-of-body experiences, as a result."

In the scientific paper described above, a paper entitled "Causal evidence for the processing of bodily self in the anterior precuneus." we hear quotes from the brain-zapped people, and we get some carefully selected fragments trying to make it sound like one or two of them had something a bit like an out-of-body experience. But  a review of the full spreadsheet showing the questions scientists asked and the answers patients gave provides no support for the claim that anything like an out-of-body experience occurred. The doctors interviewing the patients again and again asked "leading questions" as if they were trying to encourage reports that would sound something like out-of-body experiences or near-death experiences. There are several things objectionable about this methodology:

(1) The overwhelming majority of out-of-body experiences (more than 95%) occur to people who do not have the fairly rare disease of epilepsy and are not suffering seizures. Also, all of the more severe seizures result in unconsciousness rather than experiences that people remember.  A person having a "grand mal" tonic-clonic seizure will not remember the experience at all. So the idea of trying to explain out-of-body experiences by artificial brain zapping is fundamentally misguided. 

(2) The people who report having out-of-body experiences were not people having their brains stimulated by electrodes. It makes no sense to zap some part of a brain with electricity and offer that as an explanation for out-of-body experiences that do not occur under such stimulation. Doing that is as silly as twisting someone's arm, asking them whether this makes them feel sad, and then offering arm twisting as an explanation for depression. 

(3) The doctors asking questions of the patients repeatedly used "leading questions" as if they were trying to elicit responses from patients that sounded like something you would hear in an account of a near-death experience or out-of-body experience. 

Hiding their "dirty linen" in a place where almost no one would tend to find it, the authors of the paper have placed their list of questions and answers outside of the main paper, in a spreadsheet attachment within their supplemental information document. You can only get this list of questions and answers if you are diligent enough to (1) click on the Supplemental Information link in the pdf file of their main paper, and (2) then also click on the Supplemental Information link on the left of the URL that arises, and (3) then click on the "Download .xlsx" link allowing you to download a spreadsheet. You will then get a spreadsheet in which you can see how "leading questions" were used to try to get spooky-sounding answers from the poor brain-zapped subjects (but only if you have software allowing you to read spreadsheets). 

Below are some examples of how "leading questions" were used, after some part of the brains of these very sick people was needlessly electrically zapped. I will put into boldface examples of "leading question" improperly pulling the respondents in some particular direction. The duration of these zaps varied between 1 second and 10 seconds. 

Rows 194-202:

Patient: Yeah I feel it

Doctor: What happened?

Patient: I feel I don't know how to say it but my body lift up for a minute, just for a second

Doctor: Ah, is that right, I see. You were inside your body or did your body leave you?

Patient: My body leave me

Doctor: Your body left you. Where did you end up being if your body left you?

Patient: In the bed

Doctor: Ok, but where did your body leave

Patient: Up  

We have here some glaring examples of "leading questions." After being brain zapped, a patient reports his body lifting up for just a second, which sounds like a reflexive jolt response you might get from being zapped. The doctor then asks the extremely suggestive question "did your body leave you," thereby planting in the patient's mind the suggestion of an out-of-body experience. The patient is then asked where his body ended up, and is given an answer of "in the bed." Not accepting this answer, an answer suggesting no actual out-of-body experience, the doctor then speaks like he is refusing to accept the answer, and asks the additional "leading question" of  "where did you body leave?" Any answers received from such leading questions are worthless, and merely show the power of suggestion. 

Rows 230-247

Doctor: What happened?

Patient: Swing

Doctor: Do you feel like you're floating like on a boat up and down or side to side?

Patient: Side to side. I just feel like I'm swinging

Doctor: Is the entire world swinging or only you?

Patient: Only me because I feel like I'm outside and I would sit down

Doctor: If you were outside and this happened you would sit down?

Patient: Yeah

After a 5-second brain zap resulting in a "No change" report, the next statements (after additional brain zaps) are these:

Patient: Right now, yeah

Doctor: What is happening? Is it you or is it the world?

Patient: It's me. I feel inside like something

Doctor: Keep yes closed please. Was the feeling of floating the same or different?

Patient: The same.

Doctor: Is this feeling something you would want more or less of?

Patient: Less of, I feel like it's unsafe

Doctor: Unsafe, but do you feel like you're free like you're relieved like a bird?

Patient: No, I feel more confused

We have here some more glaring examples of "leading questions." After being brain zapped, a patient merely uses the word "swing" to describe how it felt. Without any provocation, the doctor then asks "do you feel like you're floating," just as if he was trying to plant in the subject's mind some idea of something like an out-of-body experience.  Later "out of nowhere" without anything to justify such  a question, the doctor asks "was the feeling of floating the same or different," even though the patient's previous response was not anything having to do with floating, but a vague report of "feel inside like something." Then the doctor speaks like he is trying to plant some idea of flying into the patient's mind, by asking if he felt like a bird. Any responses given to such "leading questions" are worthless, merely showing the power of suggestion. 

Rows 253-255:

Patient: Yes, yes, I'm feeling it - the swing. Like a cold feeling. I can feel something come up - it's cold in my mind.

Doctor: Are you feeling the floating?

Patient: Yeah.

Again, we have a glaring examples of a "leading question." Utilizing the power of suggestion, the doctor asks, "are you feeling the floating?" to a patient just after he reported no such thing, but a mere cold or swinging feeling.  The "yeah" answer is worthless as evidence, and merely shows the power of suggestion.  

Row 309: 

Again "out of nowhere" the doctor tells the patient "last time you mentioned were floating," even though the patient never independently or spontaneously said anything about floating, but merely responded (like someone under the influence of suggestion) to "leading questions" asked by the doctor, questions that introduced the word "floating."

Row 408-415

Doctor: What happened?

Patient: The same thing as before like I couldn't really focus.

Doctor: Same thing as before you can't focus on anything. Okay. Did you mind become absent?

Patient: Kind of

Doctor: Kind of? Did the position where you were lying, did it change?

Patient: *shakes head*

Doctor: Not at all?

Patient: *shakes head*

The doctor here is clearly asking more "leading questions." He sounds like he is trying to get out of the patient some report that the patient has floated out of his body, but the patient does not agree with the suggested idea. 

Row 416 - 433

We have more attempts by a doctor to get answers that might suggest floating out of the body or a change in body vertical position, but the patient says nothing in agreement with such suggestions. 

Rows 483-488

Doctor: What happened?

Patient: I don't really feel my body

Doctor: You don't feel your body? Okay. Did you lift up at all this time?

Patient: Kind of.

Doctor: Kind of? Right now or before?

Patient: Right now.

The doctor here is clearly asking another "leading question." Without any provocation, he asks about whether a "lifting up" occurred, as if he was hoping to get some report of a mind floating out a body. The "kind of" response is worthless as evidence, being probably the mere result of suggestion. 

Rows 591-595

Patient: That was much stronger.

Doctor: Got it. Do you think you can explain more? What would cause this feeling if you're up and going, and running, and walking?

Patient: I don't know.

Doctor: Have you seen the movies of astronauts of space? Have you seen them floating?

Patient: Not that last one, no. That was not painful, but my heart was beating really fast, and my hands were sweating. 

The doctor here is clearly asking another "leading question." Without any provocation, he reminds the patient of movies of astronauts floating in zero gravity, as if he was trying to get the patient to say he experienced something like that.  This time the patient does not fall for such a suggestion. 

Lines 621- 636

Doctor: What happened?

Patient: [inaudible] lightheaded.

Doctor: lightheaded?  

Patient: Yeah. That's the only way I can describe it.

Doctor: Tell me a little bit more about this lightheadedness.

Patient: Not like you're gonna pass out of anything, it just makes my head feel like compressed.

Doctor: What's happening?

Patient: Yeah, it's just kinda like got like thrown up on the clouds.

Doctor:  Thrown up on the clouds.

Patient: Yeah, like higher up floating.

Doctor: Floating in the clouds?

Patient: Yeah.

Doctor: Was that you, the whole you or part of you?

Patient: No, just my head. Just this portion [gestures to face head area]

We have here no actual report of an out-of-body experience. The brain zapping has merely produced some dizziness or a "lightheaded" feeling. Continuing to press for descriptions rather than just sticking with the original description, the doctor has got from the patient a statement that "it's just kinda like got like thrown up on the clouds." There is no reason to think that this weak "just kinda like" claim is anything more than a lyrical or poetic simile. When asked whether this involved the whole body or just part of him, the patient says "just my head." This does not match what is reported in out-of-body experiences, which are very vivid experiences no one describes using "just kinda like" language. 

Lines 659 -- 660

Doctor: You were out there floating?

Patient: Yeah, kind of.  

Here the doctor "out of the blue" without any provocation asks the patient whether he was floating. The patient had previously reported no such thing in response to the latest brain zap, merely previously reporting (in response to "leading questions") some euphoria and dizziness. The "kind of" response to a leading question has no evidence value. 

Lines 728- 731

Doctor: Did you feel any floating?

Patient: No.

Doctor: Any change in your perception of time?

Patient: No.

Another "leading question" asked without any provocation. 

Lines 752 - 765

Doctor: What happened?

Patient: Uh just a pronounced increase in that lightheaded feeling.

Doctor: Tell me more about that lightheaded feeling.

Patient: It almost feels like low blood sugar but not bad right. It's sort of like floating.

Doctor: Tell me more.

Patient: It's kind of like floating but with a heightened sense of clarity, I guess.

Doctor: Can you elaborate on that? I'm purposely not looking at your face when you're reporting. Cause we don't want to nod or to say anything to lead you. We don't want to bias you.

Patient: Just like a heightened sense of clarity in terms of like when I was like looking at the clock it just made the clock and the pictures around it seem more robust, I guess. Like an awareness of a kind. Seemed more coherent or clear.

Doctor: Was it a positive feeling or negative feeling?

Patient: Oh positive.

Doctor: Did your vision change now?

Patient: No.

Doctor: Did we cause blurriness this time?

Patient: No.

The doctor's statement "we don't want to nod or to say anything to lead you" and that "we don't want to bias you" is at this point extremely laughable, because we have seen in the quotes (from line 650 to line 731) that this patient had been repeatedly asked "leading questions" trying to get him or her to report feelings of floating.  By now we can assume that the patient had been trained to learn that the questioning doctor or doctors are very interested in hearing about anything that might be a little like floating. So his or her claim at this point to have experienced (after brain zapping) something "sort of like floating" and "kind of like floating" is no evidence of an out-of-body experiences, in which people do not use such "kind of like" qualifiers.  

Lines 766-786

Patient: Oh that was like in my body.

Doctor: Tell me more.

Patient: Like that floating feeling in your body.

Doctor: Tell me more.

Patient: Like a positive feeling in terms of ... I wouldn't necessarily call it floating but like I feel lighter than I did before.  

Doctor: Tell me more.

Patient: Kind of made my chest feel lighter.

Doctor: Chest feel lighter

Patient: Yeah

Doctor: Did your position in space change? Did you kind of move in space?

Patient: Yeah.

Doctor: Which way did you go?

Patient: Forward.

Doctor: Did you go up?

Patient: Yeah

Doctor: Were you up like almost out of bed or no?

Patient: No.  

Doctor: But did you feel floatiness?

Patient: Yes.

Doctor: Did you feel kind of lightweight?

Patient: Yes.

Here we have a classic example of a doctor asking a "leading question" as if he were trying to move the patient's testimony away from what was originally reported. The patient does not report floating out of his body, but merely "that floating feeling in your body," which he then walks back by saying " I wouldn't necessarily call it floating." The doctor tries hard to push the patient towards saying that he floated out of his body, but it's a failure. After getting a few "yes" answers (probably involving the mere power of suggestion) the doctor asks whether the patient was out of his bed, and the answer is "no." So there's no out-of-body experience here. 

Lines 810 to 823:

Doctor: Okay. What exactly happened?

Patient: Like my head.. uhh.. just kinda like you're floating on clouds almost just like.. I mean I'm still here obviously but kind of like you're floating a little bit more than normal.

Doctor: Was this a positive feeling or a negative feeling?

Patient: Positive.

Doctor: You were saying a little bit on the ketamine study. How does this relate?

Patient: Just like that uhh floating. Ketamine gave me that out-of-body experience. Like it started that feeling of getting out of body but not that full-on out-of-body experience.

Doctor: Got it. Would you say that it was similar?

Patient: Yeah.

Doctor: Less intense?

Patient: For sure less intense. 

The patient makes a weak claim to have felt something "just kinda like you're floating on clouds... kind of like you're floating a little bit more than normal." Seeming to engage in more attempts to stretch the patient's account into something like an out-of-body experience, the doctor asks the patient to compare this brain zapping to his experience with a hallucinogenic drug. The patient first says that ketamine "gave me that out-of-body experience" but then seems to walk back that statement, apparently saying that ketamine merely "started that feeling of getting out of body but not that full-on out-of-body experience." No matter how you interpret the language, there is no report here of an out-of-body experience during brain zapping. 

I carefully read the entire spreadsheet listing all of the patient responses. None of the patients reported anything that can be accurately described as an out-of-body experience. Like very many neuroscience papers these days, the scientific paper described above ( entitled "Causal evidence for the processing of bodily self in the anterior precuneus") contains some inaccurate statements about its results. Specifically:

• The paper incorrectly states, "Three of the nine participants reported a sense of self-dissociation after the stimulation of the right aPCu." Excluding one statement with a question mark and the word "maybe," none of the patients reported such a thing, judging from the statements contained in the spreadsheet listing their statements. One of the patients reported that it "kind of feels like slipping, but it's not my whole body," which is not a report of self-dissociation.  (In Table 2 the paper includes quotes from a patient S09 that do not match anything in the question-and-answer spreadsheet, so we don't know whether those statements occurred from brain zapping, and don't know whether they are responses to "leading questions." We read, "When the subject was asked if he was floating in space, the patient replied: 'No. I was floating more in myself.' ")  
• The paper incorrectly states, "Participant S01 reported feelings of floating up in the clouds and losing focus associated with an analogy of ‘frontal lobe getting dumber.’" The responses of Participant S01 are recorded in rows 3 to 36 of the spreadsheet. Participant S01 did not report anything like "feelings of floating up in the clouds" nor any feeling at all of floating. His statement about the frontal part of the brain was "My frontal cortex got almost dumber?" which is a question, not an assertion.
• The science paper incorrectly states, " Participant S08 also reported a state of being thrown up on the clouds and out-of-body." Judging from the spreadsheet statements attributed to this patient, that claim is untrue.  The patient never claimed to be out of his body, and merely made (among many of his statements reporting dizziness or lightheadedness in a variety of ways) the very weak poetical-sounding statement that "it's just kinda like got like thrown up on the clouds."  No statement having the qualifier of "just kinda" (i.e. "just kind of") should be regarded seriously as evidence.  
• The paper misleadingly states, "Both S08 and S01 reported that their experience reminded them of their previous dissociative feelings on psychedelics." The statement by S01 was weak and only occurred in response to a "leading question" by a doctor, asking "how does this compare to what you felt yesterday on ketamine," to which the patient answered "probably pretty similar" because it made him feel "just like a sedated monkey," which is not a report of a brain zap producing a feeling of dissociation.  Patient S08 also mentioned psychedelics only after being pushed towards such a comparison by a doctor. We read this on rows to 801 to 804, in which patient S08 is questioned about a brain zap just given:

Doctor: So you feel like this feeling can be related to ketamine?

Patient: No, that was just a feeling reference point I had so [inaudible] words

Doctor: I understand. Just to be clear, how does feeling resemble or not what you felt during ketamine?

Patient: Just the way the body feels in terms of like that lightweight feeling and perception of space and time. 

Good heavens, it's rather hard to imagine a more flagrant use of  "leading questions" to try to push someone to answer in a particular way.  First the doctor tries to get from the patient a ketamine comparison that the patient did not naturally make. Then, after being told "no," the doctor persists, as if he was trying to signal to the patient that he wasn't satisfied with the patient's "no" answer, and was hoping for a "yes" answer. This is "leading questions" at its worst. 

The statement in the paper's "highlights" section that "stimulation of aPCu caused distortions in core body schema and self-dissociation" is untrue. No reliable reports of self-dissociation by such stimulation have occurred, except for weak, hesitant statements occurring after "plant an idea in their minds" interrogative prodding trying to elicit reports sounding like reports of self-dissociation.  The study has provided no insight at all about out-of-body experiences, and none of the statements by the patients is an account of an out-of-body experience. The claim by Discover magazine that the study shows that scientists are "starting to understand what causes out-of-body experiences" is entirely untrue. 

The paper has also provided no basis for any claim that some part of the brain helps to produce your sense of self. The title of the paper is "Causal evidence for the processing of bodily self in the anterior precuneus."  No such evidence was provided.  None of the spreadsheet statements by any of the patients after brain zapping describe any alteration in the state of the self. None of the brain zap patients said anything like "now I'm not my self" or "now I don't feel like a person" or "now I don't feel like a self" or "now I feel like only half my self" or "now my self is outside of my body." The transcript of the patient provides no justification for any claim that the brain zapping sheds any light on a brain cause of the self. Search for the word "self" in the spreadsheet of patient responses, and you will find no such justification. 

What kind of care would be taken if a study like this followed proper methods? For one thing, there would be no "leading questions" planting ideas in people's minds.  A person might be questioned only with entirely neutral questions like this after a brain zap was given:

Doctor: So how did that feel?

Patient:  Well, I felt a little strange on my left side. 

Doctor: Can you give me more details?

Patient: Well, there was a weird kind of tingling in my left hand. 

Doctor: Can you give me any more details?

Patient: I almost felt like my left hand was going to fall off. 

This would be the correct way to ask interview questions in a study like this. Every single one of the responses and ideas is coming entirely from the patient, without the patient being led in a particular direction, and without any "leading questions" that plant some particular idea in a patient's mind.  Instead of such an approach, the spreadsheet of the paper reveals an appalling methodology in which doctors keep trying to gin up particular answers from the patients. 

If you used a technique avoiding any "leading questions," could you then rely on the results if patients reported something sounding a little like an out-of-body experience? Probably not, unless the patients were "blind" about what the study was looking for. If you sign people up for a brain zapping study, telling them scientists are looking to see whether zapping a particular part of the brain produces something like an out-of-body experience, that itself through the power of suggestion will make it more likely for people to report something like what they think the scientists are hoping to find. The famous Milgram Experiment showed that people will do things they would never normally do to try to please authority figures in white coats. 

Since this post has got quite long, I will say little about my ethical concerns about this study, which are very grave concerns. The subjects here were all people with severe epilepsy, all very sick people. Zapping the brains of very sick people in a trial and error fashion and asking what the results were raises many grave ethical concerns that I won't fully discuss here. A paper tracking complications in people given deep-brain stimulation (DBS) ("Surgical complications in 502 DBS patients operated over 20 years") reports  "stimulation induced hypophonia (0.7%), blepharospasm (9%), psychic disorders (8.3%), and one suicide (0.3%)." Such a paper makes me worry about people needlessly suffering risks during experiments like the one I have described. A paper says, "The complications that require revision surgery after DBS exhaust patients physically, mentally, and economically." Another paper says that "comparatively little information is available on the complications of neurostimulation in patients with epilepsy," making it sound like the procedure may be hazardous. It is particularly objectionable when very sick people are subjected to unnecessary risks for the sake of shoddy science studies that don't follow proper methods and produce results that are not accurately described in their papers. 

Overall, the results of this study are quite consistent with the claim that the brain is not the source of the human mind, and not the storage place of human memories. A group of subjects have been brain-zapped in different areas of the brain. None of the subjects reported any recall of memory produced by such zapping, nor have they reported any serious change in their mental state. All of the reported effects sound trivial, and almost all of the descriptions of the effects are loaded with weak qualifiers such as "kind of," "sort of," "a little" or "a wee bit." No clear mental effect has been produced by any of this brain zapping.  Take away the answers that are responses to "leading questions" and may be mere results of suggestion, and you have nothing in the study that supports claims that brains make minds. 

Contrary to the claim of Discover magazine, scientists are not at all "starting to understand what causes out-of-body experiences." To the contrary, out-of-body experiences are a phenomenon that completely contradicts the dogma of neuroscientists that your brain makes your mind. What typically happens in an out-of-body experience is that a person reports viewing his body from above the body, separated by a distance of two meters or more. Such reports are utterly inexplicable under the assumption that the brain produces the mind, and are one of the strongest types of evidence against such a claim.  If your brain makes your mind, no one should ever report observing his body from two meters away or more.  But if your mind is your soul or part of your soul, then we might expect such reports to occur.   

The high prevalence of out-of-body experiences is one of the reasons they are such powerful evidence against claims that the mind is produced by the brain. Below is a graph from page 185 of a paper on this topic, the paper "Out-of-Body Experiences" by Carlos S. Alvarado. 

Most people don't have out-of-body experiences. But all of us throughout our lives have a very strong sense of a unified self. The simple fact of ordinary self-hood is one of the strongest pieces of evidence against claims that the brain makes the mind.  The brain consists of billions of neurons, located in two different hemispheres.  It is illogical to think that the action of so many tiny little things would ever add up to a lifelong sense of a unified self.  And when the connection between the left hemisphere and the right hemisphere of the brain is severed, a single unified self persists, rather than two separate selves you would expect if the brain makes the mind.  The lies told about this topic are some of the worst of the many misstatements materialists have made about the brain.  Two selves have never resulted from an operation splitting the fibers connecting the hemispheres of the brain. The famous savant Kim Peek was born without any of the corpus callosum that connects the hemisphere of the brain. He had a single unified self, and also extraordinary powers of memory recall. 

Critics of panpsychism (usually materialists) often refer to what they call the "combination problem." This is the problem that if individual atoms were conscious, there is no reason why a vast number of tiny "experiences of being an atom" would ever add up to be the experience of being a human.  What such materialists fail to recognize is that exactly the same "combination problem" exists for anyone claiming that the brain produces the mind. There is no reason why a huge number of tiny little neuron effects could ever add up to be the effect of being a single unified human person. You have always been a single unified human person because you have always been a soul or spirit. 

Attempts to naturally explain out-of-body experiences and near-death experiences have very often been guilty of inaccurate statements, as I discuss in the post here.  The study I have discussed gives more examples of such a thing.