A study on a group of more than 200 patients conducted by French scientists concluded that the mysterious out-of-Body experiences could be related to problems of the vestibular system, made up of several structures in the inner ear, which provide the body with balance and orientation in space according to livescience.com.
A French patient had a strange feeling as he was driving. He felt as if he were outside the car, looking at his own body, who was still driving. This patient is involved in a new study. The study makes a connection between the inner ear problems and the mysterious experiences outside the body.
These experiences are short, strange and many people say they had them. A person's consciousness seems to leave his/her body and see the body from outside. People who have experiences like this perceive them as something spiritual and say they have communicated with the afterworld.
Supernatural experience or just your ear?
The study examined 210 patients with vestibular disorders, the system responsible for balance and spatial orientation. Dizziness or a feeling of floating is among the symptoms caused by problems with the vestibular system.
Maya Elziere, an ENT specialist at the European Marseilles Hospital in France, who co-authored the study, recruited patients who say they had experiences such as dizziness, they have heard noises or had ear infections.
14% of these patients reported this kind of strange experience outside their body. Only 5% of the patients without this kind of problems had out of body experiences.
Christophe Lopez, the main investigator, and neuroscientist at Aix-Marsilia University said the experiences outside the body are about three times more common in patients who have vestibular disorders than at people without these problems.
Lopez said that the example of the patient who felt as if he was leaving his body while driving makes sense. The researcher explained that a poor vestibular system might send mixed signals to the person's brain during the movement. This happens because the vestibular system is responsible for the driver's sense of direction and gives him the feeling of moving forward when he accelerates the car.
Out of body experience are very common
These weird experiences outside the body are known for centuries. This kind of experience was documented in 1905 by Pierre Bonnier who had a patient who said he felt "divided into two people, one who had not changed his position and another on his right ..." The patient told how the two individuals came close to each other and they finally merged. After this, the dizziness disappeared.
