If you’ve had an out-of-body experience, new research suggests you may have experienced a weird state between sleep and waking, where the dreamy unreality of unconsciousness spills into consciousness.
As detailed by ScienceAlert, a study published in Consciousness and Cognition by Radboud University neuroscientist Teresa Campillo-Ferrer and her team hooked 35 participants up to EEG caps to figure out why our brains occasionally glitch out so hard that we think our consciousness has left our bodies to go on metaphysical adventures.
They found that those bizarre “unusual bodily experiences,” or UBEs, as they call them, ranging from feeling like you’re hovering above your own bed to dealing with the classic sleep paralysis demon staring at you from the doorway, happen when your brain refuses to choose between being asleep and being awake.
Scientists Found a Surprising Explanation for Out-of-Body Experiences
They found that during this hazy half-state, your temporal regions are still active. Slow sleep-cycle waves mix with fast waking beta and gamma waves. Your internal wiring gets caught between two states, allowing subconscious dream logic to leak straight into your waking reality while you are conscious enough to freak out about it.
Further research will need to look into how, exactly, the brain can produce sensations that feel convincingly real. So the next time you find yourself floating several feet above your bed with your physical body still in it, don’t panic. Go on whatever wild metaphysical adventure you want; just know it probably isn’t a spiritual experience as much as it’s your brain refusing to pick a lane.
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