Such a concept as "the exit of the astral body" once bore only a spiritual or mystical meaning, but now science has taken up its research. Oddly enough, but scientists believe that the feeling of "astral flight" can be caused by hearing impairment in humans.
A new study by the University of Aix-Marseille in France, published in the journal Cortex, indicates that people are more likely to experience a sense of separation from their bodies if they suffer from dizziness and have problems with the inner ear - peripheral vestibular disorders. For most patients, this feeling appeared precisely after they began to experience dizziness.
Out-of-body experiences are different for people, but they usually feel like they are “floating” outside their bodies in a state of lucid dreaming. Many people say they felt this way when they were in a coma.
One of the patients in this study explained how he felt like “I was separated from my body. I felt that I was not in it. Another said he felt “as if he had split into two people, one of whom did not change his posture, and the other was on his right. Then these two corporeal entities approached each other, merged into one, and the vertigo disappeared.
Led by neuroscientist Christophe Lopez, the researchers examined 210 patients with vertigo and 210 men and women who did not. Of those who experienced dizziness, 14% claimed they had an out-of-body experience. Among healthy participants in the experiment, only 5% reported this experience. Many patients who suffered from vertigo and tended to experience so-called out-of-body sensations ("astral flights") also showed symptoms of depression, anxiety, depersonalization or migraine.
Scientists believe that out-of-body sensations can arise from disturbances in the vestibular system, which is located in the inner ear and helps control balance and eye movement. Problems with the vestibular system often cause symptoms such as dizziness, lightheadedness, weightlessness, and it is difficult to focus on something.
The reasons for this are not entirely clear, since scientists did not look for a direct causal relationship between out-of-body sensations and disorders of the vestibular system, they simply found that they were somehow interconnected.
“In general, our data suggest that out-of-body sensations in patients with dizziness can occur when the incoherence of perception caused by disorders of the vestibular system interacts with psychological factors (depersonalization - derealization, depression and anxiety) and neurological factors (migraine),” says in the study.
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Svetlana Bodrik