Researchers from the Karolinska Institute at Stockholm discovered that human beings tend to forget the events that took place during out-of-body experiences.
According to Loretxu Bergouignan, one of the study's proponents, out-of-body experiences resemble the feelings associated to anxiety disorder or schizophrenia and such events can alter one's memories.
To study this matter further, the researchers re-created out-of-body experience by recruiting student volunteers and made them wear headphones and goggles. These enabled them to see and hear through microphones and cameras situated in the room. The out-of-body experience was heightened by the illusion of stick touching the students as they watch a different stick point at the camera from a similar angle.
According to Bergouignan, who has tried the experiment many times, this creates a very strong effect. "You feel outside your body. You feel where the camera is," he said in a press release.
After the experiment, the students were asked questions pertaining to information that they have studied, but they weren't able to provide the correct answers. Bergouignan explained that since the student's location was temporarily transported out of their bodies, they had trouble accessing their memories of the events that happened a week later.
Similarly, MRI scans revealed that when the students were trying to remember what they saw in virtual reality sessions, their brains used the hippocampus less, and this is a region where memories are created and stored. Results showed that the students used their body more in attempt to recall the events rather than using what they know about the situation.
The connection about the body and memory may help scientists gain more knowledge about posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD). "We know the trauma will change the person. But we don't know what's the effect of stress, and what's the effect of disassociation. Here we show the effect of disassociation alone. It has an effect on memory," Bergouignan said in a press release.
However, researchers warned that people should be careful in linking virtual reality, such as how we use computers and phones, to memory loss or alteration.
This study was published in the March 10 issue of Proceedings of National Academy of Sciences.
