Altered neural dynamics in people who report spontaneous out of body experiences

I thought this

If I'm reading this right, they are taking measurements from two groups, a control group, and a group of those who have reported at least one OBE in the past. It doesn't look as though there were any OBEs at the time of the measurement?

It sounds reasonable that if OBES are real something must be happening in the brain too. Maybe the different structure allows for an OBE without a NDE.

If I understand this correctly (I've only been able to read the abstract so far) - the basic finding is that certain brain functions related to processing visual and auditory information are reduced in people who have OBEs?

If that is the case, then I would be surprised - if one went with a purely brain-based explanation of OBEs, I would expect the visual processing, at least, to be more developed, to allow for collecting enough detail to be able to construct images from unusual vantage points.

Whether the results are surprising or not depends I suppose on what sort of model is adopted to (try to) explain OBEs.

I'm not actively involved right now, decades ago I set out to see whether it was possible to achieve an OBE, which involved for me a form of relaxation and meditation so that the body begins to fade from awareness, this is the preliminary preparation.

More recently I had a bad reaction to some prescribed medication, with hindsight I was slow to realise what was happening, I felt dizzy and nearly collapsed in the street - a dangerous situation since it was caused by drugs. At night time I was aware that my heart rate was disturbed, it would beat very fast and very slow, and I felt the same sensations as during the OBE preparation, I was right on the edge of leaving my body. I had to shake myself into alertness to prevent this from happening, I was seriously worried that If I did separate from the body in those circumstances I might not return.

Suffice to say, my model of brain activity during OBE is one of reduced activity, either through meditation or through reduced blood supply.

Reduced power, reduced ERP deflection, reduced Alpha band consistency between trials for OBEer’s seems to be in the right sort of direction.

If it were the other way round I’d be scratching my head, because when the brain has substantially reduced power during cardiac arrest, people do recall having OBE’s apparently containing imagery from the same period as their cardiac arrest.

We also have ERP dropout opening up holes in the brains endogenous EM field which in my view are creating somewhat similar conditions for OBE’s to occur, under different physiological conditions (ie not cardiac arrest), but things like fear death.

That is, the brains networks appear vulnerable to external fields. Higher consistency for Alpha-band phase locking, increased power, increased ERP deflection would all seem to reduce the general vulnerability of an individuals brain to external fields.

I was playing devil's advocate, to an extent - if one assumed OBEs were "just" hallucinations, one might expect increased activity at the time, and perhaps expect heightened activity in certain areas at all times to allow for collecting and retaining enough information to construct certain images.