Haven’t you every wanted to just remove yourself from your body, just for a while, and see how that feels like? Well, that might become reality, instead of science-fiction.

Specialists of the Flemish University Hospital in Antwerp have accidentally aroused a patient into a out-of-body-experience, while trying to treat the patient from a annoying buzz in his ear. An electrode was inserted into the brain, was thought to reduce or oppress the buzz. Instead, the patient felt as if he was standing a half meter behind his own body. The feeling repeated itself with electric shocks with specific voltage and frequency.

On scans, a brain-area stayed longer active, which has already been identified with out-of-body-experiences. It is suspected that in that area information merges from different senses. An error might occur while integrating the information of the different senses, which could cause the phenomenon. There might be a feeling that someone does not appear to be in his own body.