Electroencephalographic Signature of Out-of-Body Experiences Induced by Virtual Reality: A Novel Methodological Approach.

Out-of-body experiences (OBEs) are subjective experiences of seeing one's own body and the environment from a location outside the physical body. They can arise spontaneously or in specific conditions, such as during the intake of dissociative drug. Given its unpredictable occurrence, one way to empirically study it is to induce subjective experiences resembling an OBE using technology such as virtual reality.

An Embodied Perspective as a Victim of Sexual Harassment in Virtual Reality Reduces Action Conformity in a Later Milgram Obedience Scenario.

Group pressure can often result in people carrying out harmful actions towards others that they would not normally carry out by themselves. However, few studies have manipulated factors that might overcome this. Here male participants (n = 60) were in a virtual reality (VR) scenario of sexual harassment (SH) of a lone woman by a group of males in a bar.

Altered visual feedback from an embodied avatar unconsciously influences movement amplitude and muscle activity.

Evidence suggests that the sense of the position of our body parts can be surreptitiously deceived, for instance through illusory visual inputs. However, whether altered visual feedback during limb movement can induce substantial unconscious motor and muscular adjustments is not known. To address this question, we covertly manipulated virtual body movements in immersive virtual reality.

Virtual mortality and near-death experience after a prolonged exposure in a shared virtual reality may lead to positive life-attitude changes.

Mortality is an obvious if uncomfortable part of the human condition, yet it is impossible to study its impact on anyone who experiences it. Reports of phenomena associated with death such as out-of-the-body (OBE) and near death experiences (NDE) can only be studied post-hoc, since it is impossible to design a scientific study where an experimental group experiences death (and returns) and a control group does not. Yet NDEs seem to have a profound influence on the subsequent lives of people and are therefore worthy of study.

A Virtual Out-of-Body Experience Reduces Fear of Death.

Immersive virtual reality can be used to visually substitute a person's real body by a life-sized virtual body (VB) that is seen from first person perspective. Using real-time motion capture the VB can be programmed to move synchronously with the real body (visuomotor synchrony), and also virtual objects seen to strike the VB can be felt through corresponding vibrotactile stimulation on the actual body (visuotactile synchrony). This setup typically gives rise to a strong perceptual illusion of ownership over the VB.