She Said She Could Leave Her Body at Will: What an MRI Revealed

The question of whether the soul exists, and whether it can somehow separate from the body, is usually associated with religion, spirituality, or philosophy. But researchers at the University of Ottawa in Canada approached one aspect of the question from a scientific perspective, using brain imaging to examine what happens during a voluntarily induced out-of-body experience.

Their unusual case study centered on a young woman who claimed she could intentionally produce the sensation of leaving her body while remaining fully awake and conscious.

A Woman Who Could Trigger an Out-of-Body Experience

Prof. Claude Messier, a psychologist and brain researcher, had long been interested in near-death and out-of-body experiences. Such experiences have been reported by people who felt as though they were observing themselves or their surroundings from outside their physical bodies.

The turning point came when a 24-year-old psychology student approached researchers at the University of Ottawa and said she could deliberately produce a similar sensation without being critically ill or close to death.

According to the woman, identified in the study as a participant rather than by name, she first discovered the ability as a child while trying to fall asleep during nap time. She described being able to create the sensation of floating above her body and watching herself from another perspective. As she grew older, entering the state became more difficult, but she said she could still produce it voluntarily.

Rather than relying solely on her description, researchers decided to examine what was happening inside her brain.

What Happened Inside Her Brain?

The participant underwent functional magnetic resonance imaging, or fMRI, while researchers asked her to perform several different tasks. Some involved actually moving parts of her body, while others involved imagining movements. She was also asked to voluntarily enter the unusual state she described as an out-of-body experience.

The scans revealed a distinctive pattern of brain activity during the experience.

Among the regions involved were areas associated with body representation, movement, and the integration of sensory information. The researchers observed changes involving the temporoparietal region, an area of the brain known to play an important role in how we perceive the position and movement of our own bodies.

This is particularly interesting because previous research has also connected disruptions in this general region with spontaneous out-of-body experiences.

She Felt Herself Moving While Her Body Remained Still

The woman's description of the experience was especially striking.

She reported feeling as though she were moving above her physical body, sometimes watching herself from above. She could also intentionally make herself feel as though she were rotating or moving through space.

Although her physical body remained still inside the scanner, the imagined movements could feel surprisingly real. She even described experiencing sensations similar to dizziness when she imagined herself rotating too quickly.

Importantly, the researchers found differences between ordinary motor imagery and the state she identified as an out-of-body experience. Simply imagining a movement was not subjectively the same experience for her as deliberately producing the sensation of being outside her body.

The case was documented by researchers Andra M. Smith and Claude Messier in a 2014 paper titled Voluntary Out-of-Body Experience: An fMRI Study, published in the peer-reviewed journal Frontiers in Human Neuroscience.

What Does the Study Actually Prove?

The study offers a fascinating glimpse into how the brain processes our sense of where the body is located, but its findings should be interpreted carefully.

The researchers did not establish that the woman's consciousness or soul physically separated from her body. Rather, they documented the brain activity associated with an experience that she perceived as being outside her body.

Because the study involved a single participant, it also cannot establish how common the ability is or whether the same neurological processes occur in every person who reports an out-of-body or near-death experience.

What it does demonstrate is that the human sense of being located inside the physical body is more complex than it may initially appear.

The Question Science Cannot Answer

For generations, Jewish sources have taught that a human being is more than a physical body. Judaism understands the neshamah, the soul, as the spiritual dimension of the person, and describes the relationship between body and soul in ways that extend far beyond what can be measured through physical instruments.

Scientific research approaches the subject from a different direction. An fMRI can show which parts of the brain become more or less active during a particular experience. It cannot determine whether a soul exists or establish whether a spiritual separation from the body has actually occurred.

That distinction makes this study particularly fascinating. The researchers were able to observe measurable changes in the brain while a conscious person experienced herself as being outside her physical body. Whether those changes explain the entire phenomenon or merely describe what happens in the brain while it occurs is a question the experiment itself cannot answer.

For a person of faith, the study does not prove the existence of the soul, nor does it need to. Instead, it offers another intriguing glimpse into the extraordinary relationship between consciousness, the human body, and experiences that science is still working to understand.