Doctors at 25 UK and U.S. hospitals are embarking upon a three-year study to try to understand the “out of body experience.”

Shelving will be set up in resuscitation areas with pictures that can only be seen from the ceiling, and 1500 survivors who have experienced the loss of heartbeat or brain activity will be asked whether they have seen the pictures whilst their consciousness is allegedly outside their bodies.

One hundred cases of the “out of body experience” were documented in the 1975 best seller Life After Life by Dr Raymond Moody. Survivors reported either looking down at their lifeless body lying in the hospital bed from the perspective of the ceiling or moving through a tunnel towards a bright light.

Dr Sam Parnia, of the University of Southampton, says that his own work experience has led him to be less than sceptical about this phenomenon:

“People who have been brought back to life after clinical death often describe a sensation of separating from themselves — that’s called an ‘out-of-body experience’ — and that can be tested and validated scientifically. So if it’s real we should be able to prove it, and if it’s just a trick of the mind we should be able to prove that as well.”

Psychologist Dr Susan Blackmore has a slightly different idea about what is going on:

“All my own research over decades on out-of-body experiences shows that they are convincing, realistic, quite amazing experiences but that nothing leaves the body,” she says.

Let’s hope the pictures that Dr Parnia and his team put on the walls of the resuscitation areas are eye-catching enough to be remembered by the near-death survivors. It would be rather disappointing if they forgot to look, and it’s unlikely that many subjects would be volunteering for a second attempt.

Rhian Gibbings