http://arstechnica.com/science/2014/03/out-of-body-experiences-are-harder-to-remember/

"Scott K Johnson @ ArsTechnica" wrote:

If you think about it, memory is an astounding thing. At will, our brains can dig back through the archives and pull out the sights, sounds, smells, sensations, and emotions from a day long gone. All those memories have one pretty obvious thing in common—everything about an experience is recorded from a first-person perspective. But what happens if your memory is not in first-person.

Some people go through what is commonly referred to as “out-of-body experiences,” where they feel a sense of detachment from their body as if they were somehow floating above it. This and related "dissociative" phenomena can be a part of posttraumatic stress disorder or schizophrenia, for example.

...

Previous research showed that the hippocampus is hard at work when we first try to remember an event, but it’s less involved if we go over that memory again soon after. So during the test, the students were asked to recall each event several times.

The scans showed the normal pattern for the events experienced from an in-body perspective, with activity in the hippocampus decreasing with each repetition. For the out-of-body memories, however, the pattern was reversed—activity in the hippocampus was low when a memory was first retrieved. Further, the students with the lowest activity were also the ones who reported their memory as being the least vivid.

The researchers say that these results point to the hippocampus not being able to fulfill its role as stenographer as well when it doesn't have an in-body perspective to work with, resulting in less-detailed memories. “The sense of owning a body in space defines the egocentric reference frames used to generate spatial representations of the external environment,” they write. Working out the details of how that happens in the brain helps us understand memory broadly, as well as what people with dissociative disorders are going through.

I think this directly means that anyone who believes they experienced one and can remember every detail often allow their own creativity to fill in the gaps without realizing it.

Some very interesting discussion on the first page of user comments as well.

Maybe that is why I don't remember any ;)

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Bob DeWoody

My motto: Never do today what you can put off until tomorrow as it may not be required. This no longer applies in light of current events.

lol...

I think this topic also applies to alien abduction experiences, where people often can't remember much of what happened to them. Typically the gaps in memory are filled by previous stories of encounters, or things they saw on TV, but their memory makes it real to them.

Strange to come across a thread like this over here:))

Thanx Ozzfan, interesting.

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rOZZ
Music
Pictures

Ernest Hemingway, in "Farewell to arms" describes his experience when hit by a shell on the Isonzo front in the First World War. Unfortunately the translator in Italian did not understand what he was expressing and I found it when reading the English original version.
Tullio

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I've never had one so can't comment - but thought I'd say hello anyway! :) I did once not recognise my own hands - but that probably isn't the same thing at all. I sort of knew they must be mine because they were attached to my arms but beyond that - nothing.

Hope everyone's having a nice day in their bodies!

I don't remember many of my 'out of body' experiences either.

I sometimes profess to be from kpax, so it's no wonder.

I at times absolutely believe that to be true.
It would explain many things in my life.

Many things.

Like my cat thingy. I hear there are MANY cats on kpax.

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"Time is simply the mechanism that keeps everything from happening all at once."