Out-of-body experiences explained away by scientists

The findings, reported in the journal Science, suggest that the mind relies on the senses of sight and touch to know it is located inside the body.

When the connection between the two is disrupted - by illness, drugs or scientific experiments - things go awry, creating a sensation that the mind has left the body.

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Neuroscientist Dr Henrik Ehrsson used goggles, a video camera and sticks or rods in a simple experiment to confuse the brain.

A volunteer was asked to sit on a chair and wear goggles that were linked to a video camera trained on his back. Looking through the goggles, the person saw an image of his back, from the perspective of someone sitting around six feet behind him.

During the experiments at University College London, Dr Ehrsson then touched the person's chest with a plastic rod.

Unable to see Dr Ehrsson touching his chest because of the goggles, the volunteer was left with the sensation that he was sitting in the position of the onlooker and looking at his back from behind.

Dr Ehrsson, who tried his experiment out on himself, said: "You really feel that you are sitting in a different place in the room, and you're looking at this thing in front of you that looks like yourself, and you know it's yourself, but it doesn't feel like yourself.

"This experiment suggests that the first-person visual perspective is critically important for the in-body experience. In other words, we feel our self is located where our eyes are."

The researcher believes the technique could be refined to allow people to feel as if they are part of a video game or even allow surgeons to direct robots to carry out operations hundreds of miles away.