I think this article gives an interesting theory on obe. It poses the idea that when we learn to obe we learn to control our own ‘body image neuronal network’.
i don’t understand… 
What exactly don’t you understand? formulate a question…
In short they found ‘evidence’ that we have a mental image of our own bodies, which they call a “body scheme represented by the neuromatrix” (somehting we already suspect ofcourse because we have dream bodies too which resemble our real bodies very closely).
So this is exactly what happens when people go into a dream and also an OBE: their neuromatrix takes over and creates a virtual (dream) body. To me this proves once more that the claims of people who say they actually leave their body through a sleep or trance induced OBE, are based on a false, albeit very understandable, assumption.
bingo
Nice post Æzen 
. Very well thought out and stuff 
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Yeah indeed very well thought out, those 2 seperate but interconnected systems. We’ll have to ponder on this over some Rochefort 10.
Actually, this neuromatrix sounds incredibly similar to what is referred to as the somatosensory homunculus. This is the part of the brain which is responsible for the sensations we feel in our extremities… and explains the phantom limb as such - Neurons in the somatosensory homunculus stop receiving neural information say from the arm (cause it was cut off) - in order to get any input they start to spread out in to other areas of the homunculus. The homunculus can be divided up into the different areas of our extremities… and it just so happens the hand and the cheeks are right next to each other… so when the cheek starts sending information (like the sensations when you are shaving), those neurons that receive for the hand start picking up some of the cheeks info too - and hence you experience your phantom limb.
The articles that link references seem a bit old.
Maybe what happens is something similar when we relax/sleep - the somatosensory cortex becomes starved of information and what we experience as an OBE is some sort of compensation mechanism?
Well that is my two cents for the day! 
Yeah it could very well be that this somatosensory homunculus is (at least) part of the mechnism behind the neuromatrix, and as a result also of experiences like phantom limbs and OBE’s. However OBE is different from phantom limbs in that here your entire body is emulated, and not just because you activate some part of the somatosensory homunculus like with shaving. Also, the dream body generation in for example OBE’s is something that MUST happen, since in a dream we automatically switch to it. Phantom body parts however can be active or inactive, and some people without a certain limb don’t experience phantom symphtoms.