Hi, you're about to get smarter in just a few minutes with Curiosity Daily from Curiosity.com.

I'm Cody Gough.

And I'm Ashley Hamer.

Today you learn about how scientists induced an out-of-body experience in mice and a human without using drugs, and how major planetary

events tend to coincide in what scientists are calling the Earth's geological pulse.

Let's satisfy some curiosity.

Researchers have figured out how to induce an out-of-body experience without drugs.

And that could tell us more about this strange phenomenon, which is associated with

everything from ketamine and PCP to epilepsy and post-traumatic stress disorder.

The researchers were interested in an altered state of consciousness called dissociation,

where you feel like you're outside of your own body.

As many as 10% of the population has experienced dissociation at least once, usually because

of drugs, a neurological disease, or trauma.

Nearly 75% of people who experienced something traumatic found themselves

dissociating later on. It's not that unusual, but scientists have very little idea what's going on in the brain during this state.

And that's why it's a big deal that researchers have finally begun unraveling the biology underneath this strange experience.

The research involved several mice and one human.

First the researchers found out what happens in a brain that was dissociating by giving mice a lot of drugs, some known to cause dissociation, and others know not to.

They noticed something distinctive happening in the brains of mice on dissociative drugs, in a region called the retrosplenial cortex.

Neurons in a small part of that region started firing in sync very slowly.

Then the researchers flipped the script.

They took sober mice and stimulated the same bundles of neurons in their brains so they pulsed at the same rhythm.

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