VR, vision and sense of self

A couple of days ago I received a post from a team mate (its in Hebrew so I wo'nt bother with it). It basically talks about two separate experiments that were carried out in Europe and deal with recreating rigorously "out of body" experiences for tested subjects by using sensory inputs from video cameras to their eyes in which they see themselves. These were both part of the latest Science issue but the two originals can be found at the UCL Neurology institute and the Ecole Polytechnique Federale de Laussane. ostensibly what both researchers demonstrated was that projecting people with images of themselves from the back in real time, while conflicting physical sensory inputs (touch) to their bodies, created a perception of being outside ones own body.
As an anecdotal side note - about 10 years ago while at a government research facility and dealing with stereo vision I had pondered seriously on the implications of manipulating the points of view of our eyes and what effect that might have on our perception. My concept was somewhat different and basically talked about using the same video camera feed but with one "eye" set to normal and the other changing perspectives. I hypothesized that as long as the two images were towards the front of the subject (such that when she moves to her "real" front both eyes get closer to the far wall) she will retain her sense of balance and self. I expected that once this relation was broken (say one camera was 90 degrees to the other, or pointed backwards) our consciousness would break down and our sense of self localization could suffer. Unfortunately this was not part of the agenda at the time and I never returned to it. I wonder if some of the neuroscientists looking into this field could take on this experiment...
At any rate out of body experiences connect directly to the issue of self and the connection of our physical and mental existence as a unified pair. This has been something revisited by many philosophers theologists, cognitive scientists and even physicists over the years and seems to be a critical hub of both social science, brain and neurology, physics and artificial intelligence and a hotly debated issue these days.

MC