Neural-pathway Causes  

For example, it is possible that a disturbance in the neuromatrix, a form of pain transduction, can disrupt various sense perception, including ones for the vestibular, motor and proprioceptive system. This disturbance can generate unusual bodily sensations and OBE is possibly one of the extreme result. And this can occur during sleep paralysis, a near death experience and sensory deprivation. 

In addition to the neuromatrix model, another finding implies the possibility that hypo-activation or a form of hyper-polarization of the cortical vestibular area during sleep paralysis can render multiple cortexes incapable of processing and integrating mismatching information from various senses while possibly activating the sub-cortical vestibular centers.

To understand this concept, one can think of this as a form of reverse cross-activation or “cross-inhibition.” Cross-activation describes an imbalance of chemical that travels between various parts of the brain and it illustrates how when one part of the brain is activated, another or multiple others would simultaneously respond. For example, people with grapheme color synesthesia experience cross-activation when they see numbers and letters as the cortex that responds to color becomes excited too. Here, cross-inhibition would mean that the deactivation of one cortex correspond to the deactivation of another or multiple others. This idea seems appropriate here because, while the deactivation of the cortical vestibular areas does not lead to the complete inhibition of others, it does cause a similar effect by inhibiting other cortexes’ normal functions.