Sleep deprivation produces a «double hit» to the brain in this regard: there is a sharp reduction in frontal lobe activity leading one to misjudge hunger and eat more junk and also leading to an exaggerated activation of reward centers (mostly the amygdalae) after eating. (ajnr.org)
If conditions were right, says Newberg, these two things should be enough to produce the same temporal lobe activity to trigger an out - of - body experience. (discovermagazine.com)
He predicts that prefrontal lobe activity will turn out to be a key part of that brain circuitry. (sciencemag.org)