Near-death experiences have fascinated people -- and experts -- for millennia. But until recently there has been no scientific explanation for why this phenomenon occurs. Now, neuroscientist Dr Jane Aspell has explained that it could be caused by damage to a vital part of the brain responsible for processing senses and balance. It could explain why those who have come close to death, taken drugs or suffered from a brain injury are among those who have reported out of body experiences. Such accounts have detailed cases of sufferers floating above their body that is lying down beneath them just after a traumatic event or accident.

A data-driven computational heuristic is proposed to control MIMO systems without prior knowledge of their dynamics. The heuristic is illustrated on a two-input two-output balance system. It integrates a self-adjusting nonlinear threshold accepting heuristic with a neural network to compromise between the desired transient and steady state characteristics of the system while optimizing a dynamic cost function. The heuristic decides on the control gains of multiple interacting PID control loops. The neural network is trained upon optimizing a weighted-derivative like objective cost function. The performance of the developed mechanism is compared with another controller that employs a combined PID-Riccati approach. One of the salient features of the proposed control schemes is that they do not require prior knowledge of the system dynamics. However, they depend on a known region of stability for the control gains to be used as a search space by the optimization algorithm. The control mechanism is validated using different optimization criteria which address different design requirements.