Brain
January 15, 2004
Olaf Blanke, Théodor Landis, Laurent Spinelli et al.
746 citations
Out-of-body experiences (OBE) and autoscopy (seeing one's body from outside) share common neurological mechanisms rooted in disrupted body perception. In six neurological patients, these experiences were linked to vestibular sensations (floating, flying, rotation), visual body-part illusions (shortening or moving limbs), and the sensation of seeing only part of one's body. Body position before the experience influenced both OBE and autoscopy. Brain damage or dysfunction localized to the temporo-parietal junction (TPJ) in five patients. The findings suggest OBE and autoscopy result from a failure to integrate proprioceptive, tactile, visual, and vestibular information about one's own body, combined with a vestibular dysfunction that disconnects personal space from extrapersonal space, caused by temporary TPJ dysfunction during impaired consciousness.
Journal of Neuroscience
January 19, 2005
Olaf Blanke, Christine Mohr, Christoph M. Michel et al.
573 citations
The temporoparietal junction (TPJ) is crucial for the conscious experience of the self as spatially united with the body. Using evoked potential mapping, the TPJ was selectively activated 330-400 milliseconds after stimulus onset when healthy volunteers imagined themselves in the position and visual perspective typical of out-of-body experiences (OBEs). Transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) over the TPJ at this time impaired mental transformation of one's own body but not of external objects. In an epileptic patient with OBEs originating from the TPJ, partial activation of the seizure focus occurred during mental transformations mimicking her OBE perceptions. These findings suggest that impaired processing at the TPJ may lead to pathological selves such as OBEs.
The Neuroscientist
January 4, 2005
Olaf Blanke, Shahar Arzy
468 citations
Out-of-body experiences (OBEs), where one's perspective and sense of self seem to leave the body, challenge the everyday assumption that the self resides inside the body. Evidence from neurology, cognitive neuroscience, and neuroimaging indicates that OBEs arise from a failure to integrate multisensory information about one's own body at the temporo-parietal junction (TPJ). This multisensory disintegration disrupts self-processing, producing illusory reduplication, self-location, perspective, and agency that together constitute the OBE.
Brain Research Reviews
July 13, 2005
Olaf Blanke, Christine Mohr
352 citations
Autoscopic phenomena (AP) are rare visual illusions where a person sees a second own body in external space, including out-of-body experiences, autoscopic hallucinations, and heautoscopy. This article reviews and statistically analyzes 41 neurological patients described over the past century, extracting phenomenological, functional, and anatomical variables that distinguish or are comparable among the three types. The findings provide testable hypotheses for future research. The authors suggest that scientifically demystifying AP can help investigate the cognitive functions and brain regions underlying normal corporeal awareness and self-consciousness.
Cortex
October 31, 2008
Sally Easton, Olaf Blanke, Christine Mohr
56 citations
People who have previously had out-of-body experiences (OBEs) show reduced cognitive flexibility when switching between different mental perspectives of their own body. In a study of 47 healthy participants (11 with prior OBEs, 36 without), individuals with OBEs performed worse on trials requiring them to alternate between imagining a figure as their own reflection (embodied self-location) and taking the figure's position (disembodied self-location mimicking an OBE). This difficulty was specific to switch trials, not repeated trials, and was most pronounced for body positions normally considered easier. The findings suggest that fronto-parietal brain connectivity, which supports flexible perspective-taking of self-congruent body representations, may be impaired in individuals prone to OBEs.
Elsevier eBooks
January 1, 2009
Olaf Blanke, Sebastian Dieguez
43 citations
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NeuroImage. Clinical
January 1, 2021
Eva Blondiaux, Lukas Heydrich, Olaf Blanke
33 citations
Autoscopic phenomena—the illusion of seeing a second own body in external space—take three forms: autoscopic hallucination, heautoscopy, and out-of-body experience. Using lesion network mapping in 26 neurological patients, all three forms localized to a common brain network centered on the bilateral temporo-parietal junction. Each type also showed distinct functional connectivity patterns: out-of-body experiences connected to the angular gyrus, precuneus, and inferior frontal gyrus; autoscopic hallucinations to the precuneus, inferior temporal gyrus, and cerebellum; heautoscopy to the left inferior frontal gyrus, insula, and parahippocampus. The temporo-parietal junction is the core region for all autoscopic phenomena, with each form recruiting additional sensorimotor and self-related subnetworks.
Neuroscience and biobehavioral reviews
August 1, 2024
Teresa Campillo-Ferrer, Adriana Alcaraz-Sánchez, Ema Demšar et al.
14 citations
Out-of-body experiences (OBEs), where a person feels located outside their physical body, often occur spontaneously near or during sleep. This review examines sleep-related OBEs and proposes that maintaining consciousness during the transition from wakefulness to REM sleep (sleep-onset REM periods) may enable them. A new conceptual model is introduced to distinguish sleep-related OBEs from similar states like lucid dreaming and sleep paralysis, and to suggest possible brain activity patterns (polysomnographic features) underlying them. The predictive coding framework is applied to connect sleep-related OBEs with those occurring during wakefulness.
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America
March 19, 2024
Hyuk-June Moon, Louis Albert, Emanuela De Falco et al.
9 citations
Grid cells in the entorhinal cortex, which encode location in space using environmental and bodily cues, also respond to illusory shifts in self-location caused by multisensory bodily stimulation, even without actual movement or visual navigation. In this fMRI study, participants experienced controlled illusory forward drifts in self-location through visuo-tactile stimulation while their visual viewpoint remained fixed. The entorhinal cortex showed grid cell-like representations that correlated with the magnitude of the perceived self-location and had the same grid orientation as during conventional virtual navigation. This indicates that the same neural representation is recruited for navigation based on environmental cues and for self-location changes driven by bodily signals.
Psychological medicine
February 1, 2024
Pavo Orepic, Fosco Bernasconi, Melissa Faggella et al.
9 citations
A robotic procedure that creates sensorimotor conflicts and a feeling of another person's presence can induce auditory-verbal hallucination (AVH)-like sensations in healthy individuals. In two studies, participants showed increased false alarm rates on a voice detection task. Stronger sensorimotor conflicts led to more AVH-like sensations, supporting the self-monitoring deficit account. The otherness condition produced more false alarms when detecting other-voice stimuli than self-voice stimuli, consistent with the strong perceptual priors account. The findings integrate both theoretical models of AVH.
iScience
January 19, 2024
Hsin-Ping Wu, Estelle Nakul, Sophie Betka et al.
9 citations
Out-of-body experiences (OBEs) involve feeling located outside one's own body, often looking down from above. These experiences have been linked to disrupted integration of bodily signals, particularly visual and vestibular information. In two experiments using mixed reality and a motion platform, congruent visual-vestibular stimulation in a self-centered reference frame induced an OBE-like illusion in healthy participants, characterized by elevated self-location and feelings of disembodiment and lightness. The strength of this illusion varied with individuals' visual field dependency, measured by the Rod and Frame Test. The findings suggest that OBEs arise from a mismatch between visual and vestibular cues related to gravity and self-motion.
NeuroImage
July 1, 2025
Hang Yang, Bruno Herbelin, Chuong Ngo et al.
6 citations
Experienced meditators often report feeling detached from their body and current concerns. This study used virtual reality to manipulate perspective during meditation in 23 participants, comparing a third-person perspective (3PP) with a first-person perspective (1PP). The 3PP condition produced stronger feelings of detachment and disconnection, reduced awareness of body boundaries, and less identification with the body. Neural recordings showed a more negative heartbeat-evoked potential in the 3PP condition, linked to activity in the posterior cingulate cortex and medial prefrontal cortex. These results connect changes in the sense of self during meditation to brain processes underlying bodily self-awareness, suggesting VR could help cultivate self-transcendent experiences.
Cortex; a journal devoted to the study of the nervous system and behavior
November 1, 2019
Jean-Paul Noel, Nathan Faivre, Elisa Magosso et al.
6 citations
Artificial neural networks built with feedback connections from multisensory to unisensory cortices, consistent with all-or-none models of conscious access, produced intermediate reaction times when multisensory stimuli were associated with unisensory feedback. In psychophysical testing with 29 subjects completing 10 hours of a multisensory cue-congruency task, reaction times to multisensory cues reported as unisensory fell between those of fully aware and fully unaware cues. These results suggest that graded forms of phenomenal consciousness can arise from neural networks that follow all-or-none principles.
eLife
May 22, 2025
Michael Pereira, Nathan Faivre, Fosco Bernasconi et al.
3 citations
Neurons in the subthalamic nucleus and thalamus, subcortical brain regions traditionally linked to motor and cognitive control, also play a role in perceptual consciousness. Recording single-neuron activity in patients undergoing deep brain stimulation surgery, researchers found that a significant proportion of these neurons changed their firing rate while participants anticipated a weak vibrotactile stimulus. The firing rate of 23% of these neurons differed between detected and undetected stimuli. This direct neurophysiological evidence suggests that subcortical structures contribute to conscious detection, challenging the prevailing cortico-centric view of the neural correlates of consciousness.
medRxiv
June 25, 2025
Devon Stoliker, Fosco Bernasconi, Olaf Blanke et al.
1 citation
preprint
Psilocybin reduces effective connectivity between the right and left anterior insula and between the right anterior insula and right temporoparietal junction in people who report intense out-of-body experiences. These changes parallel disruptions in TPJ–insula circuits observed in clinical and experimental OBEs, particularly in the right hemisphere. The findings highlight how psilocybin-induced disembodiment corresponds to altered causal neural dynamics underlying bodily self-consciousness.
medRxiv
July 10, 2026
Lada Kohoutová, Jevita Potheegadoo, Léa F Duong Phan Thanh et al.
Hallucinations in Parkinson's disease, from minor to structured, are linked to changes in brain connectivity and cognitive decline. Non-demented patients with minor or structured hallucinations share a common pattern of resting-state functional connectivity that is absent in patients without hallucinations. This pattern involves connections between subcortical areas and visual, attention, and default mode networks, as well as within-cerebellar and within-subcortical connectivity. The pattern is equally expressed in both hallucination groups and is associated with impairments in attention and executive function, as well as increased sensitivity to an experimental procedure that induces presence hallucinations. The findings suggest that altered subcortical-cortical connectivity underlies hallucinations even in their early, minor forms.
bioRxiv (Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory)
July 3, 2026
Sébastien Czajko, Jelle Zorn, Oussama Abdoun et al.
Nondual meditation, specifically Open Presence (OP) practice, is associated with reduced bodily self susceptibility and increased large-scale integration of functional brain networks. Expert meditators with over 10,000 hours of practice showed lower global network eccentricity during OP compared to novices, particularly in dorsal attention, ventral attention, and frontoparietal networks, indicating greater integration. These neural patterns correlated positively with measures of bodily self illusion and negatively with cognitive defusion, a construct reflecting reduced self-grasping toward thoughts. The findings suggest that nondual awareness involves alterations in self-representation and large-scale functional brain integration.
bioRxiv
October 26, 2024
Hang Yang, Bruno Herbelin, Chuong Ngo et al.
preprint
Practicing meditation from a third-person perspective in virtual reality, compared with a first-person perspective, produces stronger feelings of detachment and disconnection, a less distinct sense of one's body boundary, and reduced identification with the body. These subjective changes are accompanied by a more negative heartbeat evoked potential amplitude and activation of the posterior cingulate cortex and medial prefrontal cortex. The findings link altered states of self during meditation to neural and behavioral measures of the bodily self, demonstrating that manipulating perspective in VR can modulate the sense of self during meditation.
bioRxiv Preprint Server
January 27, 2023
Michael Pereira, Nathan Faivre, Fosco Bernasconi et al.
preprint
Neurons in the subthalamic nucleus and thalamus, subcortical brain structures, modulate their activity during expectation of a weak vibrotactile stimulus on the hand, and 23% of these neurons show firing rates that differ between detected and undetected stimuli. This provides direct neurophysiological evidence that these subcortical regions are involved in perceptual consciousness, challenging the prevailing cortico-centric view.
Medical hypotheses
January 1, 2005
Shahar Arzy, Moshé Idel, Théodor Landis et al.
Revelation experiences foundational to the three monotheistic religions share phenomenological features with experiences reported by contemporary non-mystic mountaineers at altitude, including feeling and hearing a presence, seeing a figure or lights, and fear. The authors suggest that exposure to altitude may alter functional and neural mechanisms—particularly in the temporo-parietal junction and prefrontal cortex—that facilitate such experiences. Acute and chronic hypoxia affect these brain areas, which are also linked to altered body perceptions and mystical experiences. Prolonged high-altitude stays, especially with social deprivation, may cause prefrontal lobe dysfunctions like reduced stress resistance and loss of inhibition. These parallels indicate altitude exposure might contribute to inducing revelation experiences and help explain the mountain metaphor in religion.