Hearing of a Presence

Abstract

Here we describe a patient with epilepsy (secondary to left parieto-temporal brain damage) suffering from the paroxysmal unilateral experience of hearing a person in her near extrapersonal space. The paroxysmal auditory experience was associated with a deficit in spatial auditory perception and other paroxysmal disorders of somatognosia. Based on these findings, it is suggested that the paroxysmal hearing of a person nearby corresponds to an auditory disorder of somatognosia.

Feeling in control of your footsteps: Conscious gait monitoring and the auditory consequences of footsteps

“…A comparison with the previous literature revealed that these delay-related agency mechanisms were similar whether auditory or visual consequences of actions were tested, compatible with supramodal, modality-independent control mechanisms. We argue that the further study of agency and ownership for a person's full body may help to refine our scientific criteria of selfhood (Blanke & Metzinger, 2009) and are of relevance for neurological conditions (Arzy, Seeck, Ortigue, Spinelli, & Blanke, 2006;Blanke et al, 2003) and psychiatric conditions (Daprati et al, 1997;Franck et al, 2001) characterized by a disturbance of selfhood.…”

“…This is suggested by the scene from The Man Who Knew Too Much and by clinical data in neurological patients (i.e. Blanke, Ortigue, Coeytaux, Martory, & Landis, 2003). Moreover, walking differs from upper limb actions in several physiological ways: Gait is cyclic, more rarely immediately goal-directed, and is generally considered a highly automatic and unconscious action with important control centres in spinal cord and brainstem (Armstrong, 1988;Grillner & Wallen, 1985).…”

Out-of-body experience, heautoscopy, and autoscopic hallucination of neurological origin

“…During negative heautoscopy, subjects report not seeing their reflection in a reflecting surface. The feeling of a presence is defined as the convincing feeling that there is another person close by without actually seeing that person [21,10] and has been called previously ''leibhafte Bewusstheit'' [56], ''hallucination du compagnon'' [62] or ''feeling of a presence'' [21,10]). We have not included internal and negative heautoscopy in the present analysis because they are extremely rare and there have been, to our knowledge, no reported cases due to focal brain damage.…”

Why revelations have occurred on mountains?

“…Brugger et al [9] pro- posed that stressful events, physically and emotionally while climbing mountains, cause release of endorphins, which are known to lower the threshold for temporal lobe epilepsy, which, in turn, may evoke revelation-like experiences such as hearing of sounds or voices, memory flashback, déjà vu, a sense that someone is nearby (feeling of a presence), autoscopic phenomena and emotional manifestations, most commonly fear [17]. Blanke et al [18] suggested that feeling a presence, autoscopy, and hearing a presence might all relate to abnormal body processing or body schema. It has been proposed that such phenomena are due to interference with the temporo-parietal junction (TPJ) and adjacent structures [16,[18][19][20].…”

“…Blanke et al [18] suggested that feeling a presence, autoscopy, and hearing a presence might all relate to abnormal body processing or body schema. It has been proposed that such phenomena are due to interference with the temporo-parietal junction (TPJ) and adjacent structures [16,[18][19][20]. Vestibular manifestations also accompany phenomena resulting from damage to this area [16,20,21] and multisensory integration in the temporo-parietal association areas at extreme altitude may be disturbed [10].…”