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

Blanke, Olaf; Möhr, Christine

doi:10.1016/j.brainresrev.2005.05.008

Cited by 310 publications

(136 citation statements)

References 64 publications

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“…Yet, it is telling that even in lucid control dreams, where multiple (visual) body models are simultaneously active and under one's own control, only one of these is typically experienced as being the self, whereas the others are experienced as distinct from the self. This fits in well with the finding that in wakefulness, instances of bi-location and of identification with more than one body-model at the same time are rare and typically unstable (as in heautoscopy; see Blanke and Mohr, 2005; see also Furlanetto et al, 2013). Research is only beginning to investigate the feeling of dis owning one's own body in full-body illusions, and again, there is some indication that the experience of owning a different body comes at the price of disowning one's own (Guterstam and Ehrsson, 2012).…”

Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 86%

Tickle me, I think I might be dreaming! Sensory attenuation, self-other distinction, and predictive processing in lucid dreams

Windt

Harkness

Lenggenhager

2014

Front. Hum. Neurosci.

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The contrast between self- and other-produced tickles, as a special case of sensory attenuation for self-produced actions, has long been a target of empirical research. While in standard wake states it is nearly impossible to tickle oneself, there are interesting exceptions. Notably, participants awakened from REM (rapid eye movement-) sleep dreams are able to tickle themselves. So far, however, the question of whether it is possible to tickle oneself and be tickled by another in the dream state has not been investigated empirically or addressed from a theoretical perspective. Here, we report the results of an explorative web-based study in which participants were asked to rate their sensations during self-tickling and being tickled during wakefulness, imagination, and lucid dreaming. Our results, though highly preliminary, indicate that in the special case of lucid control dreams, the difference between self-tickling and being tickled by another is obliterated, with both self- and other produced tickles receiving similar ratings as self-tickling during wakefulness. This leads us to the speculative conclusion that in lucid control dreams, sensory attenuation for self-produced tickles spreads to those produced by non-self dream characters. These preliminary results provide the backdrop for a more general theoretical and metatheoretical discussion of tickling in lucid dreams in a predictive processing framework. We argue that the primary value of our study lies not so much in our results, which are subject to important limitations, but rather in the fact that they enable a new theoretical perspective on the relationship between sensory attenuation, the self-other distinction and agency, as well as suggest new questions for future research. In particular, the example of tickling during lucid dreaming raises the question of whether sensory attenuation and the self-other distinction can be simulated largely independently of external sensory input.

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Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 86%

Tickle me, I think I might be dreaming! Sensory attenuation, self-other distinction, and predictive processing in lucid dreams

Windt

Harkness

Lenggenhager

2014

Front. Hum. Neurosci.

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“…The illusion is then triggered through congruent visuotactile stimulation on the real and fake body. When synchronous visuotactile stimulation is delivered on the back (Lenggenhager et al, 2007), most participants experience the illusion of looking at their body from the outside, similarly to what is reported in OBEs of neurological origin (Blanke and Mohr, 2005). This illusion is associated with illusory changes in self-location , with a systematic shift from the participant's visual perspective toward the seen body.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 54%

Sliding perspectives: dissociating ownership from self-location during full body illusions in virtual reality

Maselli

Slater

2014

Front. Hum. Neurosci.

110

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Bodily illusions have been used to study bodily self-consciousness and disentangle its various components, among other the sense of ownership and self-location. Congruent multimodal correlations between the real body and a fake humanoid body can in fact trigger the illusion that the fake body is one's own and/or disrupt the unity between the perceived self-location and the position of the physical body. However, the extent to which changes in self-location entail changes in ownership is still matter of debate. Here we address this problem with the support of immersive virtual reality. Congruent visuotactile stimulation was delivered on healthy participants to trigger full body illusions from different visual perspectives, each resulting in a different degree of overlap between real and virtual body. Changes in ownership and self-location were measured with novel self-posture assessment tasks and with an adapted version of the cross-modal congruency task. We found that, despite their strong coupling, self-location and ownership can be selectively altered: self-location was affected when having a third person perspective over the virtual body, while ownership toward the virtual body was experienced only in the conditions with total or partial overlap. Thus, when the virtual body is seen in the far extra-personal space, changes in self-location were not coupled with changes in ownership. If a partial spatial overlap is present, ownership was instead typically experienced with a boosted change in the perceived self-location. We discussed results in the context of the current knowledge of the multisensory integration mechanisms contributing to self-body perception. We argue that changes in the perceived self-location are associated to the dynamical representation of peripersonal space encoded by visuotactile neurons. On the other hand, our results speak in favor of visuo-proprioceptive neuronal populations being a driving trigger in full body ownership illusions.

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“…This specific localization has been supported by multiple lines of evidence, including neuroimaging studies, focal lesion case reports and electrical stimulation studies (De Ridder et al, 2007; Blanke and Arzy, 2005). OBEs are subjective episodes in which the self is perceived outside of the body combined with the impression of visualizing one's own body from a distant or elevated perspective (Blanke and Mohr, 2005). Blanke and Arzy (2005) have proposed that multisensory disintegration may lead to disruption of numerous aspects of self-processing and consequent illusory perceptions and agency.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Functional neuroimaging of conversion disorder: The role of ancillary activation

Burke

Ghaffar

Staines

et al. 2014

NeuroImage: Clinical

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BackgroundPrevious functional neuroimaging studies investigating the neuroanatomy of conversion disorder have yielded inconsistent results that may be attributed to small sample sizes and disparate methodologies. The objective of this study was to better define the functional neuroanatomical correlates of conversion disorder.MethodsTen subjects meeting clinical criteria for unilateral sensory conversion disorder underwent fMRI during which a vibrotactile stimulus was applied to anesthetic and sensate areas. A block design was used with 4 s of stimulation followed by 26 s of rest, the pattern repeated 10 times. Event-related group averages of the BOLD response were compared between conditions.ResultsAll subjects were right-handed females, with a mean age of 41. Group analyses revealed 10 areas that had significantly greater activation (p < .05) when stimulation was applied to the anesthetic body part compared to the contralateral sensate mirror region. They included right paralimbic cortices (anterior cingulate cortex and insula), right temporoparietal junction (angular gyrus and inferior parietal lobule), bilateral dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (middle frontal gyri), right orbital frontal cortex (superior frontal gyrus), right caudate, right ventral-anterior thalamus and left angular gyrus. There was a trend for activation of the somatosensory cortex contralateral to the anesthetic region to be decreased relative to the sensate side.ConclusionsSensory conversion symptoms are associated with a pattern of abnormal cerebral activation comprising neural networks implicated in emotional processing and sensory integration. Further study of the roles and potential interplay of these networks may provide a basis for an underlying psychobiological mechanism of conversion disorder.

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

Cited by 310 publications

References 64 publications

Tickle me, I think I might be dreaming! Sensory attenuation, self-other distinction, and predictive processing in lucid dreams

Tickle me, I think I might be dreaming! Sensory attenuation, self-other distinction, and predictive processing in lucid dreams

Sliding perspectives: dissociating ownership from self-location during full body illusions in virtual reality

Functional neuroimaging of conversion disorder: The role of ancillary activation

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