Out-of-body experience in the anterior insular cortex during the intracranial electrodes stimulation in an epileptic child.
Journal of clinical neuroscience : official journal of the Neurosurgical Society of Australasia August 1, 2018 Kaijia Yu, Chang Liu, Tao Yu et al.
Stimulating the anterior insular cortex (AIC) with intracranial electrodes triggered an out-of-body experience (OBE) in a child with intractable epilepsy. After destroying specific sites in the left AIC using radiofrequency thermocoagulation, the patient's seizures stopped and the OBE could no longer be reproduced by stimulating those sites. This is the first reported case of an OBE originating from the AIC. The authors analyze how OBEs typically arise from the temporo-parietal junction and propose two possible mechanisms by which the AIC might cause the experience.