Hayley Dewe

2 papers in the library · publishing 2013-2017

Papers

Predisposition to out-of-body experience (OBE) is associated with aberrations in multisensory integration: Psychophysiological support from a "rubber hand illusion" study.

Journal of experimental psychology. Human perception and performance June 1, 2017 Jason J Braithwaite, Derrick G Watson, Hayley Dewe

People who have spontaneous out-of-body experiences in everyday life show differences in how their brains integrate sensory information. In a rubber hand illusion experiment with 180 participants, those prone to out-of-body experiences did not show the typical fear response to a threat directed at the rubber hand when the brushing was asynchronous, unlike control participants who reacted more strongly during synchronous stimulation. This suggests that imprecise top-down tuning in multisensory integration, possibly through predictive coding mechanisms, may underlie aberrant self-consciousness even in nonclinical populations.

DOI: 10.1037/xhp0000406 Full text

Fractionating the unitary notion of dissociation: disembodied but not embodied dissociative experiences are associated with exocentric perspective-taking.

Frontiers in Human Neuroscience January 1, 2013 Jason J Braithwaite, Kelly James, Hayley Dewe et al.

People who have had out-of-body experiences (OBEs) are more efficient at taking an external, third-person perspective on a novel perspective-taking task compared to people who have not had OBEs. They also report significantly higher levels of derealization—feeling alienated from their surroundings—but not higher levels of other anomalous body experiences, emotional numbing, or sensory recall anomalies. These results support a distinction between embodied dissociative experiences (like feeling unreal) and disembodied ones (like OBEs), with only the latter linked to enhanced exocentric perspective-taking. The findings suggest that OBEs may reflect a facilitated ability to adopt an external viewpoint, rather than a deficit.

DOI: 10.3389/fnhum.2013.00719 Full text Anomalous bodily experiences Depersonalization Dissociation Out-of-body experience +1