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.