Cognitive correlates of the spontaneous out-of-body experience (OBE) in the psychologically normal population: evidence for an increased role of temporal-lobe instability, body-distortion processing, and impairments in own-body transformations.
Cortex; a journal devoted to the study of the nervous system and behavior January 1, 2011 Jason J Braithwaite, Dana Samson, Ian Apperly et al.
People who report out-of-body experiences (OBEs) show more perceptual anomalies, particularly related to temporal-lobe instability and body-distortion processing, and are impaired at mentally transforming their own body. Two studies with university students found that 26% reported at least one OBE. OBEers scored higher on the Cardiff anomalous perception scale, and those with elevated temporal-lobe or body-distortion measures performed worse on a mental own-body transformation task. These results extend findings from epileptic patients to the general population, suggesting disrupted temporal-lobe and body-based processing underlies OBE-type experiences.