October 1, 2005
Shahar Arzy, Théodor Landis, Olaf Blanke
Under normal conditions, human subjects experience the self within the limits of the physical body and the limits of the present time. This unified experience of the self in space and time has been challenged by philosophers and physicists. The spatial unity between self and body has also been challenged by a well defined group of experiences called “autoscopic phenomena” (AP), during which...
Journal of Neuroscience
January 19, 2005
Olaf Blanke, Christine Mohr, Christoph M. Michel et al.
573 citations
The spatial unity of self and body is challenged by various philosophical considerations and several phenomena, perhaps most notoriously the "out-of-body experience" (OBE) during which one's visual perspective and one's self are experienced to have departed from their habitual position within one's body. Although researchers started examining isolated aspects of the self, the neurocognitive...
Medical Hypotheses
2005
Shahar Arzy, Moshé Idel, Théodor Landis et al.
The fundamental revelations to the founders of the three monotheistic religions, among many other revelation experiences, had occurred on a mountain. These three revelation experiences share many phenomenological components like feeling and hearing a presence, seeing a figure, seeing lights, and feeling of fear. In addition, similar experiences have been reported by non-mystic contemporary...
Brain
January 15, 2004
Olaf Blanke, Théodor Landis, Laurent Spinelli et al.
746 citations
During an out-of-body experience (OBE), the experient seems to be awake and to see his body and the world from a location outside the physical body. A closely related experience is autoscopy (AS), which is characterized by the experience of seeing one's body in extrapersonal space. Yet, despite great public interest and many case studies, systematic neurological studies of OBE and AS are...
Cognitive Neuropsychiatry
February 1, 1997
Peter Brugger, M Regard, Théodor Landis
Autoscopic phenomena involve the illusory reduplication of one's own body. The literature on the topic is widely scattered and suffers from considerable terminological and conceptual inconsistencies. This article proposes a classification scheme based on phenomenological criteria. Along with examples of illustrative cases, we outline the main features of autoscopic hallucinations, heautoscopy...