Out-of-Body Experience During Awake Craniotomy.

An out-of-body experience (OBE)—feeling as if one is spatially separated from one's physical body—was repeatedly triggered in a patient undergoing awake brain surgery for a low-grade glioma. Electrical stimulation of subcortical white matter near the left temporoparietal junction (TPJ) during the craniotomy caused the patient to feel as if she were floating above the operating table looking down at herself. Diffusion tensor imaging tractography suggested that the posterior thalamic radiation may be involved in such autoscopic phenomena. These findings support the TPJ's role in generating OBEs and point to specific white-matter pathways as possible neural substrates.

Study at a glance

Abstract

The out-of-body experience (OBE), during which a person feels as if he or she is spatially removed from the physical body, is a mystical phenomenon because of its association with near-death experiences. Literature implicates the cortex at the temporoparietal junction (TPJ) as the possible anatomic substrate for OBE. We present a patient who had an out-of-body experience during an awake craniotomy for resection of low-grade glioma. During surgery, stimulation of subcortical white matter in the left TPJ repetitively induced OBEs, in which the patient felt as if she was floating above the operating table looking down on herself. We repetitively induced OBE by subcortical stimulation near the left TPJ during awake craniotomy. Diffusion tensor imaging tractography implicated the posterior thalamic radiation as a possible substrate for autoscopic phenomena.