Out-of-Body Experience During Awake Craniotomy.
Eelke M Bos, Jochem K H Spoor, Marion Smits, Joost W Schouten, Arnaud J P E Vincent
World neurosurgery August 1, 2016 DOI: 10.1016/j.wneu.2016.05.002 (opens in new tab)
Study at a glance
AI-extracted from the abstract| Characteristics | Case study Case report Peer reviewed |
|---|---|
| Sample size | 1 |
| Population | A patient undergoing awake craniotomy for low-grade glioma resection |
| Keywords | Autoscopy Awake craniotomy Diffusion tensor imaging Low-grade glioma Out-of-body experience Posterior thalamic radiation Temporoparietal junction |
| Key findings | Subcortical stimulation near the left temporoparietal junction repeatedly induced out-of-body experiences during awake craniotomy. |
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.