Flattened brain hierarchy and increased EEG complexity during unusual bodily experiences and out-of-body experiences

Abstract

Abstract Experiences in which the sense of the body becomes distorted offer a unique window into how the brain constructs the bodily self. Despite their clinical relevance in conditions such as depersonalization and body-image disorders, large-scale brain dynamics underlying unusual bodily experiences (UBEs) remain poorly understood, and no prior study has examined them systematically across wakefulness and sleep. Here, we analyzed a high-density EEG dataset including 36 UBE episodes, such as floating sensations, distorted body boundaries, and out-of-body experiences, recorded across rapid eye-movement (REM) sleep, light sleep, sleep arousals, and wakefulness during meditation (N=20). We quantified the temporal irreversibility of neural dynamics, a marker of cortical hierarchical organization, and complemented these analyses with whole-brain signal complexity measures following a within-subject design. UBEs were consistently associated with a global reduction in neural irreversibility and cortical hierarchical differentiation relative to non-UBEs and wakefulness, along with a concurrent increase in whole-brain complexity to levels comparable to wakefulness. Together, these findings suggest that UBEs reflect a neural state combining high informational richness with a transient flattening of cortical hierarchy, a profile that resembles that observed in psychedelic states. Key points UBEs are associated with a global flattening of brain hierarchy measured by EEG. UBEs are associated with increased global EEG complexity, resembling the psychedelic state.