The Experimental Induction of Out-of-Body Experiences

2007/08/23 by H. Henrik Ehrsson · 7 citations
Computer Science · Neuroscience · Psychology · #Aesthetic Perception and Analysis #Artificial intelligence #Cognitive psychology #Computer science #Conjunction (astronomy) #Epistemology #Illusion #Optical illusion #Perspective (graphical) #Philosophy #Physical body #Physics #Psychology #Virtual Reality Applications and Impacts #Visual perception and processing mechanisms

paper · doi:10.1126/science.1142175

openalex publication_date 2007/08/23 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/08/06

Abstract

I report an illusion in which individuals experience that they are located outside their physical bodies and looking at their bodies from this perspective. This demonstrates that the experience of being localized within the physical body can be determined by the visual perspective in conjunction with correlated multisensory information from the body.

Citations

• Reflective mirrors: Perspective-taking in autoscopic phenomena
• Spatial memory: how egocentric and allocentric combine
• Illusory Reduplication of One's Own Body: Phenomenology and Classification of Autoscopic Phenomena
• Out‐of‐body experience and autoscopy of neurological origin

Cited by

• Brain mechanisms in religion and spirituality: An integrative predictive processing framework
• First Person Experience of Body Transfer in Virtual Reality
• Psychedelics, Meditation, and Self-Consciousness
• An Examination of a Theory of Embodied Social Presence in Virtual Worlds*
• Quantifying body ownership information processing and perceptual bias in the rubber hand illusion
• 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
• Out-of-body experience [wikipedia]

Related

• If I Were You: Perceptual Illusion of Body Swapping
• Voluntary Out-of-Body Experience: An fMRI Study
• Video Ergo Sum: Manipulating Bodily Self-Consciousness
• The Invisible Hand Illusion: Multisensory Integration Leads to the Embodiment of a Discrete Volume of Empty Space
• 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