Out-of-Body Experience

An out-of-body experience (OBE) is a transient impression of being separated from one's own body. Usually it is associated with three main phenomenological elements: the impression of the self being localized outside one's body (disembodiment), the impression of seeing the world from this elevated perspective (altered first-person perspective), and seeing one's own body below (autoscopy). This entry describes OBE's observed in clinical settings and how OBE has been studied experimentally in healthy participants.

These are, of course, unusual and uncommon experiences, because we normally perceive our self as localized within our bodily borders (embodiment) at a distinct location in space from where we also perceive the world (first-person perspective). Therefore, the scientific study of OBEs offers a unique possibility to gain insights into the functional and ...