Autoscopy

Autoscopic phenomena refer to complex experiences involving the illusory reduplication of one's own body. Here we report the third long-lasting case of autoscopy in a patient with right occipital lesion. Instead of the commonly reported frontal mirror view (fantôme spéculaire), the patient saw her head and upper trunk laterally in side view (fantôme de profil). We found that the visual appearance and completeness of the autoscopic image could be selectively modulated by active and passive movements, without being influenced by imagining the same movements or by tactile and auditory stimulation...

Kafka's writings are frequently interpreted as representing the historical period of modernism in which he was writing. Little attention has been paid, however, to the possibility that his writings may reflect neural mechanisms in the processing of self during hypnagogic (i.e., between waking and sleep) states. Kafka suffered from dream-like, hypnagogic hallucinations during a sleep-deprived state while writing. This paper discusses reasons (phenomenological and neurobiological) why the self projects an imaginary double (autoscopy) in its spontaneous hallucinations and how Kafka's writings help to elucidate the underlying cognitive and neural mechanisms...

The sense of personal identity is an element of the Jasperian definition of self-conscience. Each of us is convinced of being a unique and stable individual, different from other individuals. These properties - stability ad coherence - belong to an image of ourselves that was proposed to us by the Other's look during the mirror phase. Brain focal lesions may threaten this certitude in two ways: 1) brain lesions result in deficiency, disability or handicap, which are experienced as a narcissistic injury. The patient questions himself about the image he offers to the Other's look, and, as a result, his sense of personal identity is unsettled; 2) a variety of focal brain lesions or dysfunctions may alter the activity of areas which are necessary for maintaining a stable image of the patients' body or self...

Among the varied hallucinations associated with sleep paralysis (SP), out-of-body experiences (OBEs) and vestibular-motor (V-M) sensations represent a distinct factor. Recent studies of direct stimulation of vestibular cortex report a virtually identical set of bodily-self hallucinations. Both programs of research agree on numerous details of OBEs and V-M experiences and suggest similar hypotheses concerning their association. In the present study, self-report data from two on-line surveys of SP-related experiences were employed to assess hypotheses concerning the causal structure of relations among V-M experiences and OBEs during SP episodes...

Autoscopy is an experience of seeing oneself in external space, viewed from within one's own physical body. It is a complex psycho-sensorial hallucinatory perception of one's own body image projected into external visual space, with epilepsy one of the common disorders reported to be associated with the experience. A survey of the literature revealed that there are few case reports of postictal autoscopic phenomena. Herein, we report a case of a patient with partial epilepsy who has experienced postictal autoscopy for nearly 30 years...

INTRODUCTION: Spatial properties of hallucinations have received relatively little systematic investigation. We present evidence from a web-based study of the spatial properties of a broad array of hallucinations associated with sleep paralysis. Predictions regarding spatial characteristics of hallucinations were based on proposed neurophysiological mechanisms underlying different types of hallucinations. METHOD: Distributions in three dimensions as well as distance and dispersion measures were assessed for 279 experient for two general categories of hallucinations: Intruder hallucinations--including presence, visual, and auditory hallucinations; and Vestibular-Motor (V-M) hallucinations--including floating, flying, illusory motor movements, out-of-body experiences (OBEs), and autoscopy...

Out-of-body experiences (OBEs) are defined as experiences in which a person seems to be awake and sees his body and the world from a location outside his physical body. More precisely, they can be defined by the presence of the following three phenomenological characteristics: (i) disembodiment (location of the self outside one's body); (ii) the impression of seeing the world from an elevated and distanced visuo-spatial perspective (extracorporeal, but egocentric visuo-spatial perspective); and (iii) the impression of seeing one's own body (autoscopy) from this perspective...

Maupassant excelled as a realist writer of the nineteenth century, with fantastical short stories being an outstanding example of his literary genius. We have analysed four of his fantastical stories from a neurological point of view. In "Le Horla," his masterpiece, we have found nightmares, sleep paralysis, a hemianopic pattern of loss and recovery of vision, and palinopsia. In "Qui sait" and in "La main" there is also an illusory movement of the objects in the visual field, although in a dreamlike complex pattern...

Autoscopy is the experience of seeing an image of one's body in external space. We describe the case of a patient who reported longstanding autoscopic hallucinations following post-eclamptic brain damage. The MR scan demonstrated damage involving the occipital cortex and the basal ganglia bilaterally. We hypothesize that the image was the result of aberrant plasticity mechanisms involving cortical areas that play a central role in high-order body or representation of oneself.

Individual differences were investigated in the lateralisation of two general categories of hypnagogic and hypnopompic hallucinations associated with sleep paralysis: (1) Vestibular-motor (V-M) hallucinations; comprising sensations of floating, flying, illusory locomotion and postural adjustments, out-of-body experiences (OBE), and autoscopy; and (2) Intruder hallucinations; incorporating a sense of the presence, and visual and auditory hallucinations of external, alien agents. Left-right lateralisation of such hallucinations, as well as handedness and footedness, were assessed in a diverse, nonclinical sample of 201 subjects participating in a web-based survey of sleep paralysis experiences...

PURPOSE: Autoscopy is a pathologic perception of one's body or one's face image within space, either from an internal ("as in a mirror") or from an external ("out-of-body experience") point of view. Among various psychiatric and neurologic disorders, partial epilepsy is the main etiology. However, the significance of this rare ictal symptom remains controversial. We report this phenomenon in three epilepsy patients and discuss its semiologic value and neuropsychological significance. METHODS: Interictal EEG and/or video-EEG monitoring was performed, as well as neuropsychological examination and cerebral magnetic resonance imaging (MRI)...

During an out-of-body experience (OBE), the experient seems to be awake and to see his body and the world from a location outside the physical body. A closely related experience is autoscopy (AS), which is characterized by the experience of seeing one's body in extrapersonal space. Yet, despite great public interest and many case studies, systematic neurological studies of OBE and AS are extremely rare and, to date, no testable neuroscientific theory exists. The present study describes phenomenological, neuropsychological and neuroimaging correlates of OBE and AS in six neurological patients...

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In a collection of 562 migraine art pictures, seven pieces illustrate various elements of out-of-body experiences (OBEs) and related phenomena, including the somesthetic sensations of a duplicate or parasomatic body and the visual experiences of perceiving the own body, i.e. autoscopy, and its environment from a vantage point out of the body. Phenomenological features of the OBEs depicted are compared with 17 similar case reports reviewed from the literature. It is concluded that OBEs can occur as migraine aura symptom, which supports the notion that OBEs represent a preformed functional response of the brain...

Since Kirstein introduced formal direct examination (autoscopy) of the glottis in 1895, a great number of laryngoscopes have been produced to view the vocal folds; however, none have had universal appeal. The primary goals for the designs have been to optimize exposure and to facilitate instrumentation of the glottis. An analysis of more than 50 laryngoscopes was done to assess key design characteristics that would ideally be present in a laryngoscope for optimally viewing the musculomembranous vocal folds...