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Out-of-body experiences–100 words

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 January 2018

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Out-of-body experiences, in which the person feels they are viewing the world from outside their body, may be spontaneous or triggered by pain or fear, due to failure to integrate proprioceptive, tactile and visual information in the right parieto-temporal junction. They are similar to autoscopy, namely seeing your body in extra-personal space. But out-of-body experiences can occur in a near-death state during a cardiac arrest and be remembered even though brain processes are distorted or absent. Reliable accounts of patients who have acquired verifiable information while clinically dead suggest that consciousness may not after all be limited to the brain.

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Copyright © Royal College of Psychiatrists, 2015 

Out-of-body experiences, in which the person feels they are viewing the world from outside their body, may be spontaneous or triggered by pain or fear, due to failure to integrate proprioceptive, tactile and visual information in the right parieto-temporal junction. They are similar to autoscopy, namely seeing your body in extra-personal space. But out-of-body experiences can occur in a near-death state during a cardiac arrest and be remembered even though brain processes are distorted or absent. Reliable accounts of patients who have acquired verifiable information while clinically dead suggest that consciousness may not after all be limited to the brain.

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