Autoscopy is the experience in which an individual perceives the surrounding environment from a different perspective, from a position outside of their own body.
[Blanke, O., Mohr, C. (2005)]
''Out-of-body experience, heautoscopy, and autoscopic hallucination of neurological origin Implications for neurocognitive mechanisms of corporeal awareness and self consciousness''
. Brain Research Reviews 50: 184–199. Autoscopy comes from the
ancient Greek (, "self") and (, "watcher").
Autoscopy has been of interest to humankind from time immemorial and is abundant in the
folklore,
mythology, and spiritual narratives of most
ancient and
modern
Modern may refer to:
History
* Modern history
** Early Modern period
** Late Modern period
*** 18th century
*** 19th century
*** 20th century
** Contemporary history
* Moderns, a faction of Freemasonry that existed in the 18th century
Phil ...
societies. Cases of autoscopy are commonly encountered in modern psychiatric practice. According to
neurological
Neurology (from el, νεῦρον (neûron), "string, nerve" and the suffix -logia, "study of") is the branch of medicine dealing with the diagnosis and treatment of all categories of conditions and disease involving the brain, the spinal ...
research, autoscopic experiences are hallucinations.
Their root cause is unclear. Autoscopic experiences can include non-mirroring real-time images and the experiencer may be able to move.
Factors
Experiences are characterized by the presence of the following three factors:
* disembodiment – an apparent location of the self outside one's body;
* impression of seeing the world from an elevated and distanced, but
egocentric visuo-spatial
perspective;
* impression of seeing one's own body from this perspective (autoscopy).
The autoscopic phenomenon is classified in the following six tipologies: autoscopic hallucination, he-autoscopy or heautoscopic proper,
feeling of a presence,
out of body experience
An out-of-body experience (OBE or sometimes OOBE) is a phenomenon in which a person perceives the world from a location outside their physical body. An OBE is a form of autoscopy (literally "seeing self"), although this term is more commonly us ...
, negative and inner forms of autoscopy.
Laboratory of Cognitive Neuroscience,
École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne,
Lausanne, and Department of Neurology, University Hospital, Geneva, Switzerland, have reviewed some of the classical precipitating factors of autoscopy. These are sleep, drug abuse, and general anesthesia as well as neurobiology. They have compared them with recent findings on neurological and neurocognitive mechanisms of autoscopy; the reviewed data suggest that autoscopic experiences are due to functional disintegration of lower-level multisensory processing and abnormal higher-level self-processing at the
temporoparietal junction.
Related disorders
Heautoscopy is a
term used in psychiatry and neurology for the reduplicative
hallucination of "seeing one's own body at a distance". It can occur as a symptom in
schizophrenia and
epilepsy. Heautoscopy is considered a possible explanation for
doppelgänger
A doppelgänger (), a compound noun formed by combining the two nouns (double) and (walker or goer) (), doppelgaenger or doppelganger is a biologically unrelated look-alike, or a double, of a living person.
In fiction and mythology, a doppelg ...
phenomena.
The term polyopic heautoscopy refers to cases where more than one double is perceived. In 2006, Peter Brugger and his colleagues described the case of a man who experienced five doubles resulting from a tumor in the insular region of his left
temporal lobe.
[Brugger, P; Blanke, O; Regard, M; Bradford, D. T; Landis, T. (2006). ''Polyopic heautoscopy: Case report and review of the literature''. Cortex: 42 666–674.]
Another related autoscopy disorder is known as negative autoscopy (or negative heautoscopy) a psychological phenomenon in which the affected person does not see their reflection when looking in a mirror. Although their image may be seen by others, they claim not to see it.
See also
*
Syndrome of subjective doubles The syndrome of subjective doubles is a rare delusional misidentification syndrome in which a person experiences the delusion that they have a double or Doppelgänger with the same appearance, but usually with different character traits, that is l ...
References
{{reflist
Further reading
* Bhaskaran, R; Kumar, A; Nayar, K. K. (1990). ''Autoscopy in hemianopic field''. ''Journal of Neurology, Neurosurgery, and Psychiatry'': 53 1016–1017.
* Blanke, O; Landis, T; Seeck, M. (2004). ''Out-of-body experience and autoscopy of neurological origin''. ''Brain'' 127: 243–258.
* Brugger, P. (2002). ''Reflective mirrors: Perspective-taking in autoscopic phenomena''. ''Cognitive Neuropsychiatry'' 7: 179–194.
* Brugger, P; Regard, M; Landis, T. (1996). ''Unilaterally felt "presences": the neuropsychiatry of one's invisible doppelgänger''. ''Neuropsychiatry, Neuropsychology, and Behavioral Neurology'' 9: 114–122.
* Devinsky, O., Feldmann, E., Burrowes, K; Bromfield, E. (1989). ''Autoscopic phenomena with seizures''. ''Archives of Neurology'' 46: 1080–1088.
* Lukianowicz, N. (1958). ''Autoscopic phenomena''. ''Archives of Neurology and Psychiatry'' 80: 199–220.
External links
Topic and releases – website
Epilepsy
Neurology
Schizophrenia
Symptoms and signs of mental disorders