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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 Ancient Greek includes the forms of the Greek language used in ancient Greece and the ancient world from around 1500 BC to 300 BC. It is often roughly divided into the following periods: Mycenaean Greek (), Dark Ages (), the Archaic peri ...
(, "self") and (, "watcher"). Autoscopy has been of interest to humankind from time immemorial and is abundant in the
folklore Folklore is shared by a particular group of people; it encompasses the traditions common to that culture, subculture or group. This includes oral traditions such as tales, legends, proverbs and jokes. They include material culture, ranging ...
,
mythology Myth is a folklore genre consisting of narratives that play a fundamental role in a society, such as foundational tales or origin myths. Since "myth" is widely used to imply that a story is not objectively true, the identification of a narrat ...
, 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 Egocentrism is the inability to differentiate between self and other. More specifically, it is the inability to accurately assume or understand any perspective other than one's own. Egocentrism is found across the life span: in infancy, early chi ...
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 École may refer to: * an elementary school in the French educational stages normally followed by secondary education establishments (collège and lycée) * École (river), a tributary of the Seine flowing in région Île-de-France * École, Savoi ...
,
Lausanne , neighboring_municipalities= Bottens, Bretigny-sur-Morrens, Chavannes-près-Renens, Cheseaux-sur-Lausanne, Crissier, Cugy, Écublens, Épalinges, Évian-les-Bains (FR-74), Froideville, Jouxtens-Mézery, Le Mont-sur-Lausanne, Lugrin (FR-74), ...
, 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 The temporoparietal junction (TPJ) is an area of the brain where the temporal and parietal lobes meet, at the posterior end of the lateral sulcus (Sylvian fissure). The TPJ incorporates information from the thalamus and the limbic system as well ...
.


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 Schizophrenia is a mental disorder characterized by continuous or relapsing episodes of psychosis. Major symptoms include hallucinations (typically hearing voices), delusions, and disorganized thinking. Other symptoms include social withdra ...
and
epilepsy Epilepsy is a group of non-communicable neurological disorders characterized by recurrent epileptic seizures. Epileptic seizures can vary from brief and nearly undetectable periods to long periods of vigorous shaking due to abnormal electrical ...
. 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 The temporal lobe is one of the four Lobes of the brain, major lobes of the cerebral cortex in the brain of mammals. The temporal lobe is located beneath the lateral fissure on both cerebral hemispheres of the mammalian brain. The 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

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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


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