Out-of-body experiences (OBEs) and vestibular-motor sensations during sleep paralysis share a distinct factor, with research on direct vestibular cortex stimulation producing nearly identical bodily-self hallucinations. Two online surveys of sleep paralysis experiences assessed causal relationships among vestibular-motor experiences and OBEs. Results support the hypothesis that OBEs arise from a breakdown in normal bodily-self sensation binding, with out-of-body feelings resulting from anomalous vestibular-motor experiences and preceding a specific form of autoscopic experience called out-of-body autoscopy. Vestibular and motor experiences independently contribute to OBE variance. The findings offer naturalistic explanations for phenomena superficially consistent with dualistic and supernatural intuitions.
About 70% of people who have had an out-of-body experience (OBE) report that the experience included visual content. Individuals who saw something during their OBE scored higher on measures of preference for object-based visual thinking and weak synaesthesia than those who reported no visual content. Weak synaesthesia was the stronger factor distinguishing the two groups. The findings support a synaesthetic model in which visual hallucinations during OBEs arise from a cognitive blending of non-visual sensory cues, possibly due to hyperconnectivity between brain areas handling body representation and visual processing.
People who have previously had out-of-body experiences (OBEs) show reduced cognitive flexibility when switching between different mental perspectives of their own body. In a study of 47 healthy participants (11 with prior OBEs, 36 without), individuals with OBEs performed worse on trials requiring them to alternate between imagining a figure as their own reflection (embodied self-location) and taking the figure's position (disembodied self-location mimicking an OBE). This difficulty was specific to switch trials, not repeated trials, and was most pronounced for body positions normally considered easier. The findings suggest that fronto-parietal brain connectivity, which supports flexible perspective-taking of self-congruent body representations, may be impaired in individuals prone to OBEs.