Out-of-Body Experience (Psychology)

An out-of-body experience is a phenomenon in which a person perceives the world as though from a location outside their own physical body. It is a form of autoscopy, literally seeing oneself, although that term is more often used for the separate, pathological experience of seeing a second self or doppelganger. The term was introduced in 1943 by G. N. M. Tyrrell in his book Apparitions and was later adopted by researchers including Celia Green and Robert Monroe as an alternative to belief-centered labels such as astral projection or spirit walking. The experience has been induced by traumatic brain injury, sensory deprivation, near-death experience, dissociative and psychedelic drugs, dehydration, sleep disorders, dreaming and electrical stimulation of the brain, among other causes, and can also be deliberately induced by some people; about one in ten people report having had at least one such experience, more commonly several, over their lifetime. Psychologists and neuroscientists regard out-of-body experiences as dissociative experiences produced by a combination of psychological and neurological factors.