utoscopy is the experience in which the individual while believing himself to be awake sees his or her body position

outside of his body. Autoscopy comes from the ancient Greek ("self") and ("watcher").

Autoscopy has intrigued humankind from time immemorial and is abundant in the folklore, mythology, and spiritual narratives of most ancient and modern societies. Cases of autoscopy are commonly encountered in modern psychiatric practice.[1]

Contents [hide] 1 Factors 2 Disorders 3 See also 4 References 5 External links Factors[edit source | editbeta]

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 visuo-spatial perspective or extracorporeal, but egocentric visuo-spatial perspective; impression of seeing one's own body from this perspective (autoscopy). Laboratory of Cognitive Neuroscience, cole Polytechnique Fdrale de Lausanne, Lausanne, and Department of Neurology, University Hospital, Geneva, Switzerland, have reviewed some of the classical precipitating factors of autoscopie. These are sleep, drug abuse, and general anesthesia as well neurobiology. They have compared them with recent findings on neurological and neurocognitive mechanisms of the autoscopy. The reviewed data suggest that autoscopies are due to functional disintegration of lower-level multisensory processing and abnormal higherlevel self-processing at the temporo-parietal junction. The researchers argue that the experimental investigation of the interactions between these multisensory and cognitive mechanisms in autoscopies and related illusions in combination with neuroimaging and

behavioral techniques might further our understanding of the central mechanisms of awareness and self-consciousness.

Disorders[edit source | editbeta]

A related autoscopy disorder known as negative autoscopy (or negative heautoscopy) is a psychological phenomenon in which the sufferer does not see his or her reflection when looking in a mirror. Although the sufferer's image may be seen by others, he or she claims not to see it. This was briefly and scientifically referred to as "Maartechen Syndrome" due to comments resulting from experiment that illustrated this disorder.[2][3]