15. It is interesting to note how the earliest historical meaning of the word «information» in English was the act of informing, or giving form or shape to the mind. What I call the «self-model» is exactly this: the «inner form» an organism gives to itself, the shaping of a mind.
16. Susan J. Blackmore, Beyond the Body: An Investigation of Out-of-theBody Experiences (London: Granada, 1982).
17. In addition to Beyond the Body, see S. Blackmore, «A Psychological Theory of the Out-of-Body Experience,» Jour. Parapsychol. 48:201–218 (1984); and S. J. Blackmore, «Where Am I? Perspectives in Imagery and the Out-of-Body Experience,» Jour. Mental Imagery 11:53–66 (1987).
18. E. Waelti, Der dritte Kreis des Wissens (Interlaken: Ansata, 1983), 18, 25. English translation by T. Metzinger.
19. C. S. Alvarado, «Out-of-Body Experiences,» in E. Cardena et al., eds., Varieties of Anomalous Experience: Examining the Scientific Evidence (Washington, DC: American Psychological Association, 2000).
20. See, for example, J. Palmer, «A Community Mail Survey of Psychic Experience,» Jour. Am. Soc. Psychical Res. 73:21–51 (1979); S. Blackmore, «A Postal Survey of OBEs and Other Experiences,» Jour. Soc. Psychical Res. 52:225–244 (1984).
21. See Alvarado, «Out-of-Body Experiences» (2000) for an overview of many studies; Blackmore, «Spontaneous and Deliberate OBEs: A Questionnaire Survey,» Jour. Soc. Psychical Res. 53:218–224 (1986); Harvey J. Irwin, Flight of Mind (Metuchen, NJ: Scarecrow Press, 1985), 174 ff; O. Blanke & C. Mohr, «Out-of-Body Experience, Heautoscopy, and Autoscopic Hallucination of Neurological Origin: Implications for Neurocognitive Mechanisms of Corporeal Awareness and Self Consciousness,» Brain Res. Rev. 50:184–199 (2005).
22. O. Devinsky et al., «Autoscopic Phenomena with Seizures,» Arch. Neurol. 46:1080-8 (1989).
23. See, for example, P. Brugger, «Reflective Mirrors: Perspective-Taking in Autoscopic Phenomena,» Cog. Neuropsychiatry 7:179–194 (2002); Brugger et al., «Unilaterally Felt Presences: The Neuropsychiatry of One Invisible Doppelganger,» Neuropsychiatry, Neuropsychology, and Behavioral Neurology 9:114–122 (1996); Brugger et al., «Illusory Reduplication of One's Own Body: Phenomenology and Classification of Autoscopic Phenomena,» Cog. Neuropsychiatry 2:19–38 (1997); Devinsky et al., «Autoscopic Phenomena» (1989).
24. U. Wolfradt, «AuGerkorpererfahrungen (AKE) aus differentiellpsychologischer Perspektive,» Zeitschriftf. Paraps. u. Grenzgeb. D. Psych. 42/43:65-108 (2000/2001); U. Wolfradt & S. Watzke, «Deliberate Out-ofBody Experiences, Depersonalization, Schizotypal Traits, and Thinking Styles,» Jour. Amer. Soc. Psychical Res. 93:249–257 (1999).
25. H. J. Irwin, «The Disembodied Self: An Empirical Study of Dissociation and the Out-of-Body Experience,» Jour. Parapsych. 64(3):261–277 (2000).
26. See Wolfradt, «AuGerkorpererfahrungen (AKE)» (2000/2001).
27. Ibid. Other studies find only 22–36 percent; see Alvarado, «Out-ofBody Experiences» (2000).
28. Wolfradt, «AuGerkorpererfahrungen» (2000/2001).
29. C. Green, Out-of-the-Body Experiences (London: Hamish Hamilton, 1968).
30. O. Blanke et al., «Stimulating Illusory Own-Body Perceptions,» Nature 419:269–270 (2002).
31. For a more detailed hypothesis concerning the role of the temporoparietal junction, see Blanke et al., «Out-of-Body Experience and Autoscopy of Neurological Origin,» Brain 127:243–258 (2004); S. Bunning & O. Blanke, «The Out-of-Body Experience: Precipitating Factors and Neural Correlates,» Prog. Brain Res. 150:333–353 (2005); O. Blanke & S. Arzy, «The Out-of-Body Experience: Disturbed Self-Processing at the Temporo-Parietal Junction,» The Neuroscientist 11:16–24 (2005); and F. Tong, «Out-of-Body Experiences: From Penfield to Present,» Trends Cog. Sci. 7:104–106 (2003).
32. Blanke et al., «Linking Out-of-Body Experience and Self-Processing to Mental Own-Body Imagery and the Temporoparietal Junction,» Jour. Neurosci. 25:550–557 (2005).
33. For more on this point, see Blanke & Metzinger, «Full-Body Illusions and Minimal Phenomenal Selfhood,» 13(1):7-13 (2009).
34. See Wolfradt, «AuGerkorpererfahrungen (AKE)» (2000/2001), 91.
35. Can you imagine what it would be like to look at yourself from the outside and shake your own hand? Henrik Ehrsson of the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm, Sweden, is one of the leading figures in self-model research. He created one of the classic full-body illusion experiments and also demonstrated that upper limb amputees can be induced to experience a rubber hand as their own and extended the field by focusing on behavioral and neuroimaging evidence. Recently, members of his team managed to not only trigger the illusion that another person's body was one's own, but also create the phenomenal experience of being in that other person's body while actually facing their own body and shaking their own hand. See Valerie I. Petrovka & H. Henrik Ehrsson, «If I Were You: Perceptual Illusion of Body Swapping,» PLoS ONE 3(12):e3832 (2008), H. Henrik Ehrsson, «The Experimental Induction of Out-of-Body Experiences,» Science 3127:1048 (2007), H. Henrik Ehrsson et al., «Upper Limb Amputees Can Be Induced to Experience a Rubber Hand as their Own,» Brain 131:3443–3452; Tamar R. Makin et al., «On the Other Hand: Dummy Hands and Peripersonal Space,» Beh. Brain. Res. 191:1-10 (2008).
36. See W. Barfield et al., «Presence and Performance Within Virtual Environments,» in Woodrow Barfield & Thomas A. Furness III, eds., Virtual Environments and Advanced Interface Design (New York: Oxford University Press, 1995). See also M. V. Sanchez-Vives & M. Slater, «From Presence to Consciousness Through Virtual Reality,» Nat. Rev. Neur. 6.332339 (2005). Mel Slater, for many years a leading researcher in the field of virtual reality, has recently demonstrated that the feeling of ownership can also be induced for simulated body parts in virtual environments (rather than, as in our experiment, having people still look at their «real» body). Obviously, this permits experiments that would never have been possible in the physical world, including real-time modifications of virtual bodies not only in terms of length, size, and appearance, but also complex motion patterns. As the authors put it: «For the future our work also suggests that people can have their 'self' enter the virtual domain in a genuine sense of the word, and not just metaphorically as in current day computer games and online communities. In combination with BCI [brain-computer interfaces] we envisage a functioning virtual body that is felt as their own by participants, with a significant application in VR training, limb prosthetics, and entertainment.» See M. Slater et al., «Towards a Digital Body: Th Virtual Arm Illusion,» Frontiers Hum. Neurosci. 2:6. doi:10.3389/neuro.09.006.2008.