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Hallucinations of Bodily Sensation

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Hallucinations

Abstract

The umbrella term “bodily hallucination” refers to a group of widely divergent and only rudimentarily understood corporeal sensations, such as tactile hallucinations, somatic hallucinations, sexual hallucinations, the coenesthesiopathies, proprioceptive hallucinations, kinesthetic hallucinations, vestibular hallucinations, hallucinated pain, and thermal hallucinations. This chapter provides a classification of those various phenomena and highlights what is known about their neurobiological underpinnings. In clinical practice, it may be helpful to let the diagnosis of bodily hallucination depend on the co-occurrence of a delusional explanation by the patient, but even this procedure is not airtight. Future studies seeking to enhance our understanding of these phenomena will have to address – as always, in biomedicine – neurobiological as well as conceptual issues.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Parnassia Bavo Academy, Parnassia Bavo Group and University of Groningen, Groningen, Kiwistraat 43, 2552 DH, The Hague, The Netherlands

    Jan Dirk Blom M.D., Ph.D.

  2. Department of Psychiatry, Rudolf Magnus Institute of Neuroscience, University Medical Center Utrecht, Heidelberglaan 100, 3584 CX, Utrecht, The Netherlands

    Iris E. C. Sommer M.D., Ph.D.

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  1. Jan Dirk Blom M.D., Ph.D.
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  2. Iris E. C. Sommer M.D., Ph.D.
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Correspondence to Jan Dirk Blom M.D., Ph.D. .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. University of Groningen, Parnassia Bavo Group, Paradijsappelstraat 2, The Hague, 2552 HX, Netherlands

    Jan Dirk Blom

  2. , Rudolf Magnus Institute of Neuroscience, University Medical Centre Utrecht, Heidelberglaan 100, Utrecht, 3584CX, Netherlands

    Iris E.C. Sommer

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Blom, J.D., Sommer, I.E.C. (2012). Hallucinations of Bodily Sensation. In: Blom, J., Sommer, I. (eds) Hallucinations. Springer, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4614-0959-5_13

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