The Phenomena of the Disembodied Eye or is it a Matter of Personal Geography?

Abstract

When a bilaterally asymmetrical figure is drawn on the skin at various bodily positions, the observer often reports that the figure he ‘sees’ is reversed. On the head and neck, for example, figures drawn to the front of an imaginary line through the centre of the head, approximately in line with the ear canal are seen as reversed, and those to the rear of this line as correctly orientated. Different bodily locations such as the palm were tried and the orientation was found to depend in most instances upon the direction in which the surface faced. Several possible theories were tested against the data.