Keeping in Touch with One's Self: Multisensory Mechanisms of Self-Consciousness

Jane E Aspell, Bigna Lenggenhager and Olaf Blanke

PLOS ONE, 2009, vol. 4, issue 8, 1-10

Abstract: Background: The spatial unity between self and body can be disrupted by employing conflicting visual-somatosensory bodily input, thereby bringing neurological observations on bodily self-consciousness under scientific scrutiny. Here we designed a novel paradigm linking the study of bodily self-consciousness to the spatial representation of visuo-tactile stimuli by measuring crossmodal congruency effects (CCEs) for the full body. Methodology/Principal Findings: We measured full body CCEs by attaching four vibrator-light pairs to the trunks (backs) of subjects who viewed their bodies from behind via a camera and a head mounted display (HMD). Subjects made speeded elevation (up/down) judgments of the tactile stimuli while ignoring light stimuli. To modulate self-identification for the seen body subjects were stroked on their backs with a stick and the felt stroking was either synchronous or asynchronous with the stroking that could be seen via the HMD. Conclusions/Significance: These data reveal that systematic alterations in the mapping of tactile stimuli occur in a full body illusion and thus establish CCE magnitude as an online performance proxy for subjective changes in global bodily self-consciousness.

Date: 2009
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:plo:pone00:0006488

DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0006488

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