Abstract
Our sense of body ownership relies on integrating different sensations according to their temporal and spatial congruency. Nevertheless, there is ongoing controversy about the role of affective congruency during multisensory integration, i.e. whether the stimuli to be perceived by the different sensory channels are congruent or incongruent in terms of their affective quality. In the present study, we applied a widely used multisensory integration paradigm, the Rubber Hand Illusion, to investigate the role of affective, top-down aspects of sensory congruency between visual and tactile modalities in the sense of body ownership. In Experiment 1 (N = 36), we touched participants with either soft or rough fabrics in their unseen hand, while they watched a rubber hand been touched synchronously with the same fabric or with a ‘hidden’ fabric of ‘uncertain roughness’. In Experiment 2 (N = 50), we used the same paradigm as in Experiment 1, but replaced the ‘uncertainty’ condition with an ‘incongruent’ one, in which participants saw the rubber hand being touched with a fabric of incongruent roughness and hence opposite valence. We found that certainty (Experiment 1) and congruency (Experiment 2) between the felt and vicariously perceived tactile affectivity led to higher subjective embodiment compared to uncertainty and incongruency, respectively, irrespective of any valence effect. Our results suggest that congruency in the affective top-down aspects of sensory stimulation is important to the multisensory integration process leading to embodiment, over and above temporal and spatial properties.
Highlights
The sense of body ownership, defined as the feeling that one’s body belongs to oneself, is considered a fundamental aspect of self-awareness[1]
We took advantage of the unique set-up of the Rubber Hand Illusion (RHI) to examine whether the affective congruency between the ‘felt’ touch on one’s own hand and the vicarious, seen touch on a rubber hand would modulate the experience of rubber hand embodiment and perceived pleasantness, over and above the effects of visuo-tactile synchrony and any valence effects
Based on previous findings about the role of affective touch in the RHI27–29, one could predict that participants would be less willing to embody the rubber hand when their real limb feels pleasant, but a non-pleasant fabric touches the rubber hand and vice versa
Summary
The sense of body ownership, defined as the feeling that one’s body belongs to oneself, is considered a fundamental aspect of self-awareness[1]. The definition of interoception has been subject of debate (e.g.31,32), it has been hypothesised that affective touch and cutaneous pain can convey both physiological and affective states of the body (such as physiological safety/threat and feelings of care/harm)[33] It remains unclear whether the changes in body awareness reported in relation to this sub-modality are caused by the bottom-up, interoceptive specificity and resulting affective value of the felt touch on the real hand, or instead by the congruency between this felt affectivity and the vicariously perceived affectivity of the seen rubber hand. This research tradition has paid little attention to the role of affective congruency during multisensory integration Affective congruency in such paradigms refers to whether the stimuli to be perceived by the different sensory channels, such as the felt touch on the participant’s own hand and visual perception of touch on a rubber hand, are congruent or incongruent in terms of their affective quality. As we explain below, both should be regarded as preliminary given their small samples and incomplete designs
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