It feels like it’s me: Interpersonal multisensory stimulation enhances visual remapping of touch from other to self.

Abstract

Understanding other people's feelings in social interactions depends on the ability to map onto our body the sensory experiences we observed on other people's bodies. It has been shown that the perception of tactile stimuli on the face is improved when concurrently viewing a face being touched. This Visual Remapping of Touch (VRT) is enhanced the more similar others are perceived to be to the self and is strongest when viewing one's face. Here, we ask whether altering self-other boundaries can in turn change the VRT effect. We used the enfacement illusion, which relies on synchronous interpersonal multisensory stimulation (IMS), to manipulate self-other boundaries. Following synchronous, but not asynchronous, IMS, the self-related enhancement of the VRT extended to the other individual. These findings suggest that shared multisensory experiences represent one key way to overcome the boundaries between self and others, as evidenced by changes in somatosensory processing of tactile stimuli on one's own face when concurrently viewing another person's face being touched.