Abstract
Recent advances in experimental science have made it possible to investigate the perceptual processes involved in generating a sense of owning an entire body. This is achieved by full-body ownership illusions which make use of specific patterns of visual and somatic stimuli integration. Here we investigate the fundamental question of the reference frames used in the process of attributing an entire body to the self. We quantified the strength of the body-swap illusion in conditions where the participants were observing this artificial body from the perspective of the first or third person. Consistent results from subjective reports and physiological recordings show that the first person visual perspective is critical for the induction of this full-body ownership illusion. This demonstrates that the multisensory integration processes producing the sense of corporeal self operates in an ego-centric reference frame.
Highlights
This approach follows a long tradition in psychology and neuroscience of studying perceptual illusions to learn more about the basic processes that underlie normal perception. In one such full-body illusion, the “body-swap illusion” (Petkova and Ehrsson, 2008), the participants are able to sense the touches applied to the body of a shop mannequin and experience this body as their own. This illusion is elicited in the following way: the participants observe the artificial body via head-mounted displays (HMD) connected to video-cameras placed on the mannequin’s head
Here, we have investigated the role played by the visual perspective in the mechanism underlying the self-attribution of an entire artificial body
Our results demonstrated that the first person visual perspective is critical for triggering the illusion of full-body ownership
Summary
One powerful approach is the use of “full-body illusions” in which healthy individuals experience a new artificial body as their own (Ehrsson, 2007; Lenggenhager et al, 2007; Petkova and Ehrsson, 2008; Slater et al, 2009) This approach follows a long tradition in psychology and neuroscience of studying perceptual illusions to learn more about the basic processes that underlie normal perception. In one such full-body illusion, the “body-swap illusion” (Petkova and Ehrsson, 2008), the participants are able to sense the touches applied to the body of a shop mannequin and experience this body as their own. This findings suggest at the core of this perceptual phenomenon is the integration of multiple sources of sensory information centered on the spatial location of the “new” body (Petkova and Ehrsson, 2008)
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