Illusory Feeling Research Articles

Beyond nature and culture

Between identification  , a means of specifying the properties of existing beings, and relations, a means of specifying the general form of the links between those beings, two kinds of connection are possible. Either the plasticity of a relational schema makes it possible for it to structure interactions in a variety of ontologies, which will then present a family likeness despite the heterogeneity of their essential principles; or, alternatively, one of the modes of identification is able to accommodate several distinct relational schemas and this introduces into an ontological configuration widely distributed in space (a cultural region, for example) the kind of concrete diversity of customs and norms from which ethnologists and historians love to draw their material. The second case is what we shall now be considering. However, the combinations made possible by the conjunction of a mode of identification and a relational mode are too numerous for us to consider them all in a systematic and detailed fashion, especially since some of them turn out not to be possible for reasons of logical incompatibility, as we shall soon see. So let us limit ourselves to considering the variations of ethos that various relational schemas imprint upon one particular mode of identification: this will be animism. The demonstration will certainly not be complete, but it will at least provide the beginnings of a proof that anthropology can always hope to find when it enters into some detail in a comparative study of a number of cases. As Mauss, mobilizing John Stuart Mill in his support, declared, ―a well made experiment is enough to demonstrate a law‖ (Mauss 1950: 391).

EXTREME RISK SEEKING ADDICTION: THEORY AND TREATMENT

Extreme Risk Seeking Addiction (ERSA) is a behavioural addiction manifested as a repeated voluntary search for risk. This article introduces some theoretical reference points to discuss a clinical case study, a once-weekly psychotherapy which extended over more than ten years. The model followed assumes that ERSA is due to the feelings of excitement and ‘narrow escape’ which, if reiterated, bring about the construction of a pathological organization, a psychic retreat in Steiner's terms. This organization is a part of the self which is tyrannical and falsely protective, and is able to create illusory feelings of invulnerability and all-powerfulness. Psychotherapy can offer a benevolent interaction which is sufficiently in tune with the ERSA-affected person to be able to favour self-reflective experiences promoting the mentalization of affect and, more generally, the skills which make it possible to recognize emotions in the self and in others, and to manage emotional states within relationships effectively and competently.

Self-other bodily merging in the context of synchronous but arbitrary-related multisensory inputs

A debated issue in the multisensory literature concerns the relative contribution of bottom-up sensory components versus top-down cognitive elaborations in contributing to the rise and persistency of bodily illusion. Previous studies, for instance, have shown that simultaneity of sensory inputs and plausibility of the stimulated object play an important role in the rubber hand phenomenon, whereas violation of tactile expectancy does not disrupt the illusory feeling to own a fake hand. The present research examined this issue in the context of the "enfacement" phenomenon (i.e., self-other face-perception modification), using entirely arbitrary and non-ecological pairs of visual and tactile events. Visual and tactile stimulation was matched in terms of spatial location, but not linked by any previously learned associations, making temporal synchrony a critical binding factor. Participants received electro-tactile stimulations on their cheek, while they watched the face of a stranger illuminated on the cheek with a dot of white light. Synchronous (vs. asynchronous) stimulations yielded the enfacement effect. In addition, the stranger stimulated in synchrony was judged as more similar, physically and in terms of personality, and as closer to the self. These findings suggest that synchronous multisensory stimulation on the face can produce both perceptual and social binding, even in the absence of any previously learned associations between the stimulations.

Impairment of the rubber hand illusion in focal hand dystonia

Patients with dystonia display a number of disturbances in the cognitive processing of movements, such as movement simulation and prediction, but whether these deficits point to a deeper rooted disturbance of perceptual bodily representations remains unknown. A useful way to investigate the sense of body ownership is the rubber hand paradigm, in which an illusion of ownership is established by synchronous stroking of the participants' real unseen hand and a visible fake hand, whereas similar asynchronous stroking does not bring about the illusion. This paradigm allows testing of both the subjective experience of feeling ownership over the rubber hand and the proprioceptive relocation of the real unseen hand towards the viewed rubber hand. Previous studies have mapped these different aspects onto two anatomically distinct neuronal substrates, with the ventral premotor cortex processing the illusory feeling of ownership and the inferior parietal lobule and cerebellum processing proprioceptive drift. We applied the rubber hand illusion task to healthy subjects and to patients affected by two different types of focal dystonia-one specifically affecting the hand (focal hand dystonia) and one not affecting the hand (torticollis and blepharospasm). Results showed that in patients with focal hand dystonia, the proprioceptive drift was selectively disrupted on the dystonic hand while the subjective experience of the illusion was retained. In the non-dystonic hand and in the other two groups (non-hand dystonia and healthy subjects), the rubber hand illusion resembled the typical pattern with synchronous stroking eliciting the illusion. These findings provide support for the contention that the mechanisms underlying the presence of the illusory feeling of ownership and the proprioceptive drift are different. Selective impairment of the limb recalibration on the dystonic hand points to underlying deficits in integrating the visual-tactile input with the proprioceptive information in order to update the current body position and may support a model linking dystonia to dysfunctions in a network comprising the inferior parietal cortex and the cerebellum.

P29-5 The effects of kinesthetic illusory feeling induced by a visual stimulus on corticomotor excitability of leg muscles

P29-5 The effects of kinesthetic illusory feeling induced by a visual stimulus on corticomotor excitability of leg muscles

XIII-Epistemic Agency and Metacognition: An Externalist View

Controlling one's mental agency encompasses two forms of metacognitive operations, self-probing and post-evaluating. Metacognition so defined might seem to fuel an internalist view of epistemic norms, where rational feelings are available to instruct a thinker of what she can do, and allow her to be responsible for her mental agency. Such a view, however, ignores the dynamics of the mind–world interactions that calibrate the epistemic sentiments as reliable indicators of epistemic norms. A ‘brain in the lab’ thought experiment suggests that an internalist view of epistemic feelings is unable to account for the contrast between norm-tracking, educated sentiments, and illusory feelings.

Emotion-induced modulation of recognition memory decisions in a Go/NoGo task: Response bias or memory bias?

In recognition memory tests for words, items with negative emotional meaning are more often classified as “old” compared to neutral items, whether or not they are in fact old. Two accounts for this bias have been offered: One proposes that emotions disrupt retrieval and response monitoring processes (executive control account), the other proposes that emotions cause illusory feelings of remembering (memory bias account). We addressed this issue by varying the target signal in a Go/NoGo variant of a recognition memory task for negative, neutral, and positive words and faces: One group of participants was asked to respond to old items whereas the other group was asked to respond to new items. Results showed that the “Go-for-old” group showed the typical emotion-induced response bias shift for both positive and negative words, while the “Go-for-new” group showed the opposite pattern. Results were nonsignificant for faces, but went into the same direction. The findings are clearly inconsistent with the executive control account and speak for a genuine memory illusion induced by emotional arousal.

Kinesthetic illusory feeling induced by a finger movement movie effects on corticomotor excitability

The present study aimed to clarify whether a kinesthetic illusion arises in our experimental condition (visual stimulus) and whether corticomotor excitability changes in parallel with the kinesthetic illusion. The visual stimulus was a movie in which someone else’s limb was being moved. The computer screen showing the movie was installed at an appropriate portion of the subject’s forearm, so that the performer’s hand appeared as if it were the subject’s hand (illusion). The experience of kinesthetic illusion under this condition was verified by interview using a visual analog scale. Healthy male subjects participated in this experiment. Transcranial magnetic stimulation was applied to induce motor-evoked potential (MEP) from the first dorsal interosseous and abductor digiti minimi muscle. Each subject was instructed to watch the same computer display shown as in the illusion, with his own stationary hand in full view (non-illusion) and to watch a display of non-biological movement (moving text) (sham) as the control conditions. The present results showed significant facilitation of MEP under the illusion compared with the control conditions for the index finger abducting in the movie, although not for adducting. MEP in the abductor digiti minimi showed no change during either abduction or adduction of the little finger. The present study demonstrated that an illusion of self-motion can be created by a video of a moving abstract index finger, and inputs to the corticomotor pathways during the self-motion illusion facilitated the corticomotor excitability. The excitatory effect of the illusion depended on the movement direction of the index finger.

Morphing the body: Illusory feeling of an elongated arm affects somatosensory homunculus

Recent studies suggest that in contrast to traditional views of the body map the topographic representation in primary somatosensory cortex (SI) reflects the perceived rather than the physical aspects of peripheral stimulation. Here, we created a simple illusion of feeling an elongated arm by using the dominance of the visual domain over the tactile sense: employing an artificial hand and arm, which were connected to the body, subjects were given the visual impression that they had an extended arm. Since it is known from animal studies that tactile illusions alter early sensory processing in SI, we expected a modulation of the topography in SI corresponding to this illusion. Behavioral results showed that during the illusion the participants felt that their arm was elongated. Neuromagnetic source imaging of the functional organization in SI revealed that the cortical distance between first (D1) and fifth digit (D5) decreased when subjects felt the arm elongated. Since this modulation was significantly positively correlated with the illusionary feeling of an extended arm, the results suggest an involvement of SI during perceived changes in the size of body parts. We discuss the results as possible top-down modulations of SI by higher order somatosensory areas.

Neural Substrate of Body Size: Illusory Feeling of Shrinking of the Waist

The perception of the size and shape of one's body (body image) is a fundamental aspect of how we experience ourselves. We studied the neural correlates underlying perceived changes in the relative size of body parts by using a perceptual illusion in which participants felt that their waist was shrinking. We scanned the brains of the participants using functional magnetic resonance imaging. We found that activity in the cortices lining the left postcentral sulcus and the anterior part of the intraparietal sulcus reflected the illusion of waist shrinking, and that this activity was correlated with the reported degree of shrinking. These results suggest that the perceived changes in the size and shape of body parts are mediated by hierarchically higher-order somatosensory areas in the parietal cortex. Based on this finding we suggest that relative size of body parts is computed by the integration of more elementary somatic signals from different body segments.

Whether There's a Will, There's a Why: Understanding Illusory Feelings of Conscious Action

Whether There's a Will, There's a Why: Understanding Illusory Feelings of Conscious ActionDana S. DunnDana S. Dunn1. Moravian CollegeSearch for more papers by this authorPublished Online:June 2005https://doi.org/10.1521/jscp.22.4.463.22896PDFPDF PLUS ShareShare onFacebookTwitterLinkedInRedditEmail ToolsAdd to favoritesDownload CitationsTrack Citations AboutReferencesAnsfield , M. E., & Wegner, D. M. (1996). The feeling of doing. In P. M. Gollwitzer & J. A. Bargh (Eds.), The psychology of action: Linking cognition and motivation to behavior (pp. 482–506). New York: Guilford. Google ScholarBoswell , J. (1970). Life of Johnson (3rd ed.). London: Oxford University Press. (Original work published 1791) Google ScholarWegner , D. M. (1989). White bears and other unwanted thoughts. New York: Viking Penguin. Google ScholarWegner , D. M. (1994). Ironic processes of mental control. Psychological Review, 101, 34–52. Crossref, Google ScholarWegner , D. M., & Gilbert, D. T. (2000). Social psychology: The science of human experience. In H. Bless & J. P. Forgas (Eds.), The message within: The role of subjective experience in social cognition and behavior (pp. 1–19). Philadelphia: Psychology Press. Google ScholarWegner , D. M., & Vallacher, R. R. (1986). Action identification. In E. T. Higgins & R. Sorrentino (Eds.), Handbook of motivation and cognition (pp. 550–582). New York: Guilford. Google Scholar Previous article FiguresReferencesRelatedDetails Cited byCited by1. Book ReviewsOnline publication date: 2 September 2005. Go to citation Crossref Volume 22Issue 4Sep 2003 Information© Guilford Publications Inc.PDF download

Collective Errors and Errors about the Collective

This article focuses on the circumstances in which individuals mistakenly assume that their beliefs, perceptions, and feelings differ from those of their peers. Pluralistic ignorance, as this phenomenon is called, yields numerous significant consequences for the self (e.g., illusory feelings of deviance) and for the collective (e.g., the perpetuation of unpopular social norms). It also illustrates several important ways in which the self and the collective influence each other. The authors propose that pluralistic ignorance has its roots in collectively shared misconceptions about the relative power of different motives. Specifically, it occurs when widely shared but erroneous social representations of human motivation lead people to view the motive guiding their behavior as one that would not exert a comparable influence on the behavior of others.