The perspective matters! Multisensory integration in ego-centric reference frames determines full body ownership

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.

Abstract licence: CC BY

1. 24.

   Keeping in Touch with One's Self: Multisensory Mechanisms of Self-Consciousness · 2009

2. 28.

   Looking for Myself: Current Multisensory Input Alters Self-Face Recognition · 2008

3. 30.

   First Person Experience of Body Transfer in Virtual Reality · 2010

4. 32.

   If I Were You: Perceptual Illusion of Body Swapping · 2008

37 more references, whose wording the paper’s licence keeps private.

• Avatar Embodiment. Towards a Standardized Questionnaire · 2018

• The role of virtual reality in improving motor performance as revealed by EEG: a randomized clinical trial · 2017

• Virtual Embodiment of White People in a Black Virtual Body Leads to a Sustained Reduction in Their Implicit Racial Bias · 2016

• Embodying self-compassion within virtual reality and its effects on patients with depression · 2016

• Over my fake body: body ownership illusions for studying the multisensory basis of own-body perception · 2015

• It's how you get there: walking down a virtual alley activates premotor and parietal areas · 2014

• The building blocks of the full body ownership illusion · 2013

• Minimal self-models and the free energy principle · 2013

• Extending Body Space in Immersive Virtual Reality: A Very Long Arm Illusion · 2012

A person counts once a day per paper. We keep no cookie and no address: a reader is a hash that changes every day. Any month under five reads shows no number.