Body ownership and kinaesthetic illusions: Dissociated bodily experiences for distinct levels of body consciousness?

Conscious Cogn. 2024 Jan;117:103630. doi: 10.1016/j.concog.2023.103630. Epub 2024 Jan 5.ABSTRACTSeeing an embodied humanoid avatar move its arms can induce in the observer the illusion that its own (static) arms are moving accordingly, the kinematic signals emanating from this avatar thus being considered like those from the biological body. Here, we investigated the causal relationship between these kinaesthetic illusions and the illusion of body ownership, manipulated through visuomotor synchronisation. The results of two experiments revealed that the sense of body ownership over an avatar seen from a first-person perspective was intimately linked to visuomotor synchrony. This was not the case for kinaesthetic illusions indicating that when superimposed on the biological body, the avatar is inevitably treated at the sensorimotor level as one's own body, whether consciously considered as such or not. The question of whether these two bodily experiences (body ownership and kinaesthetic illusion) are underpinned by distinct representations, the body image, and the body schema, is discussed.PMID:38183843 | DOI:10.1016/j.concog.2023.103630

Source: Consciousness and Cognition - January 6, 2024 Category: Neurology Authors: Louise Dupraz Jessica Bourgin Lorenzo Pia Julien Barra Michel Guerraz Source Type: research