Inducing ownership over an ‘other’ perspective with a visuo-tactile manipulation

Seeing our body from a ‘self’ perspective while performing a movement improves our ability to detect asynchrony between the visual and proprioceptive information concerning that movement: a signature of enhanced body ownership referred to as the ‘self-advantage’. We consequently experience no self-a...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Experimental brain research 2016-12, Vol.234 (12), p.3633-3639
Main Authors: Hoover, Adria E. N., Harris, Laurence R.
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Adult
Biomedical and Life Sciences
Biomedicine
Body Image
Cameras
Female
Hand
Hands
Humans
Illusions
Male
Movement
Neurology
Neurosciences
Ownership
Photic Stimulation
Proprioception - physiology
Psychological research
Questionnaires
Research Article
Self
Sensorimotor integration
Touch - physiology
Touch Perception - physiology
Young Adult
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Summary:Seeing our body from a ‘self’ perspective while performing a movement improves our ability to detect asynchrony between the visual and proprioceptive information concerning that movement: a signature of enhanced body ownership referred to as the ‘self-advantage’. We consequently experience no self-advantage when seeing our body from an ‘other’ perspective. Here we ask whether introducing visuo-tactile stimulation (VTS), similar to that used in the rubber hand illusion to invoke ownership over a dummy hand, would produce a self-advantage when viewing the body from a typically ‘other’ perspective. Prior to the experiment, participants watched a live video of their own back using a camera mounted behind them while their back was tapped with a rod for 2 min. The video was either synchronous (sVTS) or asynchronous (aVTS) with the tapping. Participants then raised their hands and made a stereotyped finger movement that they watched from the same camera either in the original, natural perspective or upside down. Participants indicated which of two periods (one with minimum delay and one with an added delay of 33–264 ms) appeared delayed. Sensitivity was calculated using psychometric functions. The sVTS group showed a self-advantage of about 45 ms in the natural visual condition compared to the upside down condition, whereas the aVTS group showed no difference between the two conditions. Synchronous visuo-tactile experience increased the feeling of ownership over a typically ‘other’ perspective in a quantifiable way indicating the multisensory and malleable nature of body representation.
ISSN:0014-4819
1432-1106
DOI:10.1007/s00221-016-4760-z