a b s t r a c tRecent research on bodily self-consciousness has assumed that it consists of three distinct components: the experience of owning a body (body ownership); the experience of being a body with a given location within the environment (self-location); and the experience of taking a first-person, body-centered, perspective on that environment (perspective). Here we review recent neuroimaging studies suggesting that at least two of these components-body ownership and self-location-are implemented in rather distinct neural substrates, located, respectively, in the premotor cortex and in the temporo-parietal junction. We examine these results and consider them in relation to clinical evidence from patients with altered body perception and work on a variety of multisensory, body-related illusions, such as the rubber hand illusion, the full body illusion, the body swap illusion and the enfacement illusion. We conclude by providing a preliminary synthesis of the data on bodily self-consciousness and its neural correlates.

Interoceptive sensitivity is an essential component of recent models of 'the self'. Increased focus on the self (e.g. self-observation in a mirror) can enhance aspects of self-processing. We examined whether self-observation also enhances interoceptive sensitivity. Participants performed a heartbeat detection task while looking at their own face in a mirror or at a black screen. There was significant improvement in interoceptive sensitivity in the mirror condition for those participants with lower interoceptive sensitivity at baseline. This effect was independent of the order of conditions, gender, age, body mass index, habitual exercise and changes in heart rate. Our results suggest that self-observation may represent a viable way of manipulating individuals' interoceptive sensitivity, in order to directly test causal relations between interoceptive sensitivity and exteroceptive self-processing.

The experimental design included three conditions in which the sounds produced by tapping with one's hand on a surface were spatially manipulated. Zero Distance (0D): the tapping sound originated at the tapping location; Double Distance (2D): the sound originated at double the distance to the tapping location; and Quadruple Distance (4D): the sound originated at four times the distance to the tapping location. Participants were instructed to tap at each marked point for ten times, with a frequency of 1 Hz, starting from the point marked in front of them (Figure 1A).We assessed the effects of the different audio-tactile 'tapping' conditions on the represented length

BackgroundRecent studies have shown that the well-known effect of multisensory stimulation on body-awareness can be extended to self-recognition. Seeing someone else’s face being touched at the same time as one’s own face elicits changes in the mental representation of the self-face. We sought to further elucidate the underlying mechanisms and the effects of interpersonal multisensory stimulation (IMS) on the mental representation of the self and others.Methodology/Principal FindingsParticipants saw an unfamiliar face being touched synchronously or asynchronously with their own face, as if they were looking in the mirror. Following synchronous, but not asynchronous, IMS, participants assimilated features of the other’s face in the mental representation of their own face as evidenced by the change in the point of subjective equality for morphed pictures of the two faces. Interestingly, synchronous IMS resulted in a unidirectional change in the self-other distinction, affecting recognition of one’s own face, but not recognition of the other’s face. The participants’ autonomic responses to objects approaching the other’s face were higher following synchronous than asynchronous IMS, but this increase was not specific to the pattern of IMS in interaction with the viewed object. Finally, synchronous, as compared to asynchronous, IMS resulted in significant differences in participants’ ratings of their experience, but unlike other bodily illusions, positive changes in subjective experience were related to the perceived physical similarity between the two faces, and not to identification.Conclusions/SignificanceSynchronous IMS produces quantifiable changes in the mental representations of one’s face, as measured behaviorally. Changes in autonomic responses and in the subjective experience of self-identification were broadly consistent with patterns observed in other bodily illusions, but less robust. Overall, shared multisensory experiences between self and other can change the mental representation of one’s identity, and the perceived similarity of others relative to one’s self.