Sensory incongruence leading to hand disownership modulates somatosensory cortical processing

Inter-Individual Differences in Vicarious Tactile Perception: a View Across the Lifespan in Typical and Atypical Populations

“…Depersonalisation is a psychological condition characterised by estrangement, detachment or disconnection from one's own being (e.g., Simeon, 2004), and in its mild form it has a high life-time prevalence (up to 80%, e.g., Hunter, Sierra, and David, 2004). Interestingly, individuals with higher levels of depersonalisation are also reported to have higher levels of body ownership illusions (Kanayama et al, 2009; see also Sierra et al, 2002), in which SI has been implicated (e.g., Aspell et al, 2012;Otsuru et al, 2014). This further supports the suggestion that the (altered) sense of bodily self is associated with (atypical) SI activity.…”

“…SI is also thought to be a critical component in the sense of body ownership (Aspell et al, 2012;Otsuru et al, 2014). These studies measured systematic changes in SI activations during the experience of body ownership of a fake hand or back using variations of the rubber hand illusion (RHI).…”

Two-Dimensional Rubber-Hand Illusion: The Dorian Gray Hand Illusion

“…As our 'dummy' hand was more degraded than the 'realis tic' three-dimensional hands used in earlier studies, then we found evidence that the rubber hand illusion is more mediated by top-down processes than it was thought before; top-down processing involves the abstract concept of one's own hand (Ehrsson etal., 2004(Ehrsson etal., , 2005Rammers etal., 2009;Tsakiris et al, 2008). For example, top-down processes involving long-and short-term memory have been found to influence both early (Gilbert and Sigman, 2007) and late (Otsuru et al, 2014) stages of visual perception, such as visual per ceptual learning (Li et al, 2004) and multisensory perceptual learning (Proulx et al, 2014). Therefore, it is conceivable that our visuo-tactile illusion can be produced by top-down projections from brain areas involved in memory and visual imagining (e.g., prefrontal cortex, Tomita et al, 1999), which exert an effect on the function of Tower level' (i.e., more perceptual) brain areas (e.g., primary somatosensory cortex, Otsuru et al, 2014).…”

“…For example, top-down processes involving long-and short-term memory have been found to influence both early (Gilbert and Sigman, 2007) and late (Otsuru et al, 2014) stages of visual perception, such as visual per ceptual learning (Li et al, 2004) and multisensory perceptual learning (Proulx et al, 2014). Therefore, it is conceivable that our visuo-tactile illusion can be produced by top-down projections from brain areas involved in memory and visual imagining (e.g., prefrontal cortex, Tomita et al, 1999), which exert an effect on the function of Tower level' (i.e., more perceptual) brain areas (e.g., primary somatosensory cortex, Otsuru et al, 2014). Finally, top-down pro cesses such as self-consciousness (Blanke, 2012;Heydrich et al, 2010) have been found to play a role in body representation in medical conditions such as schizophrenia (Thakkar et al, 2011), alimentary disorders such as bulimia (Mussap and Salton, 2006), and unusual phenomena such as the out-of-body experience (Olive and Berthoz, 2012).…”

Bodily self‐relatedness in vicarious touch is reflected at early cortical processing stages

“…This is in line with earlier findings showing that prerequisite embodiment and the observation of highly self-related stimuli (touch on own face; Adler et al, 2016; anatomically matched touch on hands in first-person perspective; Rigato et al, 2019) are associated with vicarious touch effects over P45 specifically. P45 originates in S1 (Allison et al, 1989(Allison et al, , 1992Schubert et al, 2008), which is itself critically involved in vicarious touch for hands in first-person versus third-person perspectives (Schaefer et al, 2012) and in the sense of body ownership (Aspell, Palluel, & Blanke, 2012;Otsuru et al, 2014).…”