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This thesis investigates where it is that people locate themselves in their bodies, as well as how accurately people can indicate the locations of several of their body parts. It is not well known, whether there is/are one or more region(s) of their bodies people associate themselves with most. To answer this question, three experimental studies were performed using several virtual reality (VR) setups where participants pointed directly at themselves with a virtual pointing stick. In the first two studies, participants were also asked, outside of VR, to indicate their self-location on pictures of simple body outlines. In the last two studies, participants were additionally asked, in VR, to point to several of their body parts. Based on body part locations as pointed out by the participants in VR, the indicated self-locations could subsequently be interpreted in terms of regions of the participants' perceived bodies, besides in terms of regions of their physical bodies (i.e. based on body part locations measured on their bodies). In studies of self-location in the body, self-localization has mostly been performed using outlines of bodies not co-located with the participants' own bodies. Results from these studies have mainly shown self-localization in the (upper) face region, sometimes combined with in the upper torso region. Studies of self-location in the body using both explicit and implicit behavioral measures, have mainly shown self-localization in both the upper face and the upper torso regions. Across these previous studies findings show a mixed picture, which has motivated this further study of self-location. For this thesis, a self-directed, first-person perspective (1PP) pointing paradigm was developed, which was implemented in several VR setups across the different experiments. This paradigm was used for self-localization, as well as for body part localization. The participant was instructed to rotate a pointer with a controller for each trial such that it was pointing "directly at you", or at one of several of his body parts. The VR setups were used in the present experiments, mainly because they provide strong experimental control and the possibility of manipulating sensory cues in ways not otherwise possible (the viewpoint in study three). Further, they make comparisons possibly between results from in- and outside of VR (all studies), as well as between different VR setups (study two). In addition to the VR tasks, a not self-directed, third-person perspective (3PP) body template self-localization pointing task was used, outside of VR. There the participant was instructed to point "directly at you" with a pen on an A4 print of an outline of a body, under the assumption that this was a picture of himself. In the first study participants performed the VR self-localization task using the Oculus Rift DK2 and the template self-localization task. VR self-localization showed a very strong preference for the upper face. This was not in line with previous behavioral studies, showing self-localization mainly in both the upper face and the upper torso. Template self-localization was mostly in the upper torso, followed by in the (upper) face. This was not in line with previous studies using body outlines, showing self-localization mostly in the (upper) face. The present template results are more in line with the previous behavioral findings (from studies outside of VR), whereas the present VR behavioral findings are more in line with the previous body outline findings. It was concluded that wearing a VR headset might make people more head-focused. To investigate whether the VR findings from study one were specifically due to the use of a headset (blocking visual access to the body), or more generally to VR, in study two the VR pointing paradigm was implemented in both the Oculus Rift and a large-screen immersive display (LSID), where no headset is worn. Further, VR body part localization was added to the VR self-localization. Both in specific clinical, as well as in healthy populations, systematic distortions in the perception and representations of one's own body have been found. This has provided additional motivation for the inclusion of body part localization in studies two and three for this thesis. In study two, VR self-localization in terms of the physical body was mostly to all regions of the body from the upper torso upwards, as well as above the head. Further, participants were able to point reasonably accurately to most of their body parts in the LSID, but much less so in the VR headset. Inaccuracies were particularly large for the body parts near the borders of the body. After rescaling the self-localization pointing to the perceived body, it was mainly to the (upper followed by lower) face, followed by the (upper followed by lower) torso. This looked much more like the results from the previous behavioral studies than it did in terms of the physical body, while the differences between the VR setups had disappeared. The template task largely replicated study one, with pointing being to the upper torso most, followed by the regions of the face. It was concluded that people mostly localize themselves in the (upper) face and the (upper) torso. Moreover, that, for the interpretation of where people locate themselves, when using VR setups, it is important to take into account the occurring inaccuracies in body part localization. In study three, an individually scaled and gender-matched self-avatar, animated by the tracked movements of the participant and seen from 1PP (co-located) and a 3PP mirror-view), was implemented in the HTC Vive to provide rich feedback about the participant's body in a VR headset. Two groups of participants performed the VR self- and body part localization tasks, before and after an avatar adaptation phase where the self-avatar was experienced from either (normal) eye-height, or from chest-height. The self-avatar as such did not reduce inaccuracies in body part localization. Changing the viewpoint did alter body part localization, though. Pointing to body parts was overall shifted upwards (more for the lower body parts) from the pre- to the post-test for the chest-height group, but not for the eye-height group. The self-avatar as such, nor changing the viewpoint, changed self-location, though. No evidence was found for experienced self-location being manipulated towards the viewpoint location. A non-significant trend towards higher self-location was present for the chest-height group on the contrary, which might be due to body parts being perceived higher than normal. It was concluded that experienced body part locations might be more plastic (influenced by viewpoint) than experienced self-location. The differences between the self-localization results from the VR and the template tasks are debated and might be due to the 3PP pointing in the template task resembling pointing to someone else or even an external object, rather than to oneself. Taken together, this thesis suggests a differential involvement of multi-sensory information processing in our experienced specific self-location and our ability to locate our body parts. Self-localization seems to be less flexible, possibly because it is strongly grounded in the 'bodily senses', while body part localization appears more adaptable to the manipulation of sensory stimuli, at least in the visual modality. Zweitferöffentlichung der Verlagsveröffentlichung bei Logos Verlag GmbH, Berlin, in der Reihe MPI Series in Biological Cybernetics, No. 54, September 2019, Editor Prof. Dr. Heinrich H. Bülthoff. In der Unibibliothek Tübingen vorhanden unter den Signaturen: 59 A 6570:1 und 59 A 6570:2

Some people diagnosed with “schizophrenia” showed a fundamental alteration of the sense of self. From a psychodynamic perspective, it has been hypothesized that patients diagnosed as schizo...

Pathological embodiment (E+) is a specific contralesional delusion of body ownership, observed following brain damage, in which patients embody someone else's arm and its movements within their own body schema whenever the contralesional 'alien' arm is presented in a body-congruent position (i.e., 1st person perspective and aligned with the patient's shoulder). This disorder is often associated with spatial neglect, a neurological syndrome in which patients are unaware of stimuli presented in the contralesional (often the left) space. Capitalizing on previous evidence demonstrating that prismatic adaptation of the ipsilesional arm to right-deviating prisms is effective in ameliorating neglect symptoms, here we investigated whether such amelioration also occurs in E+ patients with neglect when prismatic training is performed by the 'alien' embodied arm. Four left neglect patients (one with and three without pathological embodiment) underwent visuomotor prismatic training performed by an 'alien' arm. Specifically, while patients were wearing prismatic goggles shifting the visual field rightward, a co-experimenter's left arm presented in a body-congruent perspective was repeatedly moved toward visual targets by another examiner. In a control condition, the co-experimenter's arm was moved toward the targets from a body-incongruent position (i.e., 3rd person perspective). Neglect symptoms were assessed before and after training through paper-and-pencil tasks. In the E+ patient, neglect improved significantly more in 1st than in 3rd person perspective training, suggesting that prismatic adaptation of the 'alien' embodied arm is effective in modulating spatial representation. Conversely, for control E- patients (not embodying the 'alien' arm), we observed more limited improvements following training. These findings indicate that the 'alien' embodied arm is so deeply embedded in the patient body and motor schema that adaptation to prismatic lenses can affect multiple processing stages, from low level sensory-motor correspondences, to higher level body, motor and spatial maps, similarly as it occurs in normal subjects and neglect patients without pathological embodiment.

Il presente studio è stato condotto ai fini di indagare la relazione tra la sensibilità enterocettiva e la rappresentazione motoria, implicita e pre-riflessiva del Sé corporeo, antecedente al senso di ownership. In particolare è stato indagato il possibile contributo del tocco affettivo nel modulare il riconoscimento del Sé corporeo attraverso l’aumento delle afferenze enterocettive. A questo scopo è stato somministrato un compito di accuratezza enterocettiva e un compito implicito di rotazione mentale di parti corporee (mani) proprie e altrui. Durante quest’ultimo compito venivano somministrate sessioni di tocco Piacevole e Neutro, e registrato l’ECG per l’estrazione della RSA. I risultati dello studio confermano un ruolo del tocco nella modulazione del Sé corporeo e aprono nuovi orizzonti in ambito psicopatologico.

The experience of our body as our own (i.e. body ownership) involves integrating different sensory signals according to their contextual relevance (i.e. multisensory integration). Until recently, most studies of multisensory integration and body ownership concerned only vision, touch and proprioception; the role of other modalities, such as the vestibular system and interoception, has been neglected and remains poorly understood. In particular, no study to date has directly explored the combined effect of vestibular and interoceptive signals on body ownership. Here, we investigated for the first time how Galvanic Vestibular Stimulation (left, right, sham), tactile affectivity (a reclassified interoceptive modality manipulated by applying touch at C-tactile optimal versus non-optimal velocities), and their combination, influence proprioceptive and subjective measures of body ownership during a rubber hand illusion paradigm with healthy participants (N = 26). Our results show that vestibular stimulation (left GVS) significantly increased proprioceptive drift towards the rubber hand during mere visual exposure to the rubber hand. Moreover, it also enhanced participants’ proprioceptive drift towards the rubber hand during manipulations of synchronicity and affective touch. These findings suggest that the vestibular system influences multisensory integration, possibly by re-weighting both the two-way relationship between proprioception and vision, as well as the three-way relationship between proprioception, vision and affective touch. We discuss these findings in relation to current predictive coding models of multisensory integration and body ownership., Highlights • We studied vestibular and affective contributions to body ownership. • We stimulated the vestibular system in a Rubber Hand paradigm with affective touch. • Right-hemisphere stimulation increased proprioceptive drift during vision of a RH. • Applying affective touch further increased proprioceptive drift. • Affective and vestibular signals may favour vision in multisensory integration.

International audience; This review article summarizes neuropsychological descriptions of abnormal body representations in brain-damaged patients and recent neuroscientific investigations of their sensorimotor underpinnings in healthy participants. The first part of the article describes unilateral disorders of the bodily self, such as asomatognosia, feelings of amputation, supernumerary phantom limbs and somatoparaphrenia, as well as descriptions of non-lateralized disorders of the bodily self, including Alice in Wonderland syndrome and autoscopic hallucinations. Because the sensorimotor mechanisms of these disorders are unclear, we focus on clinical descriptions and insist on the importance of reporting clinical cases to better understand the full range of bodily disorders encountered in neurological diseases. The second part of the article presents the advantages of merging neuroscientific approaches of the bodily self with immersive virtual reality, robotics and neuroprosthetics to foster the understanding of the multisensory, motor and neural mechanisms of bodily representations.

The aim of this study is to investigate the bodily-self in Restrictive Anorexia, focusing on two basic aspects related to the bodily self: autonomic strategies in social behavior, in which others' social desirability features, and social cues (e.g., gaze) are modulated, and interoception (i.e., the sensitivity to stimuli originating inside the body). Furthermore, since previous studies carried out on healthy individuals found that interoception seems to contribute to the autonomic regulation of social behavior, as measured by Respiratory Sinus Arrhythmia (RSA), we aimed to explore this link in anorexia patients, whose ability to perceive their bodily signal seems to be impaired. To this purpose, we compared a group of anorexia patients (ANg; restrictive type) with a group of Healthy Controls (HCg) for RSA responses during both a resting state and a social proxemics task, for their explicit judgments of comfort in social distances during a behavioral proxemics task, and for their Interoceptive Accuracy (IA). The results showed that ANg displayed significantly lower social disposition and a flattened autonomic reactivity during the proxemics task, irrespective of the presence of others' socially desirable features or social cues. Moreover, unlike HCg, the autonomic arousal of ANg did not guide behavioral judgments of social distances. Finally, IA was strictly related to social disposition in both groups, but with opposite trends in ANg. We conclude that autonomic imbalance and its altered relationship with interoception might have a crucial role in anorexia disturbances.

Ad oggi la schizofrenia è una questione aperta. Non sono chiari i confini diagnostici e i meccanismi patogenetici. La diagnosi è prevalentemente basata sulla sola presenza o meno di sintomi e poca attenzione viene posta all’aspetto dimensionale, alla comprensione psicopatologica e fenomenologica, alle caratteristiche premorbose di personalità. Il trattamento, perlopiù farmacologico, è efficace sulla sintomatologia positiva e nella prevenzione delle ricadute, ma non lo è sulla sintomatologia negativa e sul funzionamento sociale. Le psicoterapie basate sul linguaggio verbale sono spesso non praticabili e non efficaci. Per dare un contributo al miglioramento di alcune di queste criticità, quali la spiegazione e la comprensione di questo disturbo, la valutazione integrata del paziente schizofrenico e l’ideazione/sviluppo di nuove vie di intervento per la cura di questi pazienti, è stato promosso e approfondito il dialogo interdisciplinare tra Psichiatria, Psicopatologia, Fenomenologia, Psicoanalisi, Infant-Research, Teoria dell’Attaccamento e Neuroscienze. Sono emersi numerosi punti di contatto tra autori e discipline diverse, per esempio un accordo su alcuni aspetti ritenuti centrali nella schizofrenia, quali una compromissione della dimensione corporea ed implicita della consapevolezza di sé, le potenzialità motorie, l’integrazione multisensoriale, la rottura del rapporto tra Io (Sé) e mondo (altri) ovvero una la compromissione dell’intersoggettività. Dopo una riflessione sulle radici e lo sviluppo del Sé, è emerso un accordo sull’importanza del contatto, del tocco affettivo, nella costituzione del Sé. Varie evidenze supportano l’ipotesi che il tocco affettivo continui ad avere per tutta la vita il potere di incidere su aspetti centrali della consapevolezza di sé e su aree, circuiti, aspetti psicologici compromessi nella schizofrenia. Una modalità di intervento utilizzata con pazienti schizofrenici, denominata Terapia Amniotica (TA), in corso di sviluppo e di validazione empirica e basata proprio sul tocco affettivo, è stata presentata, con la descrizione delle sue potenzialità e di alcuni dei suoi possibili meccanismi d’azione. Per iniziare ad indagare alcune possibili relazioni tra il tocco effettivo e il Sé corporeo, per portare nuovi elementi alla comprensione dei probabili meccanismi d’azione della (TA) e per indagare le relazioni esistenti tra misure più oggettive ed implicite e misure soggettive e più psicologiche del funzionamento personale, al fine di mettere a punto una valutazione integrata del paziente schizofrenico, è stato condotto uno studio empirico su un campione di soggetti sani, per poi estendere l’indagine ad un campione di pazienti. Nella parte finale della tesi saranno presentati i risultati delle relazioni tra misure psicologiche e tra queste e misure fisiologiche e comportamentali. Saranno inoltre presentati i risultati degli effetti del tocco affettivo su aspetti impliciti del Sé. As of today, schizophrenia is an open issue. The diagnostic criteria and pathogenetic mechanisms are not clear. The diagnosis is primarily based on the presence or not of some symptoms. The dimensional aspect, the psychopathological and phenomenological comprehension and the characteristics of personality preceding disease onset are little taken into account. The treatment, for the most pharmacological, works on the positive symptomatology and on the relapse, but not on the negative symptomatology and on the social functioning. The talk therapies often are not effective and useful. To give a contribute to improve some of these critical issues, like the explanation and comprehension of this mental disorder, the integrated assessment of the schizophrenic patient and the development of new ways of intervention for the treatment of this patients, it’s been promoted and deepened the interdisciplinary dialogue between Psychiatry, Psychopathology, Phenomenology, Infant-Research, Attachment Theory and Neuroscience. Between different authors and disciplines have been found common arguments like the impairment of corporeal dimension and implicit self-awareness, the motorial potentialities, the multisensory integration, the breakdown of the relationship between self and world (others) or rather the impairment of the intersubjectivity. After a reflection on the basement and the development of Self, it’s emerged the importance of the affective touch in the construction of the Self. Many evidences support the hypothesis that the affective touch has the power, during the lifetime, to affect central aspects of the self-consciousness, cerebral areas and circuits, and psychological aspects damaged by the schizophrenia. It’s been presented a new modality of intervention used on patients with schizophrenia, called Amniotic Therapy (AT), still in development and under empirical validation, based on the affective touch. We’ve described its potentiality and some of its possible action mechanisms. It’s been conducted an empirical study on an healthy subjects sample, to extend it in the future on patients suffered from schizophrenia, to investigate some possible relation between affective touch and Bodily Self, to understand some possible action mechanisms of (AT). To improve an integrated assessment on the schizophrenic patients, it’s been examined the relation between objective and implicit measures and subjective and psychological measures. On the final part of this work, have been shown the relations among psychological measures and the relation between them and the behavioral and physiological measures. We also presented the results of the effects of the affective touch on implicit aspects of the Self.

The article by Miriam Kyselo titled “The body social: an enactive approach to the self” (Kyselo, 2014) raises a crucial issue and discusses how bodily and social aspects may merge together in a unique account of the human self. The author rightly suggests that we do not have to choose between the bodily and social dimensions of self. The integration process between bodily and social self may fail in patients with a number of neurological and psychiatric diseases, as well as during certain experimental conditions (Lucci and Pazzaglia, 2015). Various neurological conditions produce disturbed self perceptions, for example disownership of one's hand in somatoparaphrenia (Vallar and Ronchi, 2009; Romano et al., 2014), desire for amputation in body integrity identity disorder (Sedda, 2011), unintended movements in alien hand syndrome (Della Sala et al., 1991), ownership for supernumerary limbs (Guterstam et al., 2011) or seeing own body from a third person perspective in out of body experiences (Blanke and Arzy, 2005). The illusory alterations of awareness of the bodily self can be also induced experimentally during the so-called “rubber hand illusion”—RHI (Botvinick and Cohen, 1998), where the subjective perceptual experience interfere with bodily self and the external bodily-shaped object is treated as part of the body. These clinical populations and experimental condition may challenge Kyselo's view, as bodily self could be disrupted despite a normal social self. However, an example of the complementarity of bodily and social self are patients with spinal cord injury (SCI). “The loss of self is inherent in the social isolation of paralytics, who have furthermore become separated from their bodies by neural damage, and from their former identities by society” (Murphy, 2001; p. 227). SCI can leave a part of the body insensible and immobile, leading to specific disorders in the mental representation of one's own body and the sense of bodily self (Lenggenhager et al., 2012, 2013). After SCI, patients see their former life slip away and become restricted, and the social implications can be considerable. They must adapt to their new body and make significant changes in the way they function in the world. Here we propose that a medium that accepts self-multiplicity while also offering an integrative perspective on the self is possible. We consider how an assistive tool can change the manner in which people with massive disconnection between body and brain access to social world. For people who chose to integrate their disability into their full sense of self, the wheelchair represents a changing paradigm, as highlighted by significant theoretical models (Papadimitriou, 2008; Standal, 2011) and experimental studies (Arnhoff and Mehl, 1963; Winance, 2006a,b; Higuchi et al., 2009; Olsson, 2012; Fuentes et al., 2013; Pazzaglia et al., 2013). When patients do not perceive the loss or limitation and instead focus on the power and joy of seeing the world, “I could whiz around and feel the wind in my face again. Just being out on the street was exhilarating” (Austin, 2014), the wheelchair becomes a symbol of both physical and social independence for the body injured. Even for people with life-threatening illnesses, this tool provides a way to be out in the world, continuing their lives and accessing the many realms of human experience (Karp, 2008). The plastic shaping of the bodily self has already been demonstrated by multiple neuropsychological studies showing that tools can be integrated into the representation of one's own body (Maravita and Iriki, 2004; Cardinali et al., 2009; Tsakiris, 2010; Longo and Serino, 2012). In the process, known as embodiment, the tool is processed in the same way as a part of one's body (De Vignemont, 2011), allowing a new connection between the sense of having a modified functional body and the sense of self. In the case of SCI, the wheelchair, which contributes to the individual's conscious movement, can be added to the dynamic representation of patients' bodily self. From a physical perspective, the corporeal awareness of a tool emerges as the functional self with its new rules and novel ways of interacting with the world (Pazzaglia et al., 2013). Through the use of the wheelchair, the perceived bodily self is that of being functionally whole, enabling the immobile user to act in the world again. The wheelchair becomes a vehicle of freedom of mobility and independence for newly abled adults, reconstructing their sense of self (Papadimitriou, 2008). A deep embodiment process of the en-wheeled body can occur, enhanced for both the loss of sensorimotor function (Pazzaglia et al., 2013) and the critical sense of protection and monitoring (Rossetti et al., 2015). From a social perspective, the injury affects consciousness as it introduces a novel pervasive identity. The tool incorporation process described above involves new ways of being in the world, i.e., the relations between self and others and the world (Winance, 2006a,b; Papadimitriou, 2008). The wheelchair increases permeability of the boundary between disabled and non-disabled individuals, directly mitigating the impairment and thereby helping the user escaping disability (Nario-Redmond et al., 2013). Functional and smooth wheelchair use significantly contributes to the production of a new identity and allows the individual to cope with his disability by emphasizing one's strengths, interests, and efficacy. It has the liberating aspect of providing opportunities to participate in social activities, through the new form of the body. In this case, disablement is not simply a physical affair; rather, it is a lifelong process of adjusting to changed circumstances (Pentland et al., 2002) that ultimately results in a transformation from disabled to newly abled. Being active and engaged constitutes a starting point for restructuring the social self. Emerging empirical data support the importance of the social context in shaping self-perceptions after a SCI (Fuhrer, 1996). Several surveys of patients with SCI revealed that their self-reported quality of life was only slightly different from that of control subjects without SCI (Stensman, 1994). Moreover, the quality of life for this population, regardless of severity of impairment, consisted of various themes (Manns and Chad, 2001) such as accessibility, emotional well-being, stigma, spontaneity, relationships and social function, occupation, finances and independence, additionally to the expected physical variables such as functionality and physical well-being. Similarly, patients with locked-in syndrome can adjust very well to the objective physical change and actually feel the same as before (Nizzi et al., 2012), although changes in their self-awareness and quality of life are not mediated by any functional prosthetic tool, which in this case would not have the meaning of unifying bodily and activity extremely restricted of social self. The effort to understand how people maintain psychological well-being despite physical and social challenges is a core topic of many human sciences. The field has shifted from a medical model of disability as a functional limitation of living without movement and sensation, to a social model that includes consequent relational problems (Altman, 2001; Williams, 2001; Cole, 2004; Darling and Heckert, 2010). Both physical and emotional adjustments that follow wheelchair use could result in a new bodily and social-self representation, in which the person may incorporate the wheelchair (Fuentes et al., 2013; Pazzaglia et al., 2013). Bodily changes can affect and be integrated into our self as a disordered organism regains a state of order (Goldstein, 1939). The fact that quality of life often equates with social rather than physical status (Gosseries et al., 2009) makes sense when the boundaries of self are not determined by bodily processes alone, but are instead plastic in terms of relational and social interactions. Although the relationship between actual bodily states and embodied cognition has been widely explored, little is known about how changes in the connection between brain and body periphery, occurring after a traumatic SCI, influence higher-level embodied self such as perspective-taking, inter-subjectivity and group membership, which makes these topics extremely challenging for future investigations. As an individual has to change adaptively (Thompson, 2007) by flexibly regulating his own identity (Di Paolo, 2005), it is likely that when discussing individuality, SCI patients do not view their self as primarily physical or social, but rather including both aspects of self-definition and the embodiment of the functional tool that permits them to re-negotiate their self as a whole.

This commentary aims to find the right description of the pre-reflective brain mechanisms underlying our phenomenal experience of being a subject bound to a physical body (bodily self) and basic cognitive, perceptual, and subjective aspects related to interaction with other individuals (social cognition). I will focus on the proposal by Gallese and Cuccio that embodied simulation, in terms of motor resonance, is the primary brain mechanism underlying the pre-reflective aspects of social cognition and the bodily self. I will argue that this proposal is too narrow to serve a unified theory of the neurobiological mechanisms of both target phenomena. I support this criticism with theoretical considerations and empirical evidence suggesting that multisensory spatial processing, which is distinct from but a pre-requisite of motor resonance, substantially contributes to the bodily self and social cognition.My commentary is structured in three sections. The first section addresses social cognition and compares embodied simulation to an alternative account, namely the attention schema theory. According to this theory we pre-reflectively empathize with others by predicting their current state of attention which involves predicting the spatial focus of attention. Thereby we derive a representational model of their state of mind. On this account, spatial coding of attention, rather than motor resonance, is the primary mechanism underlying social cognition. I take this as a theoretical alternative complementing motor resonance mechanisms.The second section focuses on the bodily self. Comparison of the brain networks of the bodily self and social cognition reveals strong overlap, suggesting that both phenomena depend on shared multisensory and sensorimotor mechanisms. I will review recent empirical data about altered states of the bodily self in terms of self-location and the first-person perspective. These spatial aspects of the bodily self are encoded in brain regions distinct from the brain network of embodied simulation. I argue that while motor resonance might contribute to body ownership and agency, it does not account for spatial aspects of the bodily self. Thus, embodied simulation appears to be a necessary but insufficiently “primary” brain mechanism of the bodily self and social cognition. The third section discusses the contributions of the vestibular system, i.e., the sensory system encoding head motion and gravity, to the bodily self and social cognition. Vestibular cortical processing seems relevant to both processes, because it directly encodes the world-centered direction of gravity and allows us to distinguish between motions of the own body and motions of other individuals and the external world. Furthermore, the vestibular cortical network largely overlaps with those neural networks relevant to the bodily self and social cognition. Thus, the vestibular system may play a crucial role in multisensory spatial coding relating the bodily self to other individuals in the external world., Open MIND

It is widely known that among others, the most pervasive symptoms characterizing Anorexia nervosa (AN) concern their body-image overestimation, a wide range of autonomic system disturbances, and the difficulty to discriminate their emotional states and visceral sensations. Since these pervasive symptoms largely contribute to the onset and maintenance of Eating Disorders, we investigated the nature of the body image distortion in AN (restrictive subtype), and its possible relation with Interoceptive Sensitivity (IS, the sensitivity to stimuli originating inside the body). Furthermore, since previous studies found that IS seems to contribute to the autonomic regulation of social behavior, as measured by Respiratory Sinus Arrhythmia (RSA), here we aimed at assessing the possible relation between IS and autonomic regulation both in resting state and during social interactions in AN patients, whose ability to perceive their bodily signal is impaired. For these purposes, we recorded reaction times of both healthy controls (HC) and AN patients during two tasks requiring an implicit or explicit recognition of self/other hands stimuli, in which the perceived size of the stimuli was manipulated. To assess IS, we used a widely used Heartbeat perception task. Finally, we measured participants’ autonomic reactivity, recording their RSA responses during both the resting state and a social task (Physiological proxemics task). Our results showed not only that the perceived size of hands stimuli could modulate the implicit self-recognition in HC, but also the body image distortion of AN patients, beside stemming from a disturbed body image (i.e. explicit perceptual, semantic, aesthetic and emotional representation of the body) reflects – at least partly – abnormal neural processing of the implicit and pre-reflective motor experience of the bodily self. Furthermore, we found that IS predicts the ability to execute a hand mental rotation (Implicit task: higher IS, faster RTs) but not the ability to perform a task (explicit task) in which more cognitive and/or perceptually-based mechanisms are likely involved. More importantly this relationship was lacking in AN patients, whose IS, was also significantly lower than HC. In addition, we found that IS, might be strictly related to social disposition (as measured by RSA responses at rest) since the higher was IS, the higher were RSA responses at rest. This relation was lack in AN patients, who showed significantly lower RSA at rest, and a flattened autonomic regulation during the social task compared to HC. In the light of our results, we conclude AN patients’ blunted IS might play a pivotal role in the lack of the implicit, pre-reflective sense of self as power for action leading to a less efficient self/other distinction. The lack of contact with the inner body might also account for the affected social disposition of AN patients and their autonomic regulation in social contexts.

Increasing evidence suggests that the basic foundations of the self lie in the brain systems that represent the body. Specific sensorimotor stimulation has been shown to alter the bodily self. However little is known about how disconnection of the brain from the body affects the phenomenological sense of the body and the self. Spinal cord injury (SCI) patients who exhibit massively reduced somatomotor processes below the lesion in the absence of brain damage are suitable for testing the influence of body signals on two important components of the self the sense of disembodiment and body ownership. We recruited 30 SCI patients and 16 healthy participants and evaluated the following parameters: (i) depersonalization symptoms using the Cambridge Depersonalization Scale (CDS) and (ii) measures of body ownership as quantified by the rubber hand illusion (RHI) paradigm. We found higher CDS scores in SCI patients which show increased detachment from their body and internal bodily sensations and decreasing global body ownership with higher lesion level. The RHI paradigm reveals no alterations in the illusory ownership of the hand between SCI patients and controls. Yet there was no typical proprioceptive drift in SCI patients with intact tactile sensation on the hand which might be related to cortical reorganization in these patients. These results suggest that disconnection of somatomotor inputs to the brain due to spinal cord lesions resulted in a disturbed sense of an embodied self. Furthermore plasticity related cortical changes might influence the dynamics of the bodily self. © 2012 Lenggenhager et al.

This qualitative study examines the reciprocal relationship between a person’s multilayered cultural identity (MCI) and the concept of self (CoS), that is presented purely on a theoretical level and encompasses various theories. Nowadays, in an increasingly globalising world, it is not enough to merely look at a national, ethnic or other type of identity. It is important to realise that there are different layers in an identity that one can view themselves through. The ways an individual perceives themselves through their multicultural background can also be different. This thesis helps identify the ways a person can see themselves. The thesis also attempts to explain the varied nature of one’s self-perception, and the ways in which multilayered cultural identity can be manifested through self-perceiving. The way the literature review was conducted was through a partial approach to scope literature available on the topic for this study. In the process of examining the phenomenon, views of various authors have been presented on this subject. As a result of the comparison and analysis of different theories, it appears the term ‘multilayered cultural identity’ does not, in fact, exist in the modern literature. Instead, it is often used as ‘multicultural identity’ (MI). Nevertheless, this study would like to emphasise the structure, i.e. the layered nature of a cultural identity (CI) (identity’s capacity to be built layer-by-layer). Regardless the absence of the MCI in the modern literature, the focal constituting components of the concept (namely, culture and identity) have been described and discussed in various sources. Therefore, this thesis takes a look at each of the concept’s components separately and presents a mutual interplay between them with regards to the CoS. Since the field of intercultural communication is interdisciplinary, the scope of theories applied in describing and explaining the phenomenon is broad. It covers such fields as psychology, intercultural communication, and culture and gender studies. As a result of applying the theories, it has been found that there are at least four different ways of one’s self-perception; when an individual’s perceptions appear to be loyal; as possessing a situational identity; as an absence of the multilayered perception and; as split and doubled perceptions. There are correlations between self-esteem and the way an individual perceives themselves. A ‘group’ and the ‘other’ play an important role in the majority of perceptions.

The first aim of my thesis was to shed new light on the contribution of the motor experience of one’s own body to our ability to implicitly differentiate between self and other. Behavioural and neuroimaging studies on healthy participants showed that i) a motor experience-based representation of the bodily self is encased within the sensorimotor system; ii) the necessary condition for this the sensorimotor representation of oneself, as bodily self, to emerge is that it is implicitly rather than explicitly accessed. The second aim of my thesis was to test whether disturbances of the basic sense of self in schizophrenia concern alterations of the implicit and pre-reflective representation of oneself, as bodily self. We found that that schizophrenic patients did not show the self-advantage effect described in healthy people. Indeed, when submitted to a visual matching task, they did not perform better with one’s own rather than others’ body stimuli. The third aim of my thesis was to investigate whether and to what extent social deficits in schizophrenia are primarily due to disturbances of bodily self-experience or rather are mostly determined by a primary deficit of the intersubjective domain. Schizophrenic patients showed aberrant neural processes underlying multisensory integration and differentiation between self and others’ bodily experiences, rather than altered vicarious neural activations during social perception. Our results suggest that disturbances of bodily self-experience may have a primary role in schizophrenia and that they may – at least partly– account for social deficits in schizophrenic patients. Il primo obiettivo della mia tesi è stato indagare il contributo dell’esperienza motoria del proprio corpo rispetto alla capacità di distinguere sé dagli altri individui. Dati comportamentali e di neuroimaging funzionale ottenuti da partecipanti sani hanno evidenziato che i) una rappresentazione del sé corporeo mappa nel sistema sensorimotorio; ii) la condizione necessaria per far emergere la rappresentazione sensorimotoria del sé corporeo è che essa sia richiamata implicitamente, piuttosto che esplicitamente. Il secondo obiettivo della mia tesi è stato testare se il disturbo del senso minimo del sé, che si manifesta nella schizofrenia, abbia a che fare con alterazioni della conoscenza implicita e pre-riflessiva del sé corporeo. E’ stato osservato i pazienti schizofrenici non presentano il cosiddetto “vantaggio del sé” osservato negli individui sani. Infatti, sottoposti ad un compito di matching visivo, i pazienti non erano né più accurati né più veloci nel giudicare immagini che rappresentavano le proprie parti del corpo, rispetto a quelle che rappresentavano parti del corpo di altri individui. Il terzo obiettivo della mia tesi è stato indagare se e fino a che punto le alterazioni delle competenze sociali nella schizofrenia siano da ricondurre ai disturbi del sé corporeo, piuttosto che a disturbi specificamente pertinenti al dominio dell’intersoggettività. Nei pazienti sono state riscontrate alterazioni dei processi neurali sottostanti i meccanismi di integrazione multisensoriale e quelli che permettono di discriminare tra esperienze corporee vissute e osservate, piuttosto che alterazioni dei processi alla base delle esperienze vicarie. I risultati ottenuti suggeriscono che i disturbi del sé corporeo abbiano un ruolo primario nella schizofrenia e che possano - almeno in parte- rendere conto delle alterazioni delle competenze sociali nei pazienti schizofrenici.

Aim. The aim of the study was psychological diagnosis of body self structure in Polish group of women (120 young women) suffering from eating disorders (anorexia and bulimia nervosa) and schizophrenic psychosis. Method. The authoress used the following method: Eating Disorder Inventory EDI D.Garner, Satisfaction of Body Questionnaire T.Thompson and projection methods: Thompson’s Figures Test and drawing test “body image”. 120 women in age 20–26 took part in the study. Results. Conducted statistical analysis (focussing analysis) indicated the presence of five main clusters (types) of women who expose a variety self bodily constellation. It allowed to form psychological profile of the features of these types. Conclusions. Preparation of bodily structure’s psychological profile can diversify and direct the psychological diagnosis process and psychological therapy of this group suffering women.

Audiotactile integration has been studied using various experimental setups but so far crossmodal congruency effects (CCEs) have not been found for tactile targets paired with auditory distractors. In the present study we investigated whether audiotactile CCEs exist and, if so, whether these CCEs have similar characteristics to those found by previous authors with visual distractors. We measured audiotactile CCEs by attaching four vibrators to the backs of participants and presented auditory stimuli from four loudspeakers placed, in separate blocks, at different distances in front of or behind the participant's body. Participants discriminated the elevation of tactile stimuli while ignoring the auditory distractors. CCEs were found only when participants were provided with noninformative vision of their own body, as seen from behind via a camera and head-mounted display; they were absent when participants did not view their body. Furthermore, in contrast to visuotactile CCEs, audiotactile CCEs did not depend on whether the distractors were presented on the same or different side as the tactile targets. The present study provides the first demonstration of an audiotactile CCE: incongruent auditory distractors impaired performance on a tactile elevation discrimination task relative to performance with congruent distractors. We show that audiotactile CCEs differ from visuotactile CCEs as they do not appear to be as sensitive to the spatial relations between the distractors and the tactile stimuli. We also show that these CCEs are modulated by vision of the body.

How do we know that our body and its parts belong to us? Observations from neurological syndromes and recent experiments in the cognitive neurosciences suggest that the sense of bodily ownership is a crucial component underlying self-consciousness in humans. This thesis investigates this sense of "mineness" in four experiments. The results show that bodily ownership can be systematically and measurably altered locally at the level of fingers (Study 1 and 2), hands (Study 2) and faces (Study 3), and also at a global level for the entire body (Study 4) We highlight the diversity of processes underlying the sense of bodily ownership, including the importance of multisensory integration, self-directed touch, visual familiarity with one's mirror reflection, and visuo-kinesthetic interactions. Finally, we draw parallels from these findings to clinical research.

Surgical treatment of tumors, epileptic foci or of vascular origin, requires a detailed individual pre-surgical workup and intra-operative surveillance of brain functions to minimize the risk of post-surgical neurological deficits and decline of quality of life. Most attention is attributed to language, motor functions, and perception. However, higher cognitive functions such as social cognition, personality, and the sense of self may be affected by brain surgery. To date, the precise localization and the network patterns of brain regions involved in such functions are not yet fully understood, making the assessment of risks of related post-surgical deficits difficult. It is in the interest of neurosurgeons to understand with which neural systems related to selfhood and personality they are interfering during surgery. Recent neuroscience research using virtual reality and clinical observations suggest that the insular cortex, medial prefrontal cortex, and temporo-parietal junction are important components of a neural system dedicated to self-consciousness based on multisensory bodily processing, including exteroceptive and interoceptive cues (bodily self-consciousness (BSC)). Here, we argue that combined extra- and intra-operative approaches using targeted cognitive testing, functional imaging and EEG, virtual reality, combined with multisensory stimulations, may contribute to the assessment of the BSC and related cognitive aspects. Although the usefulness of particular biomarkers, such as cardiac and respiratory signals linked to virtual reality, and of heartbeat evoked potentials as a surrogate marker for intactness of multisensory integration for intra-operative monitoring has to be proved, systemic and automatized testing of BSC in neurosurgical patients will improve future surgical outcome.

What is it like to have a body? The unitary experience of the self and the body accompanied by unambiguous self-location and egocentric visuo-spatial perspective are essential aspects of the embodied self. They play a vital role for dynamic whole body human perception and interactions in our daily lives and help distinguish our body from others and the environment. In the current thesis, we used an amalgam of virtual reality techniques and cognitive neuroscience methods in combination with electrical neuroimaging to investigate multisensory, sensorimotor, and cognitive processes involved in mental own body imagery, visuo-spatial perspective taking, the feeling of ownership and agency and their contribution to different aspects of the bodily self and bodily processing.