Journal
PSYCHOLOGICAL SCIENCE
Volume 24, Issue 12, Pages 2445-2453Publisher
SAGE PUBLICATIONS INC
DOI: 10.1177/0956797613498395
Keywords
cognitive neuroscience; consciousness; human body; virtual reality; vision
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Prominent theories highlight the importance of bodily perception for self-consciousness, but it is currently not known whether bodily perception is based on interoceptive or exteroceptive signals or on integrated signals from these anatomically distinct systems. In the research reported here, we combined both types of signals by surreptitiously providing participants with visual exteroceptive information about their heartbeat: A real-time video image of a periodically illuminated silhouette outlined participants' (projected, virtual) bodies and flashed in synchrony with their heartbeats. We investigated whether these cardio-visual signals could modulate bodily self-consciousness and tactile perception. We report two main findings. First, synchronous cardio-visual signals increased self-identification with and self-location toward the virtual body, and second, they altered the perception of tactile stimuli applied to participants' backs so that touch was mislocalized toward the virtual body. We argue that the integration of signals from the inside and the outside of the human body is a fundamental neurobiological process underlying self-consciousness.
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